Back to School

© Dr. Gary D. Lemmons, August 13, 2006

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As I was out and about on my daily two mile saunter last Monday, the big, yellow, behemoth came lumbering over the hill and the familiar sound of the straining engine filled my ears.  The school bus that services our little subdivision was rolling again.

I knew it was going to happen.  Last weekend, when I visited the local Office Depot, I noted the large number of customers taking advantage of the sales tax holiday enacted by the Georgia General Assembly and signed into law by the Governor last legislative session.  I, also, noted the number of $100 gift cards from the state government used by teachers to purchase materials and supplies in preparation for use in their classrooms.

When I had exited the Office Depot, I looked across the street to the Wal-Mart parking lot to see it jammed packed with shoppers bent on acquiring the new school supplies and clothes that mark this time of year.

Like a lot of school systems, Gordon County has been slowly moving toward a year-round school calendar.  No one has actually verbalized that this is what we are doing but little by little we are starting the school year earlier and earlier.  This year, for the first time, teachers had to report for pre-service on the last day of July and the youngsters began classes on August 4.

Now, year-round school is not as bad as it seems.  As it is being implemented clandestinely in Gordon County, it is not increasing the number of days that students are attending classes.  Rather, it is spreading the 180 days now required of students over a longer period of the school year.  While some additional holidays are sprinkled in the calendar over the year, there is not as much extended downtime.  Regression (that strange situation wherein youngsters forget what they have learned when away from school for an extended period) is not as severe under the new scheme.

When I was a boy, school never started before the last week of August.  In some rural counties, some systems didn’t start until the Tuesday after Labor Day.  A lot of church revivals occurred in mid to late August, when I was a boy.  So, the schools would not go into session before the latter part of the month.

I am told that, just prior to my starting school in the early 1950s, schools had begun in mid-August, but then they would close down a week or two in mid to late September when the cotton crops came in.  By the time I came along, cotton was no longer “king” and the practice of having a “cotton picking” vacation was no more.

The world changes, society changes, and school (although it stays the same in so many ways) also changes.  As that big, yellow, school bus passed me last Monday, I fancied that the faces of the students were bright, shiny, and excited.  I mused that the youngsters on board were eager to get back to school to meet their new teachers, to renew friendships, and to become engaged in that mystical learning process.

I was a part of this process for a total of 33 years.  For over three decades, I answered the morning bell and presided, in some fashion, over “books taking up.”  As that big bus went by, I realized that I was a part of that life no more.  It was up to younger, stronger, and more energetic folks to deal with the kids in the post-modern world.

I waved as the bus rolled toward me.  From inside the hands of the driver and several of the students raised in a friendly gesture, and the bus passed me by.

I hiked on toward the top of the little rise and smiled.