The summer was ending and he wasn’t looking forward to going back to school. The summer is never long enough.
A few weeks before the first day, the principal called. She asked if my son would be willing to talk to some prospective upper school students. He’d been a leader last year, she said. The school had a program. The older students called themselves ambassadors. She thought of him.
I told him she’d reached out. I told him what she said.
“Really?”
He sat up a little taller. His chest puffed out just slightly. I told him I thought so too.
The family ended up not needing him that day. He was still going back to school, still to the same hallways and the same people, but now as someone who’d been asked.
Every year, the week before classes start, the school holds a welcome back gathering. We go every year. I stand in the hallway and talk to his teachers, the ones who’ve known him for the last few years. I think they’re a big reason for his progress. They cared about him and I’ve never doubted that.
This year there was news. The school had added eleventh grade, which meant a dedicated upper school floor and dedicated upper school teachers for the first time. He’d be moving up. I hadn’t fully realized what that meant until that night. The teachers I’d been talking to for years would be one floor down. Not gone, but different. I was going to miss them.
One of the new upper school teachers was someone he’d had before. There was also a teacher we hadn’t met, and we met them that night. And his teachers introduced us to a new student and their parents, someone transferring in and nervous about starting somewhere unfamiliar. We talked about things my son liked about the school, how long he’d been there, what made it feel like the right place. We told them he’d help them get settled.
When school started, I checked in every few days. He said he was helping. He was.
A week or so in, I walked into his room and he was on the phone. I asked who it was. The new student, he said. They were on speaker, so I said hello.
They said my son had made them feel very welcome. They said I was raising a nice boy and a good person.
He was sitting right there.
I left the room. They were still on the phone.
