Summer flies by, doesn’t it? Wisconsin’s few warm months are treasured for good reason, with residents making the most of them. And, aside from a few hot days, this hasn’t been a bad summer to enjoy.

No one values summer quite like students, though. It’s an opportunity to get some relief from the grind of the school year. Summer represents a few months of freedom in which they can more or less live for the enjoyment of life with fewer restrictions.

It’s easy as an adult to look at school and think it’s easy compared to the jobs we do. There’s some truth to that. But that’s a comparison students can’t yet make. Their frame of reference is one grade to another, the building responsibilities that come each year.

As the years pass we lose sight of how important the daily dramas were at the time. It’s a gap that inevitably grows through the simple passage of time. Homework and peer pressure become easy to brush off as we age and the distance from those days increases. For students, they’re very real sources of stress.

Think of it this way: a stubbed toe is far less serious than a broken arm from a medical standpoint. But, for the person hopping around after stubbing a toe, it still hurts.

Many of the school activities for the fall are well underway. Teams have begun competition and we’re already beginning to get a picture of the ones who might just be able to mount a challenge for state titles. Bands are tuned up and ready to go. The classrooms are just about ready, too, regardless of whether the teachers or students are.

Every year brings challenges. That’s part of education. Intentional learning is rarely easy. Overcoming the challenges, growing to be able to surmount issues that would have stumped you just a few short weeks earlier is the entire point of education. The regularity with which students and their teachers successfully achieve those goals doesn’t render them any less remarkable.

And, while we’re on that subject, we’re fortunate to be in an area in which the teachers do their jobs pretty well. While complaints may always be part of the background noise, we can assure folks there are parts of this nation with far less competent educators. The vast majority genuinely want to see their students excel and will go to considerable lengths to ensure they have the opportunity to do so.

As the new academic year arrives, we ask that people remember that success means far more than just having students in their seats every day. In the vast majority of cases it’s the result of several working relationships.

The most obvious is, of course, that between students and their teachers. It’s natural that some students and teachers will connect better than others, but learning how to interact when the other person isn’t one you would choose to engage with is an important lesson of its own. Genuinely insurmountable difficulties are, fortunately, rare.

Overlooking the relationship between parents and teachers would be a mistake. There needs to be the opportunity for frank, effective communication. The common ground of offering the student the best chance at success should be a solid foundation to build upon. Differences of opinion may happen, but they’re far less likely to become a problem if both sides remember the primary interest is in seeing the students grow.

The beginning of the school year always brings excitement. The novelty inevitably wears off, though, yielding to routine. A couple months in and it truly feels like a daily slog and merely going through the motions becomes tempting indeed.

We’re not at that moment yet. For now there’s still the excitement of the unknown, a genuine sense of anticipation. It’s worth savoring.

We hope everyone gets off to a good start this year. We hope students, teachers and parents create the bonds and trust that help ensure a successful year. While the year will become a grind at some point for just about everyone, we hope it never gets too bad.

Even the best preparation needs a little luck as the year goes on. So good luck to everyone. A new beginning is here, and we can’t wait to see what it brings.

— Eau Claire, Wis., Leader Telegram