School has started. In this case, the sentence should have an asterix. School has started.* And then the asterix would detail the provincial guidelines and then how those guidelines were interpreted by the division and how the principles then made plans for their school, and how the teachers took those plans and put them in place in the classroom. It's like a line forming to pass buckets from the well to the fire, each bucket sloshing a little on the way over to the fire.
In grade three, our teacher taught us how to play telephone, where she whispered something in the first student's ear, and then that whispered thing made its way, student to student up and down rows of desks in a 24 student classroom before landing back in the teacher's ear at the other side of the class. I thought the point of the game was to distort the sentence and so I added a phrase. It was something about Santa Clause coming, and I added that he'd be wearing black boots. And then, when it was time to repeat aloud the sentence we thought we'd heard, one student at a time, backwards from the end, I realized my mistake and was embarrassed. The student I'd whispered to said that black boots line aloud, and I did not, as though they had invented it, rather than hearing it from me. I was teacher's pet in grade three and did not want to risk losing that special feeling. I liked to seem smart, as when I answered a question about when one might have bad posture, and I offered "when sweeping" as an answer and was praised.
So school has started.
When I write about something in the present, I feel hamstrung. I don't know what to say about it. My opinions are half-formed. We bob along like players in a game of dodgeball.