Preparing for Fall With Authenticity and Enthusiasm

Typically, the world would be awash in tips for getting your student's school year started with a bang. Parents would be carefully reviewing (and complaining about) the classroom supply lists, the aisles at your local store would be full of kids searching for the “just right” notebook, and schools would be collecting backpacks of supplies to help out kids who need them. But this year, an internet search for “back to school” results in a long list of articles about the controversies around school openings. These articles, while informative and fodder for many a social media thread, don’t necessarily help you help your kids. In a few days or a few weeks, many students will be “returning” to school by opening a website, instead of a classroom door. The mindset that they bring to that virtual classroom is important. So here are a few suggestions for helping your student make that transition and tackle the shift from summer to school in a positive manner.

Create a feeling of school

If your students have been sitting on the couch all summer, or in their bedrooms, looking at screens, it is important to create a school environment for them. They need a signal that school is back. Psychologists can tell us a little about how to create that signal.

First, students need consistent cues so they can learn to associate the cue to a particular behavior or outcome. Behaviorism, a field of psychology created by B.F. Skinner, demonstrated the strength of associations in guiding behavior. Skinner and his colleagues showed that when people (and animals) regularly saw a cue paired with an outcome, they learned that the cue caused the outcome. For example, a pigeon could be taught that when a green light was on, pecking at a button would lead to food being released, but when the green light was off, pecking would not lead to more snacks. Of course, people are more complex than pigeons, but we have still have many learned associations that guide our behavior. For example, when we walk into a library, we automatically lower our voices because we have learned that libraries are quiet spaces. To help your student succeed, you’ll want to harness the same power of learned associations—you’ll want to create cues that signal when it is time to focus on school and time to relax.

For those with enough space, this could mean reconfiguring the furniture in a room to create a new home office for your student. Or, it might mean setting up a new desk at a card table in the corner or creating personalized space with DIY cubicles so that each child has their own school space. It might just be putting up school posters or signs around workplace—just visual cues to remind your child that they are “in school” when sitting in that place.

Similarly, students should dress for success. Common advice for job seekers is to dress as though they were interviewing in-person because those business-ready clothes help put people in the right mindset. In the same way, having students change out of pajamas and get dressed for school can provide a physical cue that it is time to focus on school.

Finally, create a schedule for school days that is different than the schedule for weekends. This includes setting bedtimes so that students are ready to start school in the morning. Many schools will be returning to regular bell schedules, but some may not. Any middle-school or older child is used to a bell schedule that bookends different study periods, and if your school isn’t using a bell schedule, work with your student to create a structure that signals “school day” as different from “work day.”

Create enthusiasm and openness to improvement

Parents are models for how to respond to the stresses of the current situation. Emotions are strong and many parents may not be satisfied with how larger systems have handled the situation. However, most parents would agree that they want their students to be successful this year. And, while it isn’t the beginning to the school year than anyone would have imagined, it is still a new start, a new grade, and a signal of your child’s continued progress and development. As a parent or guardian, you have the ability to make the start of the next grade special and positive for your student. To start, keep those first-day-of-school rituals—take pictures, have a special dinner, celebrate the next step. Then, model positive attitude and healthy emotion management for your children. Considerable research has shown that when people see similar others succeed in a situation, we think we can too. In addition, research on emotional contagion has shown that positive emotions, particularly from leaders, can be “caught” by followers. In the same way, anger can also be caught by followers, and children may not be able to tell the difference between anger at the situation and anger at the teacher. So, show your children, through your words and actions that learning can happen and there will opportunities for fun. Show them how to give this new of doing things a chance.

In addition to modeling positive emotions, parents can model a growth mindset. Many people have heard of growth mindsets by now—the idea that intelligence can be developed and grow and improve over time. Less well known is how holding growth mindsets about other people can also be beneficial. That is, holding the belief that teachers, schools, other students, and other parents can change, develop, and become better at online education, communication, and other skills is important. To enable your student to succeed, they need to approach the semester with a positive attitude towards their own abilities and the abilities of their teachers. When frustrations arise, acknowledge the frustration, the embarrassment, or the discomfort, and then help your student identify their own successes, and the successes of classmates and teachers. Belief in oneself and a positive attitude isn’t enough to ensure success, but they do make it more likely.