Anything But a Backpack

I've had so many questions from students, teachers, and parents about homecoming next week. I think everyone is excited about it this year, including our community. But without a doubt, the most questions I have received have been about Anything But a Backpack Day. Everyone wants to know what they can bring to school in place of a backpack. I've had requests for everything from shopping carts, to pets and siblings. (By the way, pets and siblings are not allowed!) But the idea of it got me thinking about backpacks. When I attended school, I carried textbooks and notebooks. In a 6-period day, you carried around a lot of books and they easily filled a backpack on a night with multiple homework assignments. But today's school looks different. Textbooks have been replaced with online course content and for most subjects, notebooks have been replaced with iPads. So what's in those backpacks that kids keep carrying around?

The answer to this came to me from what I see teachers carry too. I laugh each morning as I see many of you haul your lives, sometimes in 3-4 bags into work each morning. Everything from lunch and snacks to a change of clothes for after school and all of the accompanying things that make our day better. Somewhere along the way, we started bringing our lives to school with us. We take the things that make us comfortable and come prepared for the things that we think we might need. And if you look a little deeper, we bring more than physical parts of our lives to school with us as well. We bring good and bad emotions, problems and successes, and all other parts of us to school each day. Those things that we bring are much more complex than a textbook or notebook to understand. 

So is it so strange that a student thinks that a sibling or a pet should come to school with them? I don't think so. Those things are as much a part of their lives as a hoodie or water bottle that they drag around. But the silver lining in their request is that they feel good enough about this place that we call school, and they trust the environment enough to bring the things most precious to them along. And similarly, we all unpack those intangible things that we bring with us in trust as well. Thanks for bringing anything but your backpack to school, but more importantly, thanks for making this a place where others can bring their items as well.