First Day Of School

First Day Of School Picture - 2024

Since as long as I can remember I’ve had a “First Day Of School” (often with a picture); dating back to the fall of 1971 when I started attending.  I can recall waiting in our driveway for the school bus as a kindergartner - at the top of the hill, on an unnamed road North of Sparr (known at that time simply as “Rural Route #1”), waiting to travel the seemingly long way to Johannesburg Elementary on the north-side of a small Kindergarten-12th grade building.  I had attended preschool the year before that with my teacher Mrs. Driscoll.  The preschool met in the basement of Gaylord’s small St. Andrew's Episcopal Church with the unique chalet style roof; a good deterrent for our heavy snowfall in Northern Michigan.  Mom was the one who drove me into town that year, and although foundational, it was only a couple of times a week.

I started at Joburg Elementary School a month after turning 5; the birthday when I received my blue scooter that I’d ride down the grassy hill off our backyard - dragging it by the handle back to the top or leaving it at the bottom until someone helped me.  Over the next few years a couple of the neighbor kids would congregate at our driveway before school because my Dad had put in a tetherball court just back from the road.  That meant that the pole was a maple tree cut from the woods, fixed at the top with an eye bolt that the rope and ball hung from, which was a perfect remedy to while away the time as us kids waited to be picked up by the bus.

First Day Of School Picture - 1971

As I reflect back, I guess I’ve had a first day of school for most of my life; 54 years to be exact.  I’m not sure how the years slipped by like that!  It feels monumental, and yet overwhelming at the same time.  It’s kind of John Henry-esque.  I love John’s fortitude, his style, and the legacy he left.  He’s outright my favorite folk tale hero.  And while he wins against the machine in the well known ballad, he dies from that contest with his hammer in his hand.  I suppose I feel something like that.  For 18 of those 54 years I was a student; preschool through college.  And after a year of student teaching, getting married, and working for a lawn service (the last while sending out resumes with a cover letter), I was hired and taught in a 5th grade classroom for 35 years; all in the same K-8 district.

Right this minute the kids and teachers of that district are putting the final touches on their first week of school.  They’ve been using these first few days to reacquaint themselves with routines, introduce expectations, and begin to build healthy relationships that will catapult them into next week’s full 5 days and the school year ahead.  I know this because it’s ingrained in my make-up and DNA.  I could teach with my eyes blind folded and one arm tied behind my back, because I have done it for so long, I was good at it, and loved it to boot!

As for me right now?  I’m sitting on our back deck, under the eaves and close to the house, journaling my thoughts into this worn composition book.  Not because it’s in the shade, although that’s a plus even with the unseasonably cool weather we’re having right now, but because a spider has spun an intricate web between the other chairs, table, and collapsed umbrella.  For 35 years I’ve taught science, and today will not be the day I break one of my many mottos which stated, “Don’t kill it unless you plan on eating it.  If you don’t plan on eating it, don’t kill it!”  Those were words to live by as a teacher instructing 10 and 11 year olds, and especially when it’s a cross orbweaver spider!  So the arachnid is getting free reign of the table area right now, and I’m writing with this journal in my lap.  Good luck little fella.  May you snare a big juicy arthropod.  From the bits of dried exoskeletons on the tabletop, you’ve done just that over the last couple of days!

So yes, I’m retired now; whatever that means.  Those I began teaching with (the same teachers that started soon after the 3 one-room school houses combined) have been retired for some time now.  I’m simply joining them.  Again, I’m not sure how the years slipped by like that, but they have.  I consider myself a link between those who established our district and those who are now teaching and setting new standards to match the changing times.  I don’t mean that I’m stuck between the past and present.   I see myself as a combination of both; having started with chalkboards & the occasional use of calculators, and then moving to whiteboards & a computer lab, before settling on Smart Boards & one-to-one student Chromebooks.  There has always been a past that goes further back than whatever we can recall, and there will always be a present going forward beyond what we can imagine; for all of us.  The jump in technology in the span of years that I taught, however, has been astronomical.

If I gained a millimeter of jumping ability for everyone who has asked me how retirement is treating me (insert Mr. Rhines’ metric system speech number #124.8b), then I could easily tomahawk dunk by now!  I get it, you need a standard question to start a conversation.  It’s like asking an 18 year old, “How’s college going?”  Assuming they are going that route over entering the trades, signing up for the military, or diving into the job force.  My standard answer this summer has been, “I don’t know yet…”  I spent all of June dismantling my museum of a classroom.  The first part of July was time to travel; with my wife to visit family, and then camping in Northern Michigan with my cousins, before settling into jobs around the house.  I’m not sure where August went, other than writing thank you cards for retirement gifts.  I guess I was simply trying to search for a routine while getting regrounded in running and biking.  Part of that time was dealing with the guilt that rises from knowing that teachers were preparing for school and I wasn’t.  Or that I’m retired but, “still so young” - as if the sacrifices or “sell my soul” attitude I’ve had all these years while teaching, coaching, being the athletic director, working intramurals, mentoring, or co-leading our environmental club wasn’t enough of a reason.  Not to mention the preparation for the annual creek walk day, 5th grade camp, summer camps, or any number of various activities.  These were choices, not chores in the sense of obligations.  I grew up on a small farm, so I know what chores are, and I loved 95% of those too!  Minus weeding the garden in the hot sun, although it often had its rewards with a trip to the lake to cool off once my sisters and I stopped whining and finished the task.  It’s where I learned firsthand the whole idea of delayed gratification.  What I did at school was what I loved to do because I chose to do it; it provided some of my identity and purpose, as many people feel who have connected with their careers.  Whatever task I had decided to do at school involved everything I had; sometimes spread over the many activities, but something I could always hang my hat on with pride at the end of the day.

