Summers End: Starting School
When I was a kid we went to our Beach house for the summer. My Dad rode the train down to the shore and spent several days each week with the family.
This summer ritual started in late June when school ended and we packed up to head to the beach for the summer. What a great time it was to reconnect with my summer buddies and get our shoes off to get rid of winter feet.
By the 4th of July we had the tans in order and the feet toughened so that walking on hot streets or sand was not noticed. The summer seemed to stretch out forever with a return to school and the city somewhere in the dim mist of a far future time.
My father cleared that mist at breakfast on the 4th of July every year. He would announce “Well here we are on the 4th of July. The summers almost over” As kids my brother and I were immediately jolted into a chill long before the weather caused that condition.
There was never anything my father did that caused me such an uneasy feeling. Here we were just rolling into the heart of our vacation time and it was being announced that the end was near. We gradually got to understand that Labor Day really wasn’t around the corner and we still had a lot of summer fun remaining.
If my Dad was still alive I wonder when he would now make his summer ending pronouncement. It would probably be on Memorial Day. The educators have changed the nation’s seasonal activities to meet a schedule that is without reason to me. It is a schedule that might have meaning to teachers and administrators but has little meaning to the rest of the nation. It seemed to work well when school ended mid June and restarted after Labor Day
My Grandson told me yesterday that his summer baseball league ends on August 15th because the kids are expected to return to school on August 17th. I have been thinking about this early start of school for several years and have decided that this rivals the introduction of New Math as an example of public education living in a world that tests reality.
My mother knew how to schedule our start of the fall school term when we were in elementary school. She would check the weather report for the week after Labor Day to determine if we were going back to the city to a hot school room. If it was hot she sent a note to the school announcing that her boys could be expected in the next week or so. Save them a seat in their class rooms. Somehow our readers and math books appeared at our seashore home and she spent an hour or two in the morning covering the material that our, soon to be, classmates were sweating over in a hot city classroom.
We recovered from the mornings educational toils by going to the beach or sailing on the bay each day for a week or ten days after Labor Day. I wonder how the educators of today would react to a modern counterpart if such a parent announced the starting date for her children.
My mother’s participation in the opening of school for the fall term was not without some problems for me.
In first grade coming back to the city a week or two after the start of school, my mother gave me a note announcing my identity. I was to take this note to the principal’s office hand it to the secretary and she would take care of details. I asked , “Mom where is the school “? The answer: “Don’t worry. Carol Mealy will stop by and walk you to school and show you the principals office.” That was a relief since Carol Knew all about school since she was in second grade and was experienced in this school business.
Carol showed up in the morning, walked me the five or six blocks to school and showed me the aforementioned office. I walked in alone and was greeted by a lady with a kind voice who asked, what can I do for you? She read the note and invited me to take a seat while she made the necessary arrangements. In short order I was taken to the first grade classroom where there was no available seat for me. I was told to stand by the teacher’s desk until the janitor brought in a spare desk. The desk arrived and was placed in a space in the front of the room separated from the rest of the students since the desks would need to be completely rearranged to accommodate another desk.
Needless to say the students in the class who had spent 10 days getting to know each other were curious about the new kid sitting up in the front alone, separated from the rest of the class.
This 6 year old sitting alone in the front of the class needed to make some quick adjustments from the serene life at the beach that had ended only hours before my first day in school. It was not a first school day like one depicted as loving stories in the movies or on TV about the touching experience of mother and son parting for the next phase of their lives.
After some initial trauma I handled it. After all, we are Irish and I was 6 years old.
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