Today is one of those days our family celebrates, maybe quietly, but we always celebrate the start of school. My partner and I met as graduate students preparing to be educators. We were teachers together as a young couple before we had children.

With our children, we celebrate the start of school for all the unknowns it brings–who will my teachers be? will I have friends in class? what will I learn? how badly will I fail? and how hard will it be to recover when I inevitably fail? Change substitute “colleagues” for “teachers” or “friends” and I have the same unknowns.

So this year, our family celebrates the first day of high school for our ninth grader and the last first day of high school for our senior. For me, the start of year 26 as a proud educator in North Carolina.