Since I became a teacher four years ago, I have heard a lot of advice about how to successfully start the new school year with students. Much of this advice had to do with building a class community and involving students in setting class procedures and expectations. There were also many comments and reminders about the importance of having clear routines and procedures and practicing them over and over for the first few weeks.
While this is all great advice that I have used with sufficient success, I don’t think this is best way to start a new school year in a high school classroom. By the time students get to high school, they have been doing school for about nine years. While the first day of high school might be intimidating and unfamiliar, there are still some basic school concepts that students can rely on. High school really isn’t that foreign, and most students quickly adapt and assimilate into their new world.
For teachers, the first day and even the first week of school can be very important to establishing a productive and welcoming learning environment. As a first-year teacher, I planned and prepared for my first day of school weeks in advance and still didn’t feel confident. My mentor told me about “the honey-moon phase” that teachers experience at the beginning of the year, and I didn’t really understand the effects of that blissful time until my third year as a teacher. However, I now know that at the beginning of a school year, most students are going to be on their best behavior and the classroom will seem to run smoothly, yet this won’t last forever.
In my experience, teachers can start the year using the advice described above and seem to be off to a good start. But once the class gets comfortable with each other and the students and teacher begin to get to know each other as individuals, problems start. At first they seem small, sometimes so insignificant that it might not even be worth it to address the problem. I have learned firsthand that this is a mistake. The problems always get bigger and then are much harder to solve. I have recently realized that it is not really surprising that teachers experience problems after the honey-moon phase because the problems that this specific group of students were not known at the beginning of the year when the class expectations and procedures were created.
During the first 3-4 weeks of school, nobody really knows anybody else. Everyone is being careful as they get to know each other and is rarely their true self. When teachers start the year by establishing class expectations and procedures, with or without student involvement, the teacher can only use basic or past experiences as a foundation. This is ineffective because once the class community changes, the class expectations and procedures might need to change, too. The start of a new school year might be better spent if teachers jump right into teaching and get students learning. But not about their content or subject area.
Instead, teachers should teach students about learning. How learning works and how the brain works and how different elements, such as lack of sleep, concussions, and technology, can affect the brain and learning. I think this would be an effective start of the year unit for high school students. Many of them are still interested in themselves and how things work. And many of them do not seem to understand that learning is not a passive activity. Students can benefit from explicit, direct instruction, and if teachers can teach them about the brain and learning at the beginning of the year, it could lay a solid foundation for the specific classwork and learning activities the teacher plans throughout the year.
It can be quite the struggle for teachers to get their students interested in the content or learning in general. Motivating students to participate in class is not simple. Kathryn Wentzel and Jere Brophy (2014) have found that students need to understand and value the teacher’s goals in order to be motivated, and the main goal for teachers is for their students to learn. By teaching students about learning and the brain, teachers are helping students understand the basic principles behind everything they do. Teaching this unit at the beginning of the year can help students see the relevance and value in certain class activities, and it might even help them understand their own learning processes and how they learn best.
This 2-3 week unit on learning and the brain would be a great way to start the year. Students are usually the best behaved the first few weeks of school, so teaching a unit during this time makes good use of their attention. By the time this unit is over, students and the teacher will know each other better, and they will be able to work together to create class expectations and procedures that are more meaningful and applicable to this specific group. The class community will be stronger and everyone will know the basics of learning. This would be a very successful start to a new school year.