4 Ways to Help Students Thrive in Their First Year of High School

Think back to what it was like being 14 or 15 years old. You likely struggled with the transition to high school—the memories may even make you cringe a little. Changing friendships and changing bodies can make the beginning of high school feel daunting. Combine that with increased content rigor and what may feel like less support from your teachers, and high school can be a difficult transition!

As a freshman biology teacher, I witnessed my students struggling academically and socially and emotionally, and I wanted to know how to help. Over the past five years, I have focused on supporting first-year students at my school, and I even focused my doctoral research on freshmen. Here are four things that work.

SUPPORTING FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS

1. Emphasize communication. Typically, students ask for less help in high school despite needing it more than ever. Whether it be nerves or lack of grit, students simply don’t ask for help as easily as they do in the lower grade levels. Communication needs typically regard grades but can also include day-to-day needs. Do they need help understanding the concept? Do they need to turn in an assignment late because of a doctor’s appointment? Or maybe they need to communicate that they could use some social and emotional support from the school.

As you begin the year, emphasize how to communicate with you. Tell your students the best way to get hold of you: Do you prefer emails? Post-it Notes? Chat? In addition, share with them times when you’re available for help. If students can come into your room at lunch, let them know this and reinforce it with reminders. A large amount of the struggles students face can be fixed with communication or clarification.

2. Make slight differentiations specifically for the first-years. If you have a classroom with mixed grade levels, they’re not all coming in with the same skill sets. The first-year students will not know all the rules, school culture, or even about following the social media page where fun things are announced. This differentiation can occur in a very natural way. It can be as simple as letting the class know that there was something about the pep rally posted on the Instagram page, reminding them that there is a STEAM club on Friday, or explaining a schoolwide rule to the whole class. The goal is to help first-year students feel a part of the school community; bringing them in without singling them out is as easy as being forthcoming with information about school protocols and events.

In my classroom, I noticed that dances were holding a lot of first years back from immersing themselves in the school culture. They didn’t understand that the dances ran really late into the night! They also didn’t know what to wear. As a 14- or 15-year-old, these two concepts can really throw you for a loop.

3. Emphasize soft skills in your instruction. I wrote my dissertation about soft-skill development for struggling high school freshmen. Soft skills are nontechnical skills that add to a person’s ability to succeed in various settings; my students primarily need support in time management, communication, problem-solving, team work, and adaptability. There is a direct correlation between academic success and soft skills. Taking the time to be intentional about integrating soft skills can significantly change a student’s success trajectory and buy-in to the class. This can be done in simple ways. Encouraging communication, goal-setting, stress management tips, organization support, and time management are some soft skills that offer transferable skills between content areas.

Taking three minutes each period to talk about skill-building can make a huge difference in student success. I really like working on soft skills in the daily warm-up. At first glance, the question may seem surface level, but when we discuss the answers in the class, there is real depth that comes out. For example: How do you manage stress? Most will say something along the lines of napping, journaling, and working out. When we take a few minutes to review the warm-up question, the students volunteer to share their answers. I will share my own answers to the question and ask about any new ideas they might be interested in trying. I will ask the same questions in a few weeks to see if anybody has tried a new stress management strategy.

4. Communicate with parents. As students become high school students, we often feel like they should be taking responsibility for their own grades. However, the first year can be very jarring to students. They still need support from home, which parents can’t know without teacher communication. Aside from sending home a syllabus, try to make connections with parents. Keep them in the loop with upcoming large-scale projects, alert them about falling grades, and even send home positive shout-outs. This can be done through your school’s messaging system.

Just because students are in high school doesn’t mean their need for support has suddenly stopped. In my classroom, I make an effort to send positive messages to parents through our messaging system. These are typically along the lines of “Hello! I just wanted to reach out and let you know that ____ has been working so hard in biology class. They are collaborating with their team and are working hard to be successful.” This little message takes me about one minute to write and send but makes such a meaningful difference in that student’s day. While it is difficult to connect with 100+ students, small steps can create a culture of connection and individual student celebration.

Supporting first-year students is key to building a solid foundational school culture. The first days in your classroom can set them up for success or a struggle. Setting up your classroom for team building can support the immersion into high school. The cycle will continue as those students age and progress to the next school year. After four short years, you will have a school full of students who know that their teachers are there for them and who have developed soft skills to transfer between classes and future jobs, as well as a staff who are happier because their students are thriving.