This week, we honor the children, families, teachers, counselors, administrators, bus drivers, food preparers and distributors and so many others who are giving their all to make the new school year successful.

Change isn’t always easy. And virtual learning, with its Zoom lessons and electronic distance from teachers, classmates and friends, is an adjustment for everyone.

We hope all the young people – the future leaders of our metro area – will lean in and embrace this time and find joy in learning, whether it is done from the kitchen table, the backyard or a hotspot outside Starbucks or Panera.

Knowledge is power. And ideas have power. They have legs and wings and can take us on inspiring journeys. Education, as Oprah Winfrey says, is the key to unlocking the world, a passport to freedom.

We offer students this poem by Mary Oliver:

The Summer Day

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean —

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead

of up and down — who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now she lifts

her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?