The Past Is Not the Only Possibility

Every new school year is a new beginning: fresh pens and notebooks. Cleaned whiteboards and desks. Classrooms sparking with energy and anticipation, alive with fidgeting and nerves. 

For so many of our students, the first day at Orchard Friends signifies so much more than the start of another school year—it’s the start of an entirely new relationship: with school, with learning, and with themselves. 

That’s because so many of our students arrive at our school after a long succession of struggles. Teachers and administrators that don’t understand them. Bullying and ostracization by other students. Placement in inappropriate classrooms that separate instead of support. Time and time again, these students have received the same message: you are the problem. These experiences often convince them that they are the issue—that they can’t learn—when the truth is that they can’t learn like that. And who could? 

These students walk into their first morning assembly at Orchard still carrying these internalized messages. This sense of having failed, of somehow having gotten it wrong–of being wrong– despite their best efforts, can make it hard to be open to new possibilities.

These messages make difference painful—not neutral. As a result, our students can experience a range of difficult emotions that first day: defensiveness. Skepticism. Wariness. It can all feel a little too good to be true. 

It’s our job to convince them that it isn’t. 

Different from Day One

We’re here to introduce these students to the possibilities inherent in a new kind of learning environment: 

• One that is safe and manageable. 

• One that supports them with the tools, space, and time they need. 

• One that not only understands why they’ve struggled to learn in the past, but also how to help them learn in the present. 

• One in which “different” never means “wrong”; it simply means human. 

This is why we start by doing things differently from Day One. We begin each new school year with a two-day orientation that’s solely focused on ensuring that all of our students are comfortable, secure, and welcomed. To help ease the transition and keep overwhelm at bay, we structure these days as half days, giving new students a chance to settle in, meet a few friendly faces, find their classrooms, and gain their footing. 

This year, one of our students was having an especially hard time during orientation. She struggled with the idea of attending a school for students with learning differences; she felt angry and ashamed. Instead of silencing or chastising her, with her permission, we posed a question to the assembly: “What do you do when you get angry?” 

Immediately, our students launched into an animated discussion of difficult emotions, times they’d been angry themselves, and the best strategies to help them regulate. Our new student felt seen and supported. She realized that all of her peers could not only understand her struggle with anger—they could understand her. 

Breakthroughs over Breakfast

The value of moments like these is incalculable. They are the seeds of new beginnings. New ways to understand. New ways to respond. The new experience of not feeling alone at a difficult moment. That’s why we don’t see moments like these as disruptions: we see them as opportunities to listen, to support, to model, and to learn. We believe that learning should happen whenever learning opportunities happen—even if it’s the very first assembly on Day One. 

After our discussion, we sat down to a breakfast prepared by our upper school students. They’d bought groceries and arrived early to cook for the entire school (luckily for them, that’s only 28 students, faculty, and staff—another small-school benefit!) 

This act of service wasn’t only a chance for these students to practice important life skills (transportation, time management, shopping, and budgeting)—but also to set the tone for the year from the very beginning: here, you will be cared for. This is how we care for each other. 

It was different for our new students. Unexpected. But that’s also what makes the difference. We see that the past is not the only possibility for how things can be. That there’s still an argument for hope. And that sometimes, the start of a new school year can mean the start of an entirely new adventure.