The "Day of Screaming Children" began exactly as it had every previous year at BFA: me, lying awake in bed half an hour before my alarm, previewing in my mind all the day’s events and wondering how they could all fit in. This moniker for the Opening Ceremony came from my first principal because our students - after 11 weeks apart over the summer - usually run screaming at each other followed either by a long embrace or a giddy jumping up and down. Though medical masks muffled some of the sound and kept long hugs at bay this year, the enthusiasm was still palpable. The Senior class eagerly grabbed their favorite flags or those that represented one of their best friends and lined up for pictures while parents yelled, “Smile! Yes, with your eyes!”
Due to regulations, most of the staff had to watch Opening Ceremonies on the big screen in the Student Center. We laughed together over the transmission delay every time we could hear cheering from across campus moments before our visual showed us why. The students were literally cheering for everything. Every flag (from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe), every speaker, every sip of water. We were simply grateful in the allowance of being together in person.
The day carried me through get-to-know-you games with the Grade 8 boys, an Assembly in which I demonstrated proper German recycling, lunch in the sunshine with some Grade 6 girls, Homeroom time going over rules and procedures, and a whole-school activity coloring parts of multiple butterflies that will decorate our hallways. And it was that last activity that got me thinking about the journeys our students and staff go through to get here. In some ways it is ridiculous that a hoard of expats descends on this unassuming German village every year to do school, but it’s also beautiful. Much like the 2,500-mile trek a monarch butterfly can undertake in just one migration, our people aren’t native to here. Whether we come eagerly or dragging our feet, the colors of the flags adorn our hallways as visible reminders that we all had to travel to get here. Our children scream on this day because, if they have to be 2,500 miles from “home,” it seems best to do that among a flutter of other butterflies who can relate.
This day will quickly give way to the habitual, dare we say the mundane. Eventually it will be my alarm clock waking me up again instead of the other way around. Homework will break into reality, and my guess is by next weekend, we’ll have our first students pushing back on some of those rules and procedures. Still, as we inhale deeply and dive into another year, I'm grateful for visual tokens and days that have names. They remind us that some things should be set apart, that our lives are colorful and our calling holy. It's a day worth remembering.
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