The summer holidays are at an end. The term is about to begin once more which means we have arrived at Back To School Season. A new academic year with new hope and optimism is on the horizon. Getting prepared for a new year can be a taxing and stressful time, here are 14 tips to help mums navigate this season and set up both children and parents to have the best academic year yet!
1. Have meaningful Conversations with children about the new school year
Before the school year starts you may want to have meaningful conversations about the school year ahead. Your child may be starting at a new school, you may have moved to a new city or country. There may even be more perceived pressure as your child enters an examination year, for example, GCSEs or A Levels. You can discuss issues around making friends or bullying. Create a safe space where issues can be expressed and worked through. You may also want to discuss some of these issues with your child’s teachers so they can provide support from the school’s side. These conversations allow everyone to be on the same page and expectations can be managed.
2. Being Intentional
We’ve all probably experienced it when we’ve come to the end of a season and we feel tired, and drained, knowing that our time could have been handled better. This academic year, one of the surefire ways to make it memorable and enjoyable is by being intentional. Set aside time to reflect on the previous year, what went well? What didn’t go so well? What do you want to see more of this year? What is important to you and your family?
These are the ideas that you can use as a basis for how you are going to tackle the year ahead. You may want to encourage more healthy habits around work, rest, fun, communication etc. A change of mindset and a sense of agency around what you want to see in your home can do wonders in helping you achieve them.
3. Setting goals
Goals are a great way to ensure that the important things you want to achieve both personally and as a family are met. They provide actionable steps to go along with your intentionality that can be followed and aimed toward very positive and life-changing outcomes.
Goals allow your children the opportunity to be mindful and take an active role in their academic (and non-academic) lives. Having checkpoints along the way allows you all to measure how things are going and to evaluate if you are on course to meet all the goals that have been set, if you’re not on course they provide an opportunity to correct course and ensure that you are going towards your desired destination.
4. Knowing Key Dates
Most schools will have some sort of annual calendar that parents and guardians can access. It’s very important you know about key dates including term dates, school holidays, inset days, picture day and important meetings to name a few.
Insert these dates into your personal and family calendars I would encourage mums to use a digital calendar of some sort because this allows you to set up notifications and reminders well before the time to remind you of an upcoming event, that way you can do any necessary preparation and the important date or event doesn’t have a chance to catch you by surprise.
5. Have a general idea about the Syllabus/Teaching
Your child’s teacher will be the expert when it comes to teaching the content on the specification, but it is also a good idea to have a general idea of what your children will be learning and when. This will give you the opportunity to facilitate learning at home and give extra support. For example, your child may be learning about measures in Maths, you can then use your weekly shopping trip to reinforce how measures and weighing work in the real world.
A word of caution with this, however, it’s important to allow for changes and delays to occur with the schedule, don’t worry too much about it being followed religiously. Your child’s teacher or school may need to amend some aspects of teaching and learning.
6. Deciding on Extracurricular activities
Extracurricular activities are a key part of the academic year, they can provide a creative and physical outlet for children and can go hand in hand with successful academics.
Decide as a family what activities the children will take part in this year. Along with making a decision based on what your child enjoys, you can also think about the support and effort that will be needed to be taken to activities and picked up, the cost of the activity and the cost of the equipment needed. This is made even more challenging if you have more than one child that is taking part in activities. Ideally, you want to arrive at decisions that everyone is happy with. Insert these activities into the family calendar so you can see how it fits in with everything else.
7. Managing Back To School Shopping
Back to school shopping has been known to be notoriously stressful especially when completed last minute. . .This doesn’t have to be the case! Some tips you can use to make it less stressful include;
- Taking an inventory, if you know what you already have you don’t have to waste money buying the same items again, and can focus your expenditure on what is actually needed.
- Combine in-person and online shopping for convenience and the best deals. Do your best to start as early as possible, then you can source the best place to buy your items based on quality, price and convenience.
- You may also need to invest in specialist items for the upcoming academic year such as technology, including phones, laptops and tablets. You may want to get items insured in case of loss or damage. Don’t forget to make sure gadgets are spill-resistant, especially for younger children handling gadgets like tablets.
