Jaxon Diekemper has identified the biggest upgrade that comes with fourth grade: three recesses instead of the usual couple. There's also study hall now, a new addition, where he either finishes leftover classwork or works through goals on his Chromebook if he's already done. Math is getting harder too, rounding numbers for now, with division and decimals waiting somewhere just ahead. Still, three recesses is hard to beat. Jaxon spends most of his time outside playing Gaga ball, and he's pretty good at it. He also plays baseball, basketball, and football, manning second or third base when it's baseball season.

There's a lot going on for a fourth-grader in Vandalia, and apparently a lot to look forward to as well. Asked what he'd tell his first-grade self if he could go back and offer some advice, Jaxon thought about it for a moment before landing on an answer. "I have a big future in front of me." That's a fairly big thing to believe at nine or ten years old. Jaxon already has a specific version of that future in mind: he wants to become a veterinarian, and not just any veterinarian, a zoo veterinarian, probably at the St. Louis Zoo. He likes animals, and somewhere in his imagination there's already a grown-up version of himself caring for creatures most people only ever see from the other side of a fence.

There's plenty of distance between here and there: middle school, high school, college, veterinary school, a lot of science, a lot more math than rounding numbers. That's one of the genuinely nice things about elementary school. The gap between what a kid is doing today and what he imagines doing someday can be enormous, and a good school doesn't need a fourth-grader to map out exactly how he'll close that gap. It just needs to help him believe he can. Jaxon likes school, likes math, likes his teacher, Ms. Elder. Study hall gives him time to catch up or work ahead, and then there are those recesses. None of it needs to feel separate. He can practice multiplication and throw a football in the same afternoon. He can chase an academic goal on a Chromebook and still spend recess trying to knock someone out of a Gaga ball pit. He can start imagining veterinary medicine long before he understands everything it actually requires.

That sense of open possibility seems to run through the whole town, not just his classroom. Jaxon describes Vandalia as "a really good place" where "good people live," neither too busy nor too dull, and his friends and family are all right here, including his older brother, three grades ahead and somehow juggling track, baseball, basketball, and football all at once. Right now, sports take up plenty of Jaxon's own attention. So do animals. So does being funny, which is exactly what he figures his friends would call him if asked. "Pretty funny," he said, and it tracks.

There's no need to make a fourth-grader more complicated than he actually is. Jaxon is still figuring himself out, which is more or less the whole job at his age. Vandalia's job is simpler still: good teachers, real work, chances to try things, and enough encouragement that the future feels genuinely open rather than already decided. Someday those three recesses will shrink to two, then one, then none at all. Rounding will give way to pre-algebra, the questions will get harder, and some of Jaxon's current ambitions may quietly fade. Zoo veterinarian might be one of them. It might not be. Maybe years from now Jaxon really will be caring for an animal at the St. Louis Zoo, and if he is, there will have been thousands of small steps between that day and this one. Today's step is a lot smaller: go to school, do the work, learn the math, play with your friends, get ready for PE, then do it all again tomorrow.

Before his picture that day, Jaxon insisted he'd worn his Vandal shirt just because. A moment later, he admitted the real reason: his mom wanted him looking nice for the photo. Fair enough. Jaxon doesn't need to see the whole road ahead yet. He just needs what every kid deserves from a school and a community like this one: a reason to believe there's somewhere good worth heading toward. Jaxon Diekemper already believes it.

“I have a big future in front of me.”