Let’s ring in a new school year full of promise
I love the beginning of a new school year. It holds such promise. At the start, almost anything is possible. All of our hopes for the education of children are possible when we are at the cusp of a new academic calendar. No time has been lost. No difficulties have shaken our hopes. No complicated realities have set in. It is all pure, unadulterated promise.
And I think many of our students feel the same way. Over the last two weeks and the last three-plus decades, I have borne witness to that unfortunate tendency of adults to approach children with sad faces and sadder remarks in August.
“Boy, the end of summer; back to the salt mines.”
“I suppose you are hating to see the end of summer, huh?”
“Wow, the start of a new school year. Long time ‘til Christmas break!”
They say those things as if children loathe the approach of a new school year. But I never saw that much among kids heading back into the classroom. In fact, though I rarely met a child who wasn’t ready for summer break come early May, I also rarely met a child who wasn’t pretty excited to get back to it in August, ready to get reacquainted with friends, eager to meet the new teacher, wondering what good things and new freedoms the new year might bring. Children usually approach the new school year with a sense of happy expectancy, and I have always thought that adult sentiments to the contrary, even those from well-meaning adults, were just unfortunate.
As for educators, the same positive anticipation is in order. After all, due to statewide Science of Reading-based literacy training, this may very well be the year of significantly boosted reading proficiencies. Given the heightened scrutiny we are giving smartphones in the hands of teenagers, this could be the year when we find reasonable and effective responses to such. This might be the year the hangover from Covid finally dissipates and a renewed sense of optimism arrives.
Surely, there will also be challenges, some of the old ones and some brand new. But those can wait. Those can lay idle for now, slumbering beneath the excitement for and delights of a new school year. The whiff of newly laid floor wax, the renewed sounds from the playground and the athletic field, and the sight of upturned smiles from children entering their new classroom for the first time can cover a great many ills, especially ills still only in the realm of possibility.
May your new school year teem with fulfilled promises and offer only problems which prove, ultimately, to be opportunities.
Dr. Joseph Graves
Secretary of Education
South Dakota Department of Education