- Have a budget in mind; Not just for back to school season, but also for the term and year, this will help you focus on the key items needed and allow you to save money for other important things. Bear in mind you may have to also think about other costs associated with back to school season including school fees.
8. Meet New Teachers and Build Rapport
The teachers of your children are the ones that are going to be teaching and hopefully empowering your children to be the best learners they can be. It’s so important to build a good working relationship between school and home. It means your child can be supported from multiple angles and if there are any difficulties they can be identified much more easily and quickly. Set aside time at the beginning of the school year to meet your child’s teacher in person, and it’s very important that mums don’t alienate teachers or get off on the wrong foot. This can have a negative impact on your child’s learning.
9. Creating a Study Space
Creating an effective and welcoming study space is an important factor often overlooked in academic success. Most Children will have some sort of homework to do throughout the year, ideally, you want this to be a pleasurable experience, one in which children look forward to.
A study space ideally needs to be free from clutter, it needs to be clean and it needs to be well lit (both natural and artificial light). It also needs to have everything needed for effective study such as pens, pencils, notebooks, calculators etc. So when a child sits down to work they have all they need in one place. For older children the study space will often be in their bedroom, work with them to design a space that they want to work, study and relax in.
10. Have a designated Family Landing Zone
A designated family landing zone is a place in the home where all the commonly used school items are kept, such as bags, coats, shoes etc. This can be especially useful in the mornings when time is usually short and everything you need to get out the door on time can be found in one place. It’s a good habit to prepare the landing zone ahead of time for example the night before, so when things are hectic in the mornings you and the children don’t misplace or leave anything behind. This also creates a good habit and routine for younger children, who get used to not simply throwing items anywhere and everywhere but developing the habit of putting items where they are supposed to go.
11. Reset Routine
A reset routine is a series of steps that you and the family take to get ready for the week ahead. It can be tidying the workspace, getting the school uniform ready or even just checking the calendar to see what events and activities are coming up in the week ahead. You can also use this time to reflect and analyse the previous week and use this information to tweak details for the week ahead.
The weekend at some point is a great time to do this but be aware you may not always have time to do everything in your reset routine every week, in that case, you can do it periodically to stay on track.
12. Meal Prep
Ensuring the family eats healthy nutritious meals is at the forefront of the mind of many mums, during back to school season, you may find yourself with less time, and more going on as you’re adapting to a new academic year. Planning your meals ahead can save a considerable amount of time and remove a sizable amount of stress. If you have easy and healthy go-to meals that are popular with the children that don’t take too much time to prepare, these are ideal. Even if you will be preparing more complicated meals, planning your meals ahead of time allows you to be more prepared for this. This is something that can be used throughout the academic year especially when things get busy not just at the beginning of term.
13. Extra Time
Give yourself extra time during the first few days of the new school year to get up to speed with everything, you may have to learn a new route to school or a new routine. This can be a stressful time for both Child and Mum. Make sure you give yourself some extra time by leaving earlier or by waking up earlier and allowing some extra time for random things to pop up.
14. Be Nice to yourself (Give yourself Extra Time)
With this in mind, it’s also going to be very important that you are kind and patient with yourself, there is no need to expect everything to work properly from day one, give yourself time to grow into the year and don’t put too much pressure on yourself. Make adequate time for rest and relaxation as well as fun. So long as you’re doing the best that you can, that’s enough!
Need Further Help?
As well as the points raised in this article, you can also bring in some external help if needed to help with the academic side of things. We offer a consultation service as well as academic support through tutoring, to help you navigate the school year and help you reach your academic aspirations for your children.
Samuel Adu-Gyamfi is the CEO and founder of Sam Tutoring, a tutoring service and consultancy in London he founded a decade ago.
Sam Tutoring provides private one-to-one tuition along with group and online tuition for families in Central London and internationally, as well as tailor-made services for schools.
Working with students from the ages of 7-18 we provide academic support and mentorship.
Email info@samtutoring.london, to book a consultation or visit www.samtutoring.London to see how we can help your child succeed.
Read more tips by Sam tutoring here.
