A Second Chance at a First Impression

A note from Mr. Bartsch, Grade 8 Humanities Teacher to his students

Greetings, my young cherubs.

If you remember back to September, to the first day of school, I shared with you a poem that ended with the lines “and you know the old expression/you never get a second chance to make a first impression.”

You might also know another old expression: never say never. Well, it turns out that some ‘never’s are less certain than others. You do have a second chance to make a first impression.

Today you each have a blank scorecard, a clean record, with no known history. However you were judged or misjudged yesterday, whatever was thought of you- either academically or behaviorally- is irrelevant. Today you start anew, faced with challenges unknown (certainly) and unforeseeable (possibly).

It is a second first day and you get to be the person you want to be. You get to work hard, or not. You can be an inspiration to your peers, or an impediment to their learning. You can be sincere, or cynical. You can be skeptical in the positive way- poking ideas, prodding thinking, comparing and contrasting different sets of data or dogma or diatribe, or you can be skeptical in a small-minded or mean-spirited manner.

Now is the time to do it. Be the goddess, the hero, the hermit, the philosopher, the poet, the backbone, the nurturer, the whatever-you-want-to-be, as long as it is not the first level, the easy way, or the frightened path. Push through to be more, share more, grow more, dream more, demand more.

We have about 11 weeks left together. . . apart. Unfortunately, because of the current circumstances, for the next few weeks (at least) we all have to hunker done and work from home. It might feel, at times, frustrating, or confusing, or boring. But we can turn it into a great experience, one no eighth grader has ever had before. We can choose to be adventurers in distance learning, emigrants to a land free from previous expectations, pioneers settling new fields of accomplishment. We can decide to find new ways to research, gather, filter, and sort. There are no set rules on how to assess what you will experience and acquire and devise. We can go deep. We can go broad. We can observe from inches away or from the heavens. We can push the level of our devotion to bringing our finest qualities forward, for our individual benefit and the betterment of the various communities we each are part of.    

But let’s agree that, when we look back at this crazy, unprecedented, unpredictable point in time, that we kept our cool, kept our sense of humor, and kept our magnificent capacity for wonder. Let’s have no regrets, knowing that we were kinder and more empathetic and supportive and patient than we had been before.

And let’s laugh.

Trust and go forward.

Mr. Bartsch
Grade 8 Humanities Teacher