The Potential of the Beginning

All beginnings are pregnant with potential.

Here's a beginning that's bursting with potential: "Play ball."

Here's another: "Once upon a time . . . ."

And another: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family in its own way."

The first is a reminder that at the beginning of each season, every team - in their clean uniforms, with their starting rotations and their untested rookies - has the potential to win the World Series (even my beloved - albeit struggling - Red Sox).

The second suggests that there are some tales that end happily ever after despite their fantastical nature.

And the third is the first sentence in one of the most sweeping novels ever written, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, a story of passion and power, and of tragic love - the kind of story that sweeps us off our feet and viscerally engages both our intellect and our emotions.

Potential is a powerful word. In fact, its root is "potent" or power, and power is the essence of potential. Because anything can happen in the future, especially if one is young.

The beginning of school is a magical time: sharply creased pants, haircuts, yellow pencils with precise points, shiny lunchboxes, pristine reams of lined paper, books whose spines have yet to be cracked, blackboards wiped clean of chalk dust, expectant faces, and lessons plans yet to be taught.

So much potential: proofs to be solved, labs to be explored, paintings to be framed, poems to savor, games to be won, friends to be made, and A's to be earned.

On the first day of school all things are possible: students can be on the honor roll, teachers can inspire their most reticent students, coaches can win state championships, and principals can serve as leaders of educational communities without compromising their principles.

Of course beginnings can be stressful, for an element of potential is the unknown, and we cannot know what the future holds.

On the first day of school a few years ago, my partner was teaching a first period English class. About five minutes after class had ended, one of her 9th grade students came running back crying into her classroom; he was so distraught that he could not find his next class (which happened to be Latin; the Latin classroom, as befitting a dead language, was squirreled away in a dank basement classroom) that he threw up all over her desk.

It was a tough beginning to his school year; yet, without knowing it, that student had already taken the first steps to having a successful year - he trusted his teacher enough to guide him. (After some time, she was able to comfort him enough so that he walked with her to his new classroom.)

Beginnings require trust expressly because the future is unknown. Whatever we begin, we begin with the intention that we will be successful. And that optimism, that potential, is the beauty of beginnings.

So to all teachers, staff, administrators, and most of all to students and families, best of luck with the beginning of school. Trust in the potential that you have yet to realize.

Your futures are bright, and it's a beautiful beginning.

--Steve McKibben
8/20/06