Not all school days are created equal.
The beginning of the school year is occupied with re-acclimation. Students learn what new routines and requirements the new year holds. Teachers learn about their new students: what they know, who they are, what their strengths and weaknesses will be. And just as students and teachers start to settle into the dynamic for the year, the Thanksgiving-through-New Years holiday stretch upends any routine.
Right now, as students head back from the winter break, classrooms enter a period that is the heart of the school year. Students and teachers have laid a foundation for getting the work of education done and built their working relationship for the rest of the year. In September, students were nervously heading off to a strange new setting. In January, if all has gone well, they are excitedly returning to a familiar place.
How do families best support students during these important months?
Now is the time to pull out all those advice listicles from the first day of school. When possible, send your student to school well-fed, well-equipped, and well-rested. All of the classic advice still applies.
If you had made it a habit to talk to them about their school day, but that habit has fallen by the wayside, now is the time to revive it. Ask questions. Make them specific questions that require more than one-word answers. What’s the best thing you learned today? What’s the most fun you had today? Who did you help today? The goal is not interrogation, but to signal that you are interested in this big part of their life and that school is, in fact, important.
Pay attention to the work your student has. Chances are that back in September it was all familiar stuff, review from previous years. It’s now in the long winter stretch that students are more likely to encounter material with which they struggle. Watch for signs of frustration and difficulty.
Get your student to school. There’s never a good time to miss school, but this long haul is for most classrooms the most instruction-intensive time of year.
If your student has not settled into a routine and does not yet feel comfortable in their classroom, it is time to contact the school and work to remedy the situation. It is normal for students to reach some odd or unsupported conclusions about unfamiliar teachers in September, and teachers know that September students are not necessarily on their A game, but if things aren’t clicking yet in January, it may be time for parental involvement.
Eventually spring will arrive, and between focus on the state’s big standardized test and student longing for summer, the focus on academics will flag. Until then, these middle months provide an important core for the school year. Treat the January return like a start of a new, important chapter of the school year.