Last night, after the first day of school, I spent a good amount of time emailing all 20 of my students’ families. I crafted a firm email to send to everyone and then personalized it for each student and attached a few pictures of them. I was exhausted and questioning whether or not it was really worth my time.
Throughout the day today I’ve gotten emails back from a third of my families. Overwhelming positive and sharing how happy their third grader was with their first day of school.
It was tough to invest that time and energy at the end of the first day of school but those emails coming back to me remind me of the importance of building these relationships. There will be challenges this year, across the board and individual to students, and having a strong relationship in place will help us get through.
one good thing 
You are a master at connections!