The start of school

So my oldest daughter started 4th grade yesterday. I remember my 4th grade class, my first male teacher and he scared me at the time. I look back on it now and I feel that I learned more from him than I did any year before.

So what was your character's first day of school like? I know most of my readers also write, and I think they mainly focus on the Young Adult genre, so what do you picture your character's first day of school to be like?

Do you focus on the school aspects of your stories, or use them more as a backdrop of the story? I read the "Daughters of the Moon" series, and those books did a pretty decent job of incorporating the school life in the beginning of the books to set it up for later plot points.

My first book focused the first 30-40 pages of school life, but after that it sort of falls to the past and we move on. In the sequel, it is going to be more focused on school life, but still with some major things happening away from school as well.