Schools

Beginning of a New Year

D303 students returned to school Aug. 24; one St. Charles family resumed their annual routine.

Megan and Jack O'Brien might be siblings with big differences in personalities, but they share something in common: the first day of school.

"They're four years apart and they're very different," said mother Heather O'Brien.

Like thousands of other families in the D303 community, the O'Briens busily prepared and hustled off to school on Aug. 24.

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For the O'Briens, the first to venture out was Megan, 13, who is entering eighth grade at Thompson Middle School. The school is just a few blocks from the family's west-side home. She walked there just around 8 a.m. with her good friend, Lily Hinich, who is entering Thompson for the first time on Tuesday as a sixth-grader.

"They are like sisters," said Heather, who is a local real estate agent.

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The day before, Heather and her two children visited Funway in Batavia for one last day of, well, fun. A day of batting cages and bumper cars was the last blast of summer.

Megan, who has bright blue eyes and expresses visible excitement at the prospect of a new year, volunteered to help out at an orientation for incoming sixth-graders before school started. On the first day of school, she wore the same blue shirt that was given to the volunteers during orientation, so that sixth-graders would know she was someone who could be approached if they had questions.

Despite acknowledging her status as an upperclassmen at the school, she was surprisingly down-to-earth. She realizes that, in just a year, she'll be in the same boat as the neophyte sixth-graders.

"It's not going to last very long because then you go to be a freshman (in high school)," Megan said.

Jack, 9, seems inclined to look over a person's shoulder and interject into a conversation, rather than sit benignly. He said he was looking forward to his gym classes and the chance to play a couple of sports.

"It's awesome," said Jack of baseball, one of his favorite sports. Fall baseball will soon begin for him.

Jack is a fourth-grader at Davis Elementary. His parents drove Jack to his school later.

Heather said her day would return to a little bit of normalcy once the kids were off to class. She planned get some work done and to try to get to the gym at some point. While this isn't her first time with a first day of school, she acknowledged that the summer seemed to melt away quickly.

"I can't believe it. It went fast, like always," she said.


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