A Freshly Sharpened Start | New School Year, Endless Possibilities

Article by Cindy G. Foust

Well, readers, it’s that time again. School supplies have officially taken over every store in America, which means parents are wandering the aisles holding lists that apparently require a master’s degree to interpret. I’ve been there, mind you. Three-ring binder with pockets. No, not that three-ring binder with pockets. The other one. Six plastic folders with brads. Four without brads. Wide-ruled paper. College-ruled paper. Washable markers. Dry-erase markers. Glue sticks. Headphones. Kleenex. Clorox wipes.

And, of course, the faithful No. 2 pencil. The ole trusty Ticonderoga. By the way, I will buy someone lunch at Waterfront if they can help me pronounce it the right way.

Now, I realize admitting this probably won’t surprise a single person who has read this column for any length of time, but I love a No. 2 pencil. Not mechanical. Not fancy. A real, honest-to-goodness, yellow No. 2 pencil that you have to sharpen. In fact, I have an electric pencil sharpener on my desk, and I still use it. There is something deeply satisfying about putting a dull pencil into that little machine and hearing WHIRRRRRRR until you pull it out with a point sharp enough to perform minor surgery.

Don’t worry. I’m not performing surgery.

But I could fill out a form beautifully.

I love school supplies in general. Fresh notebooks. Good pens. And I am also very particular about my pens…blue ink only. Crisp pages that haven’t been written on yet. I love walking through the school-supply section and seeing all that possibility stacked neatly on shelves for $3.97.

Which has got me thinking about something this back-to-school season. Maybe that’s what education really is.

Possibility.

My daughter is beginning her last year of college and will graduate in the spring in education, which feels particularly special to me because I always wanted to be a teacher. I have enormous respect for teachers, especially kindergarten teachers. Readers, I’m convinced there is a separate real-estate development in heaven specifically for them.

I am hoping for a tent.

Kindergarten teachers are getting mansions.

Not regular mansions, either. I’m talking gold-plated everything, diamond dominoes, streets of gold and absolutely NO construction paper that needs to be cut into 24 snowflakes. I mean, how many of you have spent time with 20 five-year-old’s? Exactly.

But watching my daughter find her way toward a classroom has made me think a lot about how our children find their place in this world.

I work in higher education now, and every day I see the value of a college degree. I see education change families. I see students walk onto a university campus uncertain of themselves and leave four years later prepared to become nurses, teachers, business owners, scientists and leaders. But I’ve also lived long enough to understand something else.

Not every road has to look the same.

Some young people will find their purpose on a university campus. Some will find it in a technical program. Some will become electricians, welders, plumbers, linemen, mechanics and skilled craftsmen, and let me tell you something, when your air conditioner goes out in Louisiana in August, nobody in that house is asking what the repairman’s ACT score was. Can I get an amen? We are simply asking how fast he can get there.

There is dignity in work. There is value in education. And there is enormous value in helping young people discover where their gifts meet a need in this world. Maybe our job isn’t to choose their lane. Maybe it’s to help them recognize it.

I didn’t always understand that when my own children were young. Back then, August was exhausting. Some of you there, now? I bet so. School-supply lists and new shoes and registration forms and lunch money and practices and schedules and trying to figure out who needed to be where at what time.

And then there was car pickup. Come on parents…I hear you. Car pickup. And I know you’re tired. I know you’ve worked all day and you’re sitting in a line approximately 14 miles long wondering why NASA can put people in space but nobody has figured out how to get 600 children into their parents’ vehicles in under 45 minutes.

I remember.

But here’s the part that gets me now. I would give almost anything for one more ordinary ride home with my children after school. Not graduation day. Not an awards ceremony. Not some big milestone with balloons and pictures. Just a Tuesday. I’d like my son to climb into the car and throw his backpack in the floor. I’d like my daughter to get in talking before she even closed the door. I’d like to hear who got in trouble, what happened at lunch, who was mad at whom, what the teacher said and why somebody’s feelings got hurt at recess.

Because here’s the question I find myself asking now: Did I listen? Really listen?

Or was I thinking about dinner? Was I answering a call? Was I mentally making my grocery list? Was I rushing to the next practice, the next appointment, the next thing?

I don’t remember. And goodness, I wish I did. (Didn’t I just write about this last month? If so, it bears repeating.)

I’m not saying that to make one exhausted mother sitting in a carpool line feel guilty. Good grief, motherhood comes with enough guilt already. I’m saying it because I didn’t know those rides were important while I was taking them. They just felt ordinary. That’s the trick childhood plays on us. You miss the ride home from school.

Maybe that’s why I’ve become a bit of an evangelist about ordinary moments as I’ve gotten older. I’m standing on the other side now, waving my arms at younger parents and yelling, “This part! Pay attention to this part!” And they’re probably thinking, “Ma’am, please move. You’re holding up the car line.”

Fair enough.

But I think there’s a connection between those car rides and those No. 2 pencils and all these young people trying to figure out what they’re going to do with their lives. Y’all know it sometimes takes me the entire length of this column to get to the No. 2 pencil point, and here we are. 

A new pencil is just possibility with an eraser. You start writing. You make mistakes. You erase. You change your mind. You sharpen yourself a little and start again.

And eventually, if you’re lucky, you begin to recognize your own handwriting. Isn’t that what growing up is?

So as another school year begins, maybe our job isn’t to have every answer for the children we love. Maybe it’s to give them the tools. I’m just saying… buy the pencils and encourage the gifts.

Listen during the ride home. Help them find their lane. And then, hard as it may be, let them write their own story. That’s hard, or it was for me, when I thought I knew better. But the truth is, it is their story.

Because those fresh pages sitting inside all those brand-new notebooks won’t stay blank for long. And neither will their lives.

So, here’s to the teachers standing at classroom doors welcoming another group of children. Here’s to the professors, coaches, counselors, bus drivers, principals and support staff who will help shape them. Here’s to the parents sitting in car lines wondering if bedtime at 6:30 is socially acceptable. And here’s to the students.

The kindergarteners gripping those No. 2 pencils with their whole fists.

The seniors wondering what comes next.

The college students changing their majors for the third time.

The future teachers, nurses, welders, linemen, entrepreneurs and whatever-they-haven’t-even-thought-of-yet.

May somebody notice what you’re good at.

May you see those gifts for yourself.

May you have the courage to erase when you need to change direction.

And may you eventually find the lane that was meant for you.

As for me, I’ll be over here sharpening my No. 2 pencil. Because at sixty, I still have some blank pages left, too.