Avery’s First Day of School

Tuesday, August 8, 2006 was Sally’s first day of kindergarten at Melrose Elementary School. We visited the school the day before and saw her classroom and her teacher, Miss Ruffin. Sally was a bit disappointed to see that Miss Ruffin is not the teacher we talked to at the Open House in June (the one who has the milkweed plants and butterflies in the classroom). On the way home, Sally said, "Why do I have to have a black teacher? I just want a teacher who is white like me." She also wished her teacher had long hair (at least she is consistently superficial). I was quite stumped for a minute or two. We try to embrace racial diversity at home and church. Unfortunately, some of our neighbors are not great examples–the drug dealers on the corner and the lady at the bus stop this morning who was yelling and swearing at us not to touch her fence, for example.

I tried to explain to Sally that we need to have an open mind about people whatever they look like–Miss Ruffin will probably turn out to be the nicest, smartest teacher ever. How would she like it, I asked, if Daddy came home from work and said he’d decided he only wanted daughters with green eyes like him, or if he told me he only wanted a wife with red hair like his? She conceded that this would hurt our feelings. Sally wanted to ride the bus to school, but I convinced her to let me drive her for the first day. We signed her in and got her settled in Miss Ruffin’s room. I joined the PTA and Susan and I ran a bunch of errands (including a visit to the utility office to get our water bill adjusted since Dick has turned out to have awesome plumbing abilities and fixed our toilets–finally!).

Sally’s bus was about 20 minutes late getting her home. Susan and I had our sunhats and cold water, and the walk is short, but it sure was hot waiting. Sally told us the story of The Kissing Hand and said that Miss Ruffin was really nice. She enjoyed eating in the cafeteria (though she only had time to eat half of the lunch we’d packed) and naptime the best. We signed all her papers for her to take back to school–holy papers, this is kindergarten, right? The school seems very on top of things and motivated to make this year a good experience for Sally. I am relieved that the first day is over!