In A Series

 The first day of school is always over before it starts, really. 

After more than a week of moving things around, making plans, moving more things around and fixing the plans that were made the first time when you thought you had twenty-four students in your class when it turns out you have twenty-seven. Time to move some more stuff around.

Then we opened the gates. All those initially anxious faces gave way to smiles of recognition. "Oh, I remember this place." That goes for both children and adults. It turns out that not a lot has changed in the two months since we parted ways. 

Yes, there are some new faces. It might take a few days to get the names straight. I am always pleased and happy that kindergarten teachers are considerate enough to stick name tags on their little charges so that 1) we can avoid yelling "hey you, yes you laddie" and 2) we can make educated guesses as to which class they belong to because someone was clever enough to put their room number on their name tags. 

We lost no one. No children. No teachers. No parents. There were a few tense moments when a new first grade boy wandered off in search of the bathroom without a partner, but he was tracked down quickly enough. There were some tears. And some children cried too. 

Mostly it was like returning after a long weekend. With the added bonus of starting with a week of minimum days so that no one twitches too hard at the transition from free time to school time. Waking up in the morning without the time to consider what is for breakfast and what clothes to wear is a different exercise that those languid days of summer. This is the setting to which we return. This is the automatic response. There was another small gift given to us when the bells didn't work for the first half of the day. None of those jarring transitions, just a steady movement from place to place without making that vein in your head stand out too much. 

There will be better days. There will be worse. It's a continuum. Now that we have that first in a series behind us, we can start adding levels of difficulty. How about reading? How about fractions? How about getting in line when the bell rings. 

It's okay. We've got time.