On September 4, 1945, a little girl stood on the back porch in her brand-new navy blue dotted swiss dress brushing her teeth with a brand-new pink toothbrush that had a tiny pink doll dangling from the bottom. Excitement filled the air. Her sixth birthday would be later that month, and she was old enough to go to school. I remember the day and the little girl well. I can even feel the cool morning air surround me as I take a trip back in time to the day I started school.
CBS has been doing a series with adults asking what your adult self would tell your younger self, and I am going to answer that question for that little girl. I would tell her to relish the day and to put it in her memory bank to enjoy for years to come. Obviously, she did that without my advice.
I would also tell her that day would be followed year by year with first-day-of-school excitement for eleven years until she finished high school. (She skipped second grade.) Off and on for many more years, anticipation would not wane as she completed a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree, certification as a teacher of gifted students, and other post-graduate classes. The biggest excitement of all would come annually for almost thirty years of preparing a classroom for her own students’ first-day-of-school. It would not matter whether they were kindergarteners, second graders, or junior high. I would tell her that she would find school so much fun that she would choose to spend a huge part of her life there.
I would give her another piece of advice that has only recently caught my attention. I would tell her not to take this privilege for granted, that a pandemic could take it all away or make it so different that it becomes unrecognizable. I would tell her that, just perhaps, the epidemic might even make those adults, who often angered her with disparaging remarks and unfunny jokes each fall about “having to go back to school,” think again and realize that school was an extraordinary blessing for learning and socialization for children, for peace of mind for their working parents, and for exciting days for those teachers like her who love their jobs.