It’s that time of year.
Marching bands are already rehearsing. Athletic teams are practicing.
Teachers are getting their classrooms ready.
Parents are counting the days. Except for parents of kindergartners and high school seniors; they are crying a lot.
There’s something about a new school year that affects the entire community, even those who no longer have a direct connection to the school district.
It’s the other New Year—the time of new beginnings, new aspirations, and new opportunities.
Every team is still undefeated and every student still has perfect attendance and no one has been sent to detention.
I’ll be watching social media for all the first day of school photos, complete with new clothes and backpacks.
Since Mrs. Sweetie retired from education and our kids graduated from college, we are not quite as interconnected with the school calendar as we once were.
But we’ve got two kids that are public school teachers, one that is an adjunct college instructor, and grandkids that are in kindergarten, first grade, and second grade, so we do have to consider school schedules when making family plans.
Our kids are third generation educators, so we are well aware of what it means to anticipate a new school year.
But I feel compelled to mention that, along with the new opportunities come some new challenges and fears that previous generations of teachers and students didn’t spend much time worrying about.
Those things are my prayers for the new school year.
I’m praying for safety. That’s not new, but previous generations didn’t spend much time thinking about the possibility that a troubled individual would show up at the school with the intent of taking the lives of innocents.
We do now.
I’m praying for wisdom for administrators who are thinking about how to provide learning environments that are safe and productive for all students and supportive work environments for teachers in a pluralistic but increasingly polarized society.
I’m praying for encouragement for teachers who have sacrificed the compensation commensurate with similar education in other fields because they want to pour their lives into the next generation.
They often live under the constant scrutiny of misinformed critics and political agendas that devalue their contribution to the community while they drown in increasing piles of paperwork, procedural hoops, and standardized testing.
And now they worry that someone is going to sue them for the content of their teaching.
I pray for endurance for the support, custodial, food service, and transportation staff who work in silent anonymity—until they make a mistake.
I pray for patience for parents who are doing their best to get their kids clothed, fed, and delivered to school and to be available to read to them and tuck them into bed at night while holding down a job that provides the resources to keep all those things in place.
This isn’t easy for anyone.
But if we’ll cut each other some slack, pray for each other regularly, and encourage each other frequently, we’ll find some amazingness in this school year.
Be amazing today, my friend.