About now school is letting out and the staff is talking in the hallways; themselves excited about the coming weekend, and I have to wonder, “What now?”  I recently saw a sit down conversation between Oprah Winfrey and NBC’s meteorologist, Al Roker, who was about to turn 70 years old.  When contemplating time, getting older, and next steps, her advice to him was, “When you don’t know what to do, do nothing.” In other words, “Be still.”  Al replied as a network spokesperson by saying, “We don’t like dead air!”  Personally, that bell rang loud and true; right upside my head.

Colleagues from yesteryear suggested that I go do something last week as the students returned to school.  Since my wife was working and enjoying her job in the library at a nearby college, I took a solo trip Up North into Wisconsin to camp and fish; a couple of other passions I have.  For me, trips like that don’t lead to being still and doing nothing.  It seemed I was constantly moving, while burning energy.  That’s often how I like to relax.  Don’t get me wrong, there were times when I would sit and either observe nature around me or read from the two books I have going right now; Gathering Moss by Robin Wall Kimmerer, and The Backyard Adventurer by Beau Miles.  The first book I bought at a cool, quaint, shop in Waco, Texas while visiting our daughter and son-in-law, and the second was given to me by my kids upon my retirement.  I guess I also relaxed the first night after setting up camp, when I woke up from only two hours of sleep to the light of a nearly full moon; listening to the barred owls calling in the hollow, coyotes laughing up on the ridges, and a family of raccoons trooping around my tent and picnic table foraging for anything I may have forgotten to store away back up in my Jeep - which fortunately I had not.  The second night of my stay I slept like the dead.

When I burned energy I was often cooking over an open fire (cutting and prepping food), trout fishing in a creek that bounces between bluffs of exposed Cambrian sandstone (in waders against the current), or running beautiful dirt trails (in what would otherwise be known as rugged terrain).  I wanted to journal while sitting outside my tent, but the process of what I deem as camping kept me from doing that this particular time, until I could return home and reflect.

I took my obligatory “First Day Of School” picture this year, but I’m standing on a gravel bar in the shade of a hemlock covered bluff (as opposed to standing beside the flag hanging on our home, or in front of the school).  At least I remembered to smile with my eyes open this year.  In 1989, my first year teaching, the photographer captured a picture of me with my eyes closed.  I didn’t care or know any better, so I didn’t participate in “retakes.”  Plus, those were the days when you waited for the film to be developed before we knew what digital photography really meant.  Consequently, I was not in that year’s class picture or school yearbook, except for one or two random shots and the one where I’m standing next to my first basketball team as their coach.  Suddenly I cared!  From then on, I always made sure my eyes were open; and I mean that literally and figuratively - as an awareness to what’s going on around me.

School, teaching, and living your passions in general, are meant to be relational.  It’s one way that we associate directly and make connections.  When I watch my favorite TV show, Alone, it’s what the contestants are always whittled down to…regardless of whether they are starving, injured, or pushing themselves to the utmost in order to win the whole shebang.  They eventually desire some degree of human contact; be it friends or family, past or present.  That applies to the most introverted hermit, to the most outgoing life of the party.  We all need relationships of some kind, which is why I love the irony in the multi-layer title Alone.  It’s also why I like the stories behind those first day of school pictures.

While I myself am going to miss many of the connections I have at school, I am looking forward to maintaining them, albeit under slightly different circumstances.  After a healthy break, I would entertain being a guest speaker or storybook reader at school, baking treats for the staff, attending an after school activity, or coming in for an occasional lunch simply to visit.  One of the retirees from the past used to come back to eat lunch with the staff in the teacher’s lounge whenever we had, “Government Chicken Day” (as he called it).  I always found that hilarious, but it made sense as well to periodically reconnect.

In the meantime, and as I’m redefining myself, I’ll follow the advice written by the authors in the books that I mentioned.  Kimmerer stated, “Mosses have a covenant with change; their destiny is linked to the vagaries of rain.  They shrink and shrivel while carefully laying the groundwork for their renewal.  They give me faith.” (37)  Maybe it’s because I taught science for 35 years, but I love that whole idea of preparing now for the unknown of the future.  We all do that, knowingly or unknowingly, because even NOT making a decision is a decision.  She simply chose to convey that through the idea of mosses.  And from Miles’ book, he wrote, “To slow down ever so slightly, realising that a story needs purpose, and purpose is built on the everyday and ordinary, is harder than it sounds given there’s so much of it… [This means that] smaller tales build within the bigger picture like muscle supported by bone.” (14)

All in all, the takeaways for this are to find something that can be therapeutic.  I chose reflecting in a journal to put some of the thoughts and feelings of my own education and years of educating into words; while contrasting that with my time in the outdoors.  Events and experiences that you have lived through are not the end all, but they are building blocks - in all their facets of being good, bad, or indifferent.

Oh, and remember to smile with your eyes open for that “First Day Of School” picture; wherever that may be and no matter what particular moment you are actually capturing.  There’s a story behind that snapshot.  I’ll remember that next week when I gather with my colleague-friends at the retiree breakfast.  Say Cheese!

See you along The Way…