Starting fresh on first day of school

LYNN – Nearly three decades in the classroom have not sapped Aborn School teacher Belinda Durgin?s enthusiasm for the nervous excitement that sweeps through students crowded outside the old brick building on Eastern Avenue on the first day of a new school year.?There are new faces and the kids are so excited to learn,” Durgin said.She held up a cardboard sign with her name on it, and her new students clustered around her before trooping up into the old brick schoolhouse on Eastern Avenue. Principal Patricia Muxie said Aborn?s first-day-of-school enrollment is 293 students, including 40 children who did not attend the school last year.Superintendent Catherine Latham said traditionally she spends the first day in her office, “waiting for the calls to come in.”By noon, however, she said she had received very few calls and no crisis. What she doesn?t do is visit the schools.?No principal wants to see me coming on the first day of school,” she quipped. “They have enough on their plate. It?s always exciting, though.”Alysha LeBlanc?s daughter, Sophia, is starting first-grade at Aborn, and LeBlanc is grateful for a change in pace from the summer months.?This is easier: Summer is a free-for-all,” she said.LeBlanc likes Aborn because, she said, “the teachers really care.” Aborn mother of two Eghe Odiase agreed and said the school?s teachers provide her daughters Zeno and Ashra with attention. She said public schools in her native Nigeria are “horrible,” and private schools are expensive.The girls kept their reading skills sharp over the summer with visits to the public library. Odiase values academics for her daughters but also wants to see Zeno, a second-grader, and Ashra, who is in first grade, learn “respect for their elders.”Muxie said one of her goals as Aborn principal this year is to “focus on the whole child” by ensuring children do well in the classroom and also develop socially and emotionally. Rafael Deleon?s daughter and son attend Aborn because, he said, the school is “rated number one” among local schools.Justin Deleon arrived with a smile Wednesday for his first day in third grade, but his little sister stared at her shoes until her father coaxed her into spelling her name.?Jinneska,” she blurted out.Parents took pictures of their children with phones or computer tablets, and Muxie checked names on a clipboard before shepherding late arrivals into the school to begin another academic year.?For me, it?s special – you feel like it?s an important part of their lives,” she said.