Editorial: Graduation ends journey for parents, not schools

That first day of school is hard.

We drop the kids off for kindergarten. We dry their tears and push them to go. We hide our tears so they don’t know we’re scared, too.

And that’s not the only first day. There’s the first time taking the bus, the first day at a new school, the move to middle school, and then high school and then the first day of senior year, the day you know it is all about to end.

We want to be there through it all, to hold their hands and tell them it will be fine and they’ve got this. But we can’t.

So we take a deep breath and smile and let go.

And the kids jump … and they fall into the waiting arms of the people who make school a little less scary, a little more safe.

The principal who meets kids at the bus with a hug. The kindergarten teacher who can tell when acting out is about frayed nerves that just need a quiet space to recover. The just-graduated teacher who spent weeks planning lessons around video games. The nurse who knows the difference between stomach flu and test anxiety.

Sometimes that person might be the reason a kid wants to go to school at all, like the drama director who makes a family out of every cast. Sometimes they were the last person a kid wanted to see — the math teacher who calls on the kids trying to slink under their desks instead of the ones who knew the answers.

And sometimes the educator isn’t a teacher at all. It is a bus driver who knows what the bullies are doing. It is the lunch lady who pays for little extras she can’t afford.

Then one day, it’s all over. They give back a grown-up they knitted out of books and science and homework, someone who is light years away from that little face that crumbled on the first day.

And they congratulate us. They push these tall, confident kids to thank us.

We have to remember that appreciation and gratitude should go both ways. Educating a child is a 13-year journey with so many stops and starts, road blocks and detours along the way. We can’t just credit the people at the finish line. We have to remember that sixth grade teacher that made the difference for a kid that hated school, or the librarian who found the book that made everything click.

The first day was hard, and we needed to all be in it together to get to the end. We can’t forget it when our kids graduate, because more kids will get on the bus in August, and those same teachers and principals and lunch ladies and bus drivers and librarians and coaches will still be there for them.