Transitions

Our long summer days get shorter.
The nights get crisper.

And then one fine September day, our beautiful school building--busy all summer with campers--sees the yellow buses pull up again, delivering bright, shining faces to our front door. The parking lot is once again crowded with parents and their children.

Another school year begins.

Every school year provides us all with a fresh start. What I love so much about teaching is that it continually taps into and renews my hopes, aspirations, nurturing, and wonder. Every year, we have new dynamics, friendships, academic needs and goals, and social agendas that must be addressed. Every year, I get to know my 2nd graders as scholars and social beings. Although I can hit the ground running with my 3rd graders, I get to see them in a new light: this year's mentors and leaders, and the learners I know so well and for whom I have the very clearest of goals on all fronts.

Right now, my class of 2nd and 3rd graders is transitioning. Out of summer. From their long days with you, moms and dads. Separating from the bounty of those picnics and family gatherings. Maybe adjusting to having more structure again in their daily lives. There's a letting go of those delicious summer days that needs to happen. For us all.

Sometimes in these early days, you may notice your child is more tired, cranky, or clingy. Your child is doing a whole lot of work right now. Gearing up for the challenges and joys ahead and adjusting to being in the company of scores of other humans. As the adults in their lives, we can provide comfort and ease through this transition by setting up clear routines, certainty about what happens where and when, and resetting expectations about their responsibilities to us.

In school this week, we will craft our classroom rules together. We will establish classroom jobs. Keep strengthening our response to the signal for quiet. At Morning Meeting, we will greet each other each day with strong eye contact and a kind and respectful tone. We will notice and share the kindness we see in our classmates, and discuss what it means to be a good friend. We will re-start our Power of Flexibility curriculum and work on bending and altering course when the situation requires it.

And we will read, discovering and reinforcing what a "just right" book means for each child. We will write, moving from drafts they have completed into a second go at revision, a task quite challenging to most 7, 8, and 9 year olds. We will continue reviewing and strengthening concepts in math, such as place value, automaticity with basic facts, reading word problems with care, and taking the time to share thinking on the page.


And we will laugh together. Often.