New Kindergarten Parent Welcome

I spent the better part of Kelsey's kindergarten year locked in a shell-shocked haze.  Six weeks after Kelsey went off to her first day of school, Drew was born.  Juggling a newborn's sleep schedule with a half-day kindergarten schedule was tricky.  I also found that navigating the modern public school system for the first time was daunting.  I remember measuring the stack of paper that came to the house from the district and the school the month before Kelsey's first day of kindergarten.  It was an inch-and-a-half high, and most of it was double-sided.  This was also about the time I realized I would be spending the next twelve consecutive years at Washington Irving Elementary School.

It didn't take me long to fall in love with Irving, but I realized there were lots of people like me who were nervous to send their first child off to school.  By the spring of Kelsey's kindergarten year, I sat down with some veteran parents and asked if there was any way we could coordinate an event for new kindergarten parents, that would take place the weekend before school started.  If it was an informal, come-and-go-as-you-please type of thing, perhaps it would be a draw.  And if we could get the principal and the teachers to attend too, even better.  I promised that if the veteran parents would help me put the first one or two together, I would run it until I left Irving.  They agreed to help me, and the New Kindergarten Parent Welcome was born.

I had no idea the impact this event would have on my family, and on the Irving community as a whole.  This event is where we've met and become friends with many Irving families, including the Rappaports.  Several parents have told me over the years, "It was at the New Kindergarten Parent Welcome that I decided I wanted to get involved at Irving."

Today was the eleventh year of this event, and my last year coordinating it.  I've passed the baton to a newer parent whose oldest child is in first grade.  She's right where I was a decade ago.

I honestly can't believe this is the beginning of the end of my involvement at Irving.  From the looks of things, the school is in capable hands.