Back To School

 Children and youth are headed back to school. Summer break is coming to an end. It is time to put away the lazy days of sleeping late, TV, video games, camp and vacations. Children will soon wake before sunrise and wait for the bus. 

 Silent buildings and empty playgrounds roar to life with children’s laughter. The smells of erasers, crayons, markers and freshly painted classrooms, along with the rumble of yellow buses mark an annual rite of passage.  It is the rhythm of our lives, as surely as the first crisp scent of fall and the turning of green leaves to gold.  We wake up to the echo of school bands, coaches’ whistles and the smack of shoulder pads practicing for the big games.  

 It is a time of deep emotion filled with conflicting currents of freedom and fear, opportunity and obstacles.  Preschool children are finally old enough to follow older brothers and sisters off to school with their own backpack of books.  Babies become children, let go by weeping parents.  College freshmen leave home, off on their own, their heads spinning with dreams and doubt, soon to be shocked with the stab of homesickness.  Houses that vibrated with teenage noise surrender to the silence of an empty room.  It is the stuff of life: joy and sorrow, celebration and challenge, learning and growing.

I am a fan of public schools.  I like the fact that, in our imperfect system, every child has a chance to learn. I love movies about public school teachers and the difference they make in students’ lives, like Freedom Writers or Mr. Holland’s Opus. My wife is a retired public-school teacher.  Across the years she taught kindergarten, third grade, and high school.  Her last assignment was a drop out prevention program for pregnant and parenting teens who achieved a 96% graduation rate.   

Even though schools take summer breaks, school is never out.  Children and youth are always learning, and sometimes the most important lessons they learn are the moments when parents and adults are least aware.  They learn honesty, generosity, courtesy and faith by watching us in check-out lines, in traffic and in the home.  They are always watching and always learning, even when we think they are tuned out.

Peter learned the greatest lesson of his life by watching the Master Teacher in His most crucial hour.  He sums up what he learned, “For what credit is there if, when you sin and are harshly treated, you endure it with patience? But if when you do what is right and suffer for it you patiently endure it, this finds favor with God. For you have been called for this purpose, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you would follow in His steps,” (1 Peter 2:19-21).

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