GREENFIELD — Sara Houston greeted her kindergartners with a wide smile and a voice brimming with excitement.
She peppered each youngster who filed into her classroom Wednesday with a few quick inquiries as they made their way through the door.
The teacher checked to make sure Andrew remembered where his seat was. She asked Mia if she was ready to ride the bus home from school that afternoon. When Benjamin tripped and lunged forward, she jokingly questioned if he was trying to fly.
Houston’s students were among thousands of Hancock County kids who headed back to school this week, new packs on their backs and ready to learn.
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Kids in the Mt. Vernon Schools district marked their first day of the 2018-19 school year on Tuesday. Greenfield-Central Schools and Eastern Hancock Schools followed suit Wednesday morning. And next week, those enrolled in Southern Hancock Schools will head back to class.
Each year, many of the same first-day sights and sounds repeat, no matter the school, no matter the district.
The hallways of elementary schools are filled with little voices asking questions of their new teachers, tugging on dresses or pant legs for attention. Middle- and high-schoolers huddle outside the front doors, chatting with old friends before being ushered inside.
In kindergarten classrooms — where the schools’ youngest students are embarking on their first first day — there are nervous looks and timid smiles. There are sometimes tears, from parents and students alike.
The little ones in Houston’s class at Harris Elementary School all had dry eyes as the clock ticked past 7:50 a.m. — the official start of the school day there.
And once the last child in the line of her students crossed the threshold of her classroom, Houston took a deep breath, pausing for only a moment to collect her thoughts before jumping up from the little chair she’d been using as a seat and bounding into the room with another excited exclamation.
“Yeah, for kindergarten,” she shouted, throwing both arms into the air. “We’re going to have 180 days of awesome.”
They’d spend the next few hours exploring their new environment, learning the names of their new classmates and labeling a few new friends. Their teachers were there to guide the way at every step, reassuring and calming looks never far from their faces.
Jan Kehrt, the principal at Harris Elementary, introduced herself to a crowd of new students as they lined up outside the school’s gymnasium, waiting to start a physical education class with teacher Jeff Bastin.
Superintendent Harold Olin waved from down the hallway as he made his way from school to school, checking in with the staffs at each of the district’s buildings to make sure everything was running smoothly.
So far, so good, he remarked, as he made his way toward Greenfield Intermediate School to see how students were acclimating themselves to the newly renovated building.
Across town, at J.B. Stephens Elementary, an aide radioed for new principal Shane Bryant to come to the main office. He arrived a few minutes later with a grin and an out-stretched hand to greet a few visitors.
Like some students, Bryant was marking his first day at J.B. Stephens. He and the school’s former principal, Matt Davis, flip-flopped positions for the start of this year. Davis is now the principal at Weston Elementary School, the school Bryant had led previously.
Down the hall from the main office, Laura Salee was leading a group of second-graders through a project in her art classroom.
Salee was having her students draw fireflies inside a coloring sheet that showed only the outline of a jar. Once they were done with their crayons, they’d used blue-colored paint to shade in the jar.
Since the watercolor of the paint wouldn’t mix with the wax of the crayon, it would have the effect that the fireflies were buzzing around inside the glass, Salee said.
It was an easy craft to start off the first day, she said.
Perhaps, it would serve to some as reminder of the summer vacation they were all leaving behind.