Back to the Future

I remember vividly the first day of second grade: My teacher, Mrs. Holtzman, handed out a worksheet and told us to write the date at the top: 9/9. I felt relieved. Nine-nine! At least that wasn’t new. But pretty much everything else was.

We call this time of year “back-to-school season.” But back is mostly an adult word. Grownups recognize the rhythm: backpacks, buses, permission slips, lunch boxes, traffic. Here we go again! Kids, on the other hand, aren’t going back; they’re going forward. A second grader has never been a second grader before. A sixth grader may know the building but not this hallway, this teacher, this lunch table, this particular blend of expectations and friendships and locker combinations. Even a high-school senior, veteran of a dozen first days, has never before been a senior.

Adults have accumulated years of evidence that strange things eventually become ordinary. We’ve started new jobs, walked into unfamiliar rooms, met new people. We know that what feels awkward today may feel routine a month from now. Kids, though, have much less evidence. Newness creates wonder and excitement, but it also creates uncertainty.

We grownups may look backward at all our previous back-to-school seasons, whether nostalgically, resentfully, or somewhere in between. But for kids, familiar scenery doesn’t necessarily mean familiar territory. We know that 9/9 comes around once each year. But where our kids will be sitting this September 9… they may remember it decades later, but it happens only once.

—Debra Ross, publisher

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