New York City Students Through the Years View Full Caption

Wednesday is the first day of school for most kids in New York City.

In honor of the day that parents anticipate and children dread at summer's end, we rounded up archival photographs of students in city grade and vocational schools, published in Life magazine as early as 1939.

Let them remind you that this year's students aren't the first to find themselves trapped in a school building for most of their daylight hours. A lot of them, as pictured in this slideshow, made the best of it.