Stephen Vance, Editor
The scramble is on. The calendar has flipped to a new month that kicks off with one final long weekend of the summer before students return to school, and daily life regains a sense of order and normalcy.
While it may be a long weekend – a time for some beach fun or beverages on the deck for many – for parents, this weekend marks the mad scramble to ensure the kids are ready to return to school. Have school supplies been purchased? Are the backpacks loaded with all the necessities? Do we have indoor shoes for little Johnny? Did we remember to buy a new lunch box to replace the one little Nicole broke on the last day of school?
Not to mention parents having to stock up on school-lunch-friendly foods (no eggs, mayonnaise, or peanut butter allowed for our students these days) at the grocery store, getting the kids in for haircuts, and attempting to shift the kids from summer hours to school year hours, which will no doubt lead to some friction at bedtime.
Yes, for many parents this weekend will certainly be a loooong weekend.
But don’t think that students have it easy. This weekend brings with it one last gasp of freedom, one last chance to hop on your bike to go hang out with your friends without having to worry about silly things like homework assignments. Mom and Dad might be concerned about preparing for school next week, but our children, not so much – most kids want summer to never end, and who can blame them?
And for some students in Meaford, this new school year brings with it a little more change than normal, as three schools are merged into just two schools. So add to the standard anxieties brought on by the first day of school, of having to adjust to new surroundings, or to having high school kids in your midst a couple of years earlier than you had previously thought. Where is the bathroom? Will my teacher like me? Will that meany that was in my class last year be in my class this year too? Our kids also have stress and anxiety as the school year approaches.
I feel for the kids with additional adjustments to make this year, but if I were able to offer them some advice, it would simply be that it’ll be okay.
Given that I attended eight schools in five cities (and two provinces) during the nine years of my elementary school career from kindergarten to Grade eight, only one of those schools was I able to attend for any length of time – nearly three years (my elementary school record): I was constantly walking into a new and strange building, meeting new and strange teachers and students – whether on the first day of school, or mid-way through the school year when my mom had moved us yet again. And while it would always feel strange, or even a little scary at times when I was starting at yet another new school, it always turned out all right – and it was always pretty similar from place to place and school to school. Some of the teachers were great, a few were jerks, and it was the same with my fellow students. Fortunately, in spite of all the elementary schools I attended, I was able to get through high school without having move to a new city or change schools – though by that point, I was such an expert at starting anew, that I don’t think I would have been fazed if I had had to change high schools a time or two.
To parents who might be at their wits’ end this weekend, scrambling to prepare two or three kids for school next week – that also gets better as the kids get older. This September I have one of my boys heading into Grade 8, while the other is set to start his first year of college. By the time our kids reach this glorious age, most of the nail-biting and logistical concerns relating to the start of a school year are all but gone, and your biggest challenge is to convince teenagers that while they’ve been staying up until three in the morning for the past couple of months, that doesn’t work so well when you have to be at school in the morning.
Whether you’re eagerly anticipating this final long weekend of what has been a long, hot, dry summer, or if you’re dreading the hustle and bustle, not to mention the craziness of getting your kids ready for another school year, take a deep breath, and relax – even if you aren’t completely ready for when the school bell rings, will it really be the end of the world?
I hope all of our readers enjoy this Labour Day long weekend, and no matter what you have planned this weekend, be safe, and have fun… oh wait, a calculator – did you buy a calculator for Mikey, and a pencil sharpener for April? (Do kids even use calculators in school anymore? Or pencils for that matter?)
