Summer's Children Re-enter the Academic Atmosphere

Area schools welcomed back students this week and Patch correspondent Steve Rogers followed the journey of one child and one school.

Willow, a fourth grader at Swimming River Elementary School (SRS), went back to school a bit early ... the day before school officially opened.  An orientation, a chance for parents and children to meet with their new teacher, was held on Sept. 7, a day before the official start of school.  This getting-to-know-ya event eases confusion on the first day and allows new students to become acquainted with their new school ... it also allowed for reunions in some cases.  Willow was happy to run into her third grade teacher, Katharine Black, who has moved over from Mahala F. Atchison School (MFA) to SRS.  She also got to see one of her friends, Lev, from MFA that she has shared a class with for three years.  This year, regrettably, for both of them, they will have different teachers ... but they'll always have recess.

After days of rain, the first day of school was greeted by a break in the soaking.  Under temporary blue skies and then a bright gray, children, Willow and Lev included, boarded buses and then tramped with bags around puddles to the halls of the SRS.  Teachers, aides and administrators pointed the way for the wide-eyed children of summer as they reentered the academic atmosphere, and despite the fact that things were running late, school principal, Dr. Marion Lamberti, called the delay "typical for the first day," citing confusion by new students and bus drivers who are taking it slow to get it right, as reasons for the gradual beginning of the 2011-2012 school year.

Lamberti and her staff deftly navigated puddles, delays and the typical anxieties and apprehensions that waft on the September air and on the freshest fumes of bus exhaust.  Autumn is in the mail.  Welcome children.  Welcome learning.