Back to School

As is my normal routine, I fed the three dogs and one cat, made coffee, poured it into a specially-chosen mug, and made my way from the kitchen to the back porch. I invited the pups as I opened the door and immediately felt the change in the air. We were greeted with 66-degree temperatures, both refreshing and chilly. Unexpected, even. These changes tend to happen nearly overnight. There will be more hot days, but we’ve had our first chilly morning and the promise of more to come.

There was a cardinal and a wren sharing the food in the tray feeder. The hummingbird happily enjoyed his nectar. The dogs took their spots—Franklin on the elevated dog bed; Ivy on the love seat; and Stella on my lap. Graycie filled up the wicker tray on the ottoman in front of my chair. I held onto my coffee cup a bit longer, enjoying the heat on my hands. Fall was giving us a preview.

School is gearing up to start here in Delaware. Two young moms on my street are teachers. This week they are setting up their classrooms in preparation for their students’ return to school on Monday. It is a transition for both students and staff to leave behind the carefree days of summer for the classroom.

I remember the summer before sixth grade. Right before school started, I broke my glasses. They were a nice pair of oval-shaped tortoise shells and I was devastated when the optometrist said they’d have to order a new pair and in the meantime I could wear a loaner pair. They were not glasses I would have chosen. I couldn’t imagine going to school wearing those glasses. I also knew I had no choice. I was not the kind of kid who could fake it and squint my way through the day. I’d worn glasses since the second grade and my eyes only got worse thereafter. Glasses were not an option for me.

I felt so ashamed of those glasses. I tried to hold my head up when I went to school, but I’m sure my shoulders were rounded at the thought of what was on my face. Sixth grade was a big deal. It was the highest grade in our elementary school and I liked all the kids in my class. We had a teacher who had ulcers and would guzzle down pints of milk to help coat his stomach, “Through the lips, over the gums, look out stomach, here it comes,” he used to say. It was the fall of 1969 and he was a fan of the Mets who were playing the Orioles in the World Series. He wheeled a big TV into our classroom each afternoon so we could watch the games. If school let out before it was was over, I would run all the way home to see the end of the game.

The first day of school was scary for me. Where would I be sitting? Who was in my class? But, I was excited about having homework the first night, especially math, if it was easy. I liked my new, clean notebooks, drawing girls, hearts, and peace signs on the fronts. I loved recess when we would play kickball out in the field behind the school.

There was a boy in my class who struggled with classroom learning. I liked him. Once, after a test, he brought his paper to me. He had gotten all ten problems wrong, and he asked me to check to see if the teacher had made a mistake in grading it. I checked each one, and he did, in fact, get them all wrong. For the last problem he had written a “one” as an answer. When I solved it, the answer was “ten”. With my pencil, I carefully added a zero to his one to make a “ten”. I did it as cautiously as I could, making sure no one was watching and that I had matched his writing the best I could. I went back to my friend and said, “Look, you got the last one right.” He went directly to the teacher and showed him the correct answer. The teacher said there was no zero on there when he graded it and my friend said there was. I never told anyone in the class what I had done. Not the teacher, nor my friend. If I had to do again, I would have done the same thing.

School can be hard for some kids. The work. The friendships. The drama. And it can be fun. The work. The friendships. The drama. The best teachers are the ones who remember what it was like to be a kid. As the temperatures cool and the buses hurl down the streets, I think of those kids and those teachers. And I remember what it was like to be a kid.