By SAMUEL MORTEL
The 2024-25 school year has officially started back up in NYC, and the students of one small private school in Queens have a wide range of feelings.
It’s a sunny September day in Queens Village and the students of Ss. Joachim & Anne, a local Catholic school, are abuzz in the yard anticipating the start of a new school year. Founded in 1924, Ss. Joachim and Anne School, also known as SsJA, has been a part of the community for 100 years. The school has undergone a lot of changes in the past century but the has kept its mission of education and providing children of a large age range with a Catholic foundation.
SsJA offers classes from Pre-K to 8th grade, so children as young as four and as old as 14 are grouped together in the schoolyard this morning, all reconnecting with their classmates and being introduced to their new teachers. Apart from the neat red and gray uniforms and tidy haircuts, the energy and rambunctiousness in the schoolyard is not too dissimilar from what you’d see at public school. Despite the properness and formality that comes with a private Catholic school, these kids, at the end of the day, are still kids. Like any other kids in any other school in the country, the student body of SsJA are letting all their emotions out on the schoolyard: the excitement of seeing their friends, the disappointment of the end of summer vacation, and anxiousness about the trials and tribulations that will meet them for the next 10 months.
Being a school that teaches kids from Pre-K to 8th grade, a lot of parents opt to send their children to SsJA for all those 10 years. As a result, a good chunk of the graduating class has been attending this one school for literally as long as they can remember. One of them is JR, who, when asked if he’s excited going into a new school year, rated his excitement level at “a 7.5 out of 10,” saying he felt “kind of nervous but a little bit excited.” He’s been going to SsJA for “too long” but still feels like this upcoming year is unprecedented, admitting, “ I feel different because it’s my last year.”. JR isn’t letting his feelings distract him from working his hardest and getting good grades, however. “I want to get at least 85s”,” JR says, referring to the minimum grade he hopes to get for all of his subjects this year.
When asking another student, JB, how he felt heading into his last year before high school, the 8th grader only had three words: “Honestly mad nervous.” Not offering any particular reason why, just the general feelings of nervousness and insecurity that come with this transitional stage in a young person’s life. As blunt as this answer is, it also holds a lot of honesty and vulnerability and is no doubt a familiar feeling for a lot of people who have been in the same position as JB. Nonetheless, the school year must go on, and students of SsJA, other schools in New York, and schools around the country find themselves having to put their nerves aside and get ready for another step in their academic journeys.