School’s Back for Summer
2012-13 School Year Begins at Capitol View, Moulton and River Woods
With the weather feeling autumnal after last week’s blistering heat wave, why not get back to school?
Roughly 1,500 Des Moines kids did just that this morning at Capitol View Elementary, River Woods Elementary and Moulton Extended Learning Center, the district’s three continuous calendar schools. While a recently appointed state committee studies the possibility of extending the school year and/or the school day statewide these kids got the jump on everybody else and they looked overwhelmingly excited and happy about leading the way in starting the 2012-13 school year.
At Moulton a big crowd was waiting for the doors to open at 8:10. When they did everyone rushed inside and either headed to the cafeteria for breakfast or upstairs to the gym for marching orders. The cafeteria was alive with the smell of toast and the excitement of Opening Day. Kids gulped ice cold orange juice and poured fat free chocolate milk over their cereal before digging in. Nothing breaks in a brand new uniform shirt quicker than a spoonful of flakes or a swig of OJ that misses the mark. Still, the black Moulton polos with the tiger logo on the breast looked smart as the kids modeling them. In the gym so much sunlight streamed in the bank of windows on one wall that you could almost feel the crop of kids growing.
Meanwhile, at Capitol View the first-day frenzy had been reduced to a smattering of enrollment snafus in the main office by 8:30 where words like “sweetheart” and “honey” coming out of reassuring smiles put confused and apprehensive newcomers at ease. The hallways were clean, clear and quiet. In the gym a pod of students was gathered around PE teacher Monica Sherman on the glistening tiles of the checkerboard floor like the nucleus of an atom fairly bursting with energy they were anxious to get to their feet and release. The room was brightly lit and cool; you could hear and feel the freshness in the air ventilating through it.
In Philis Courtney’s library another class was scattered around several large tables making personalized bookmarks that will be laminated to last them all year. Sharpeners hummed, bringing an array of colored pencils to finer points.
Nine o’clock at River Woods and all was well. The flags on the pole out front were flapping appropriately. Classes flowed through the corridors with the efficiency of a bloodstream, exploring the building and establishing standard operating procedures. In one 2nd grade classroom Stephanie Scheer’s “rock stars” were ringed around her going over their protocols and expectations. Behind them were desks stacked high with backpacks and textbooks and supplies. Every time Mrs. Scheer asked a question hands shot up like flames from a campfire.
“How do we ask for a bathroom break?”
Everyone raised a closed hand and twisted it back and forth, the agreed-upon signal.
“That looks like a rattlesnake,” one boy observed.
“I saw a big, green garter snake in my yard yesterday,” another was reminded.
Here we go again.
Photos from the first day of school:
