Dr. Sharon Gainforth* | NeuroAI Team
There is something about September.
Even after all these years, I can feel it.
The mornings are a little cooler. The evenings come a little earlier. New sneakers appear by the door. Backpacks are packed. Lunches are made.
And suddenly, after the beautiful looseness of summer, the alarm clock matters again.
School is back.
We often talk about this time of year as though it belongs to the children.
But it doesn’t.
Not really.
Because when those school doors open, an entire community walks through them.
There is the child walking into a classroom and wondering where they will sit.
Who they will play with.
Whether their teacher will like them.
Whether this will finally be the year that math makes sense.
There is another child who has been counting the days until school starts because they love the predictability of their classroom, the familiar routines, and knowing what comes next.
And there is a child standing at the door who would give almost anything to turn around and go home.
All three belong there.
There is the teacher who has spent days getting the classroom ready.
Names carefully placed on desks.
Books organized.
Plans made.
Perhaps a little welcome sign on the door.
What the children won’t see are the hours behind it all.
Or that their teacher may have stood in that empty classroom the day before school started and wondered:
Will I be enough for all of them?
There is the educational assistant who may quietly become someone’s safe person.
The person who notices the clenched hands before anyone else does.
Who knows when a child needs fewer words, a little more time, a walk down the hallway, or simply someone nearby who isn’t asking anything of them.
There is the resource teacher carrying a schedule that looks almost impossible on paper, trying to figure out how to make sure every child gets what they need.
There is the principal standing near the entrance saying hello, while already carrying a dozen things most of us will never know about.
There are custodians who arrived before everyone else.
Administrative staff answering phones.
Bus drivers learning new faces.
Cafeteria workers preparing food.
Counsellors making space for children whose worries came to school with them.
And then there are the parents.
Oh, the parents.
Some are celebrating.
Some are worried.
Some are taking the obligatory first-day picture while trying very hard not to cry.
Some are wondering whether their child will eat their lunch.
Whether anyone will sit with them.
Whether the teacher will understand that when their child says, “I don’t care,” sometimes they care very, very much.
Some parents are sending a child to school for the very first time.
Others are watching a teenager walk through those doors knowing there aren’t many first days left.
And somewhere, a parent is sitting in their car after drop-off for just a few extra minutes.
Because sometimes letting them grow is wonderful.
And sometimes it hurts a little too.
Maybe that is what we forget in all the rush of September.
School isn’t simply a building children return to.
It is a collection of people.
People who are learning.
People who are teaching.
People who are supporting.
People who are worrying.
People who are trying.
And none of them arrive as blank pages.
The child who seems tired may have had a difficult morning.
The parent who forgot the form may be juggling more than we know.
The teacher who hasn’t answered the email yet may have spent their lunch helping a child through a hard moment.
The educational assistant may go home still thinking about the student who struggled that day.
The principal may be making a hundred decisions while trying to make every person who walks through the office feel as though they are the only one who matters.
We are all carrying something through those doors.
So perhaps this year, alongside the pencils, schedules, curriculum, meetings, goals and carefully labelled lunch containers, we can make room for something else.
A little grace.
Grace for the child who needs longer to settle in.
Grace for the teacher who is still figuring out what makes twenty-something wonderfully different children tick.
Grace for the parent who asks one more question because handing your child over to someone else each day requires an extraordinary amount of trust.
Grace for the support staff doing work that is sometimes invisible but can change the entire course of a child’s day.
And grace for ourselves when September doesn’t unfold quite as beautifully as the photographs suggest it should.
Because there will be forgotten lunches.
Missed buses.
Hard mornings.
Tears.
Unanswered emails.
Lost mittens—although hopefully we have a few weeks before those begin.
There will also be friendships that haven’t happened yet.
A teacher who sees something wonderful in a child that others have missed.
An educational assistant who makes a child feel safe enough to stay.
A principal who knows a student’s name.
A resource teacher who finds the one way of explaining something that finally makes it click.
A parent who discovers that their child can do something they weren’t sure was possible.
And children who surprise us.
They always do.
So, to every child walking through those doors: You do not have to be like everyone else to belong there.
To every teacher: The small moments matter more than you may ever know.
To every educational assistant and resource teacher: The safety, connection and understanding you offer a child can become the foundation for everything else.
To every principal and school staff member: The culture you create is felt in ways that will never appear on a spreadsheet.
And to every parent watching a backpack disappear through those doors:
They are growing.
I know.
It’s wonderful.
And it’s hard.
Both things can be true.
Here’s to another school year.
Not a perfect one.
A human one.
One filled with learning, mistakes, laughter, hard days, second chances, unexpected friendships and moments of connection that nobody thought to put in the lesson plan.
Perhaps those will be the moments our children remember most.
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* Dr. Sharon Gainforth is a Speech-Language Pathologist with over 35 years of expertise as a subject matter expert on Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). She is also the Chief Business Development Officer, Chief Content Officer and Co-Founder of NeuroAI.
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