It’s a simple act of hospitality—offered by teachers at their classroom doors the first week of January—and yet it holds enormous power, this friendly greeting.

To be hospitable, Webster’s tells us, is to greet the stranger warmly and generously. In September, each student was, at first, a stranger, as was the teacher herself to her students. Then she said “Welcome” and went on to learn each of their stories as she taught them their lessons.

Now, at mid-year, each “Welcome back” carries layers of mutual meaning for student and teacher, with the nuances of what is shared between them, connecting them. It’s different for each relationship: perhaps a shared sense of humor, or a shared understanding about something that troubles the child, or a shared worry about how the two of them will get along in this half of the year, or a shared sadness about a personal loss in a child’s family.

As individual as this “Welcome back” may be, it also carries a common message as the teacher tells her students to write the new year’s date, with its unfamiliar look, on the top of their papers: “We are starting anew together and all things are possible here.”

It is this “Welcome back” that teachers and students alike must remember in the days ahead when someone makes a mistake, makes fun of someone else, forgets to be friendly, forgets their homework, flunks a test, is sent to the office, or even gets suspended for a day. Learning is full of mistakes, and not just in spelling and math.

So it is too, in the adult community of school, with all its demands and measures, the pressure of time and pacing charts, data and duty. Let us not forget the power of warmth and generosity to each other as we go back to work together.