New school year brings nerves for Sand Springs kids, adults

Third-grader Wyatt Harris (left) and kindergartner Cole Harris pose for photos for their mother, Amy Harris, on the first day of classes last week at Limestone Technology Academy.

Limestone Technology Academy fourth-grade teacher Carrie Gustafson waits in her classroom for students to arrive last Tuesday morning.

Twelve-year-old Tiffany Cooper awaits instructions in the cafeteria at the Sixth Grade Center early last Tuesday.

Sand Springs Public Schools employee Dottie Richardson smiles from her perch in the driver’s seat of a school bus on the first day of classes last week.

Limestone Technology Academy students check out the friendly “new kid” last week before classes began for the day.

Nerves were evident on a few young faces on the first day of school last week at Limestone Technology Academy.

Limestone Technology Academy second-grade teacher Charity Emigh keeps watch over her students at the first Rise and Shine assembly of the year last Tuesday.

First-day jitters are notorious for students heading back to school each fall, and last week was no exception for some of the youngsters attending classes in Sand Springs.

But the sweaty palms and butterflies in the stomach weren’t limited to students.

Dottie Richardson got ready for the first day of school in Sand Springs last week earlier than a lot of people, rising by about 3:45 a.m.

As a bus driver, she was on the job at the school district’s bus barn at 5:30 a.m., well before dawn.

But for Richardson, who started driving a bus for the district only two weeks before the end of the school year last May, the early hour was irrelevant, as first-day jitters had kept sleep at bay anyway.

“Oh, yeah. I couldn’t sleep at all last night,” she said while dropping off a load of students at the Sixth Grade Center early last Tuesday.

Richardson, who had driven a school bus for 23 years in Aztec, New Mexico, Gladewater, Texas, and Fairview, Oklahoma, has more than 100 students on her routes, and she was gearing up for the challenge of getting to know them all.

But while the students might have started out as strangers to her, the town and the school district are not.

Richardson graduated from Charles Page High School in 1990. When her husband died in February, she said, “I came back home.”

Amy Harris was all smiles last Tuesday morning as she dropped off third-grader Wyatt Harris and kindergartner Cole Harris for the first day of classes at Limestone Technology Academy.

Posing for photos outside the school, the boys themselves showed no sign of any worries.

Harris said her sons were “thrilled” to get to school.

“They’ve been doing a dance all week,” she said. “We love Limestone.”

Limestone fourth-grade teacher Carrie Gustafson was equally eager for the new school year to begin.

“I’m excited,” she said. “I’m excited, and the kids are excited.”

Gustafson, who is in her seventh year of teaching, said she doesn’t see too many first-day tears in her classroom.

“They’ve kind of got it down by now,” she said. “By fourth grade, they’ve kind of gotten the hang of it.”

But does she still ever have any first-day jitters of her own?

“Absolutely,” she said. “But after the first day it kind of goes away.”

For Gustafson, who has 22 students in her self-contained classroom, the hardest part about the first day is “getting all the kids’ names. I just want to try to learn them as fast as I can.”

In the gymnasium early Tuesday for the school’s daily Rise and Shine assembly, new Limestone teacher Charity Emigh said she had a few first-day jitters but that it could have been worse.

Although Emigh was new to Limestone as a teacher, she was far from new to the building, having attended the school herself as a child.

“It’s home,” she said. “It just feels like coming back home. I’m able to navigate the hallways and the school easily. I can tell kids where they’re supposed to go.

It’s just all very familiar, … but it’s all new and exciting at the same time,” said Emigh, who has been a teacher for five years.

She said she hadn’t seen any actual tears yet.

“They all seem to be in pretty high spirits, she said of the children, although “I’ve seen some timidness.”

Tiffany Cooper might have looked a little timid sitting in the cafeteria at the Sixth Grade Center listening to teachers and school administrators calling out instructions for where students should go.

But Tiffany, 12, was actually just taking it all in.

She said she was excited about school but also “kind of nervous. Kind of happiness but a little bit nerves.”

Enrolled in choir, she said of her favorite subject, “I like singing and dancing.”

Superintendent Sherry Durkee might not have been ready to sing or dance, but by late in the week, she was pretty pleased with how the school year had gotten started.

A small transportation glitch left some students waiting longer for a bus ride home from school than anyone was happy about, she said, but the situation was resolved by Day 3.

And the “heat has been crazy hard, crazy hot,” she said.

But all in all, Durkee was pleased.

“My words are nervous energy. It comes when we’re excited,” she said. “There’s always nervous energy. All kinds of things run through your mind, certainly in my role, … (but) we want it to be the best it can be.

“We’re excited to teach. We’re excited to provide the best possible education for our kids,” Durkee said. And when that excitement happens and everything comes together, “there’s nothing better.”

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