On Monday morning I was at Fuentes Elementary in Kyle for the Statesman to capture the first day of the 2012 school year.
I made my way to the kindergarten wing and watched as new students were dropped off by their parents. The first student that caught my eye was this little girl and her mom.
Mom was pregnant and had a few shaky emotional moments, but Abigail was doing fine. They found her desk and kissed goodbye…
Then I went with mom and dad to the hallway to get their names. When I came back, Abigail wasn’t quite as sure about this whole school thing…
I kept shooting the other kids in the class, letting Abigail have her moment. Then I turned around and saw her again in full melt down position.
I felt a little awful for photographing her while she was clearly having a rough time, but I have to admit that out of all of the crying people I’ve photographed, she’s definitely one of the cutest.
I continued to shoot as students filled up the classroom.
Then I moved on to another kindergarten class where emotions were even higher.
This little guy was almost inconsolable.
A volunteer and the school’s speech pathologist were on hand to help calm him down, but really the only things that helped were a brief moment when other kids were talking about eating bugs, and the moment when the teacher started class.
A mom was dropping off her daughter at the same time and she was having much more trouble than her daughter. I almost missed this moment, but a quick hail Mary of the shutter resulted in this:
School was starting, so I got out of the way of the teachers and let them start their first day.
This assignment was kind of fun for me. Not that I like shooting crying kids, but some of the students were really excited. The bell rang and two little boys looked up at their parents, confused. One of the parents said, “that means school is starting.” The two boys looked at each other with excitement and said, “yes!!!” That caught every adult in the room off guard and we all thought, “that’s the one and only time that will ever happen.”
Click here to view more photos from Fuentes Elementary and Elsa England Elementary in Round Rock.
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