A rite of passage – Fionnuala Ward on the first day of school

I was on the bus the other day when a little girl announced to all in the vicinity that she was going into Junior Infants in the next day or two or very soon anyway.
She could barely contain herself. And it is so exciting and also so scary. That first day of school is one of my favourite days of the year, watching those kiddies entering classrooms with their big bags in tow. All grown-up, filled with trepidation or anticipation or a mixture of both.
Some cling. Some don’t. Some abandon their parents at the earliest opportunity and some need to be convinced of the wonders of Lego or pegs or whatever there is to hand while their significant grown-ups slip out of the room.
And for those grown-ups, it’s emotional, sometimes tearful, most definitely affecting. Last year, an impeccably dressed granny had come all the way from Poland to witness this rite of passage.
She beamed and nodded as I welcomed her to the school.
That’s usually my job. Standing at the gate. A smile, a wave, a welcome. On the way in. On the way out.
The nicest of gigs.
“Only 14 years to go”, I found myself reassuring a Daddy who was feeling the moment.
We compared notes on our own first day of school. Nothing there for me. Back then, parents weren’t allowed into the school.
Had an intrepid individual darted past the front doors to attempt a quick glance into the classroom, alarms would no doubt have rung out throughout the building.
Children were handed over to the nuns with minimum fuss. I was a couple of weeks shy of my fourth birthday.
So young. All a bit mad. Of its time.
The Daddy remembered hanging onto his mother’s legs. But admitted that that could have been another day, maybe not the first, memory being notoriously slippery to pin down.
Schools are, of course, different animals these days. Parents are much more involved and pupils have a greater say.
For pupils, the spectrum starts off with something like a thumbs up or down or in the middle to indicate understanding of a tricky concept and ends with the equivalent of, as happened in one school, the student council matter-of-factly presenting the staff with a more equitable timetable for classes when it came to accessing spaces for PE and drama. And, of course, this new, improved timetable worked perfectly well. Much better than the original, according to reports.
My favourite story with regard to pupil voices concerns a school well over 20 years ago, before there was the merest flicker of recognition that pupils could or maybe should have some kind of say in the eight years they were going to spend in a primary setting.
The school was keen to do something about the yard. It was a wide open space with nothing to distract or stimulate, leaving the children with little or no option but to run.
In all directions, all the time, with predictable results.
A parent offered to remedy the situation. To kick off the process, he decided to ask the children what it was they wanted.
More than any other part of the school, the yard is the children’s domain. They use it twice a day, every day. Supervisory staff may come and go but they are always out there.
So he went from class to class and no matter where he went, he heard the refrain “Somewhere to hide”.
Needless to say, when this was reported back to staff, there was much shaking of heads and mutterings of the importance of health and safety.
But the school persisted and the parent in question got stuck in and built nooks and crannies and a sturdy, wooden bridge. The children positioned themselves on and under and beside that bridge.
They colonised those nooks and crannies.
And what was it they did there? They chatted to each other, exchanging news, telling their stories.
“Somewhere to hide” was simply a synonym for “somewhere to be”. Somewhere safe and quiet.
And almost immediately, the yard calmed down.
Those children on their first day of school are entering a system that is open and friendly. A system that is certainly not without its flaws and a system that is chronically under-resourced. But that’s for another day.
They’ll find their feet and their voice. They’ll make friends, quite possibly for life. They’ll laugh and they’ll cry and they’ll remonstrate against the unfairness of this or that or quite possibly everything. And they may not be wrong there. Life can be a real bummer.
And they’ll begin to figure themselves out. What they think, what they feel, what they like, who they like, what it is they’re good at or even what it is they’re not particularly good at but enjoy doing.
And in eight years’ time, when all the other classes are lined up to applaud them out of the building on their very last day, there’ll be more tears and more excitement.
And then they’re onto round two.