This week will include the first day of school for students in the School District of Monroe and throughout Wisconsin. The “Back to School” sales are ending, parks and swimming pools suddenly are emptying out, and it becomes a lot easier to buy an ice cream cone shortly after lunch during the week.

As somebody that has spent the last 42 years in schools, beginning with my own kindergarten experience, the first day of school has seemed to change in its complexion a bit from what it once was. What was once simply the first day of a 180-day continuum, has recently morphed into a type of holiday in American society.

I started school in the 1970s. I lived in “the country” so I took a bus to school. My mom worked third shift at that time as a nurse and my dad taught in another school district. When the bus showed up at the end of my driveway, nobody took any pictures. My mom was sleeping and my dad was already at work. I simply got on the bus and went to school, just like I would for the next 179 days.

Don’t get me wrong, I was excited to start school. I had new school supplies, I got to reunite with many of my friends I hadn’t seen for a while, and I got to eat school lunch again (this was back when we actually got to eat as much as we wanted at lunch.) Back then, we actually had three recesses a day, and it seemed like the lunch recess was an hour long. We built forts in the winter, played kickball and unsanctioned games of tackle football in the spring and summer, and most of the playground equipment hovered over jagged blacktop. It is a miracle I am here to tell about it, but it was great fun!

We didn’t actually learn much the first day of school. We organized our desks, we had some stories read to us, they extended recesses, and they handed out the books for the year and we would take the living history tour as we looked on the inside cover of our books to see who has possessed that book previous school years. Our teachers put us in reading and math groups based on where we were the previous year and we divided up of tasks for “clean-up” at the end of the day.

Once the bus brought me home, I walked up the driveway with my babysitter (who got off the same bus) and I would have a choice to clean my room or put the dishes away that had dried on the countertop the night before.

Now, the first day of school is filled with pomp and circumstance. Apparently, it is now a social media event in which cute photos are taken of children holding signs boasting about the grade they are in or at least holding up some fingers that should loosely translate to their grade level. I am not sure why this is something we want to share with others, and I am not sure why my generation of parents posts this on social media, but we do it anyway.

It also shocks me how many parents are hanging out with their students as they enter school the first day. I even see parents whose kids ride the bus drive to school to take pictures as they walk into school on “the first day” getting off the bus. This is a stark contrast to my parents where Mom would go to two parent-teacher conferences a year and would go to school when I would get in trouble, again, for playing tackle football at recess.

Students actually do work on the first day of school now. As part of my job, I get to spend time in every school on the first day, and there seems to be real work being done on the first day except at the high school where there is a freshman orientation day. Now that we are in a block schedule at the high school, I imagine that the second day of school will look different than in previous years because classes are 25 minutes longer.

In the end, while the first day of school may have changed over the years, it still symbolizes the renewal of the school year and new excitement for students and staff. Parents seem to be into this a lot more than they were in the past, but maybe that is a good thing. Life goes by in the blink of an eye, and we should savor each moment, because we will never have it back.

Enjoy the first day of school, even if you do not have children in schools anymore. Be mindful of students walking to and from school as you drive in the morning and early afternoon, and thank you to the many of you who support the schools in our community.

Have a great 2018-2019 school year and GO CHEESEMAKERS!!

— Rick Waski is the district administrator for the School District of Monroe. He can be reached at 608-328-7109 or rickwaski@monroe.k12.wi.us.