in my view, giving candies on your first day sets a rather sweet tone and you'll have to get more of those every time or face the consequences. don't bribe your kids on your first day is my suggestion :)

first days are tough and we often do not know what we're getting into. therefore, we should do our best to find out as much as we can about our class to be taught. ages, levels, characters, backgrounds etc are to enquired about. of course, more often we'll get little out of that and so we end up wondering. aside our experiences in the field, our cultural awareness as well as our social skills are to guide us through such classes. our knowledge of what the school's expectations of the class are may also help there. note that you could really waste your young learners class if you insisted on english names as it happened to me before too. so, try learning your students chinese names just in case.

cheers and beers to our sweet first days in class