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What adults can learn from kids at the first day of back to school

By Chuck Hunt - Editor | Sep 10, 2023

As you can probably tell by the number of photos in this week’s Register, it was Back to School Week across Faribault County.

The staff from the Register tried to get to several schools on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday for some pictures of kids – and some adults – on the first day of school.

I have always found it to be an interesting time.

You can see the kids who are eager to get back to school and be with their friends. There is the shy girl sitting on a bench by herself. The boy who is nervous and clings to his mom.

There is the young boy helping out his brother because his brother is a kindergartener and it really is his very first day, ever, at school.

There are some who are obviously not very thrilled about having to be back at school. That really pertains to the high school students. Some don’t always appear to be quite awake.

It is always an interesting scene.

Covering a back-to-school morning also brings back memories of going back to school. I am not sure I have a lot of very specific memories, but I know I had to start school at a new school several times. I went to kindergarten at a junior high school because the elementary school near me did not have enough classroom space. I started third grade in a brand-new Lutheran school in LaMesa, California. Then ninth grade in Denver, Colorado, 10th grade in Aurora, Colorado and college in Mankato, where I knew absolutely no one.

I was the new kid a lot of times, not knowing anyone in the whole school, and that is not always the easiest thing in the world to do. Luckily, I made friends fairly easily.

I also attended schools with other kids of, shall we say, diverse backgrounds. In San Diego there were many kids in my schools of Hispanic and Asian/Pacific Islander heritages. That was true in my neighborhood as well. In Denver, too, there were many kids of different heritages in my schools from Hispanic, to Black to Native Americans.

I think that back in the old days schools in small towns of Minnesota did not have that much diversity, as many had German or Scandinavian or other European country ancestry. It is who settled Minnesota back in the early days.

But, if you watch the kids come down the sidewalks into the schools in Blue Earth on the first day of school, you will notice a lot of diversity, especially for a small town in Southern Minnesota.

I will let others expound on just why that is, but it sure reminds me of my growing up years.

And I think of it as a good thing.

For me, I just had a lot of friends, and some of them had skin tones which might have been different than mine and their speech a bit different than mine, too. But, they were just kids, like me.

This was the 1960s and 1970s and we thought times were changing when it came to accepting all people as our neighbors. Unfortunately, these changes have only done so very slowly, with many steps backwards along the way.

Perhaps we adults can take a lesson or two from kids. They can just look at their classmates and say these are all my friends, no matter what their backgrounds, race or other differences are.

Sometimes kids unfortunately learn bigotry, racism, hatred and distrust of others from their parents and other adults.

In Blue Earth, the B.E. Welcoming group is trying to change the way we all look at each other, get along with each other, and live together as neighbors.

They are holding several events next week. A bonfire was planned for Saturday night, Sept. 9, and they are encouraging the community to wear blue for Welcoming Week on Wednesday, Sept. 13.

We wish them well with their efforts. We have come a little ways since the 1960s, but nowhere near far enough.

And maybe we can learn how to accomplish this by watching the kids on the playground at the first day back at school.