August 21, 2018: Del Rio News-Herald * OPINION * Letter to the Editor * Ode to a school desk

Letter to the Editor,

Ode to a school desk

It’s back to school again; the classrooms await a new crop of students.

Each year every classroom gets thoroughly cleaned for a new set of students to begin their school year chalk full of adventures.

Each classroom shines bright, ready to hold a classroom full of students and their teachers, each with their own unique and distinctive personality.

Every year holds the prospect that this will be the year that something amazing will happen.

The anticipation is palpable.

The questions swirling all summer long: What will my teacher be like? What will the students be like? What will I be like? Will my teacher like me? Will the students like me? Will I like my teacher? Will I like the students?

Questions that only time will tell how they will be answered.

Each year is a new beginning.

The slate is clean, new memories will be written.

Each desk awaits a new student to occupy their place for a school year.

If desks could speak, oh the stories they could tell.

Who sat in that desk before me? Who will sit in that desk after me?

The life of a desk is not merely how long the desk is in service, but the students who lived their school life sitting in that desk.

The school bell rings, the desks fill up.

Where will I sit, in the front or in the back of the classroom? Who will I sit next to? 

Oh the joy, oh the horror! Will the teacher assign us seats or will we pick where we will sit?

The desk is my home base for my school year.

My desk will take care of me and I will take care of my desk.

I take care and respect my body; I take care and respect my desk. 

No tattoos on my body, no graffiti on my desk.

Greetings to the desk where I will sit and learn, sit and daydream, sit and wonder, sit and live for another school year of my life.

Marian Casillas, Ed.D.

Del Rio