Welcome Back to School (Shootings)

Crosses, flowers, signs, and other items left at a makeshift memorial site established near the MLK Commons at Northern Illinois University within a week of the February 14, 2008 shooting at NIU which killed six and injured 18 people. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

by Rachael Maddux, Medium.com - Matter: https://medium.com/matter/welcome-back-to-school-shootings-11e14773a4c4

It’s barely September, and the afternoon light has finally mellowed enough that it no longer seems preposterous that the kids in my neighborhood are back in school.

For weeks now I’ve watched as they walk out in the mornings, already sweating in the heavy air of a far-from-over Atlanta summer, their backpacks still light on their shoulders. I envy them, almost.

But then I hear the bus’s diesel engine burbling and straining down the block and my envy turns to gratefulness, then settles back into dread.

I am a childless grownup; I should be able to embrace the start of a new school year like any other harbinger of fall, like the first honking skein of Canada geese overhead or the increasing crunch of leaves underfoot. Instead I steel myself for the inevitable, for the boys and their guns that I know are yet to come.

Already, in California, police have intercepted two rising seniors’ plans to “kill as many people as possible” at their high school at some point after classes started last week. 

Once the rest of the country catches up to the South’s early start dates (we’re ahead on this, at least), I know it’s only a matter of time before we see the headlines, or the trending topics, or the vague posts of dismay and disgust, or however we get our news now. 

The summer was a reprieve, but here we are again, seemingly helpless in the face of what by now appears to be as much a feature of the American school year as report cards and field trips and homecoming dances.

We’ve had school shootings as long as we’ve had schools, which is not quite as long as we’ve had guns. But for a while they were so baffling and so infrequent, just once a decade or so, that they were never quite incorporated into any permanent sense of reality. 

And so the idea of the American school as a safe space - free of violence, free of threat -  was carried along through the years in a bubble.

There is a tacit agreement among children to wait until they are grown to start killing one another, and when this is violated we call it “the unimaginable.” We say, “I never thought this kind of thing could happen here.” But at some point in the past 20 years, it began to see, not just imaginable, but inevitable. 

I happened to be inside the bubble when it finally burst. By my count, between my first day of kindergarten, in August 1990, and my first day of middle school, in August 1996, 23 people - children and teachers and staff - were killed and 20 were wounded in 12 shootings done by students at primary and secondary schools across the United States. 

By the time I graduated from high school, in May 2003, those numbers had more than doubled: 24 shootings in six years, 110 wounded, 43 dead. In the 11 years since I graduated from high school, 42 have died and 92 have been wounded in 69 shootings committed by students. 

Since then, too, the less frequent but generally more deadly trend of outside shooters entering schools has spiked: In 16 incidents, 16 wounded and 46 dead - more than half of those at Sandy Hook Elementary in December 2012, one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history. You can plot it all out on a chart and the red line goes up and up and it does not stop.

This year’s high school seniors, born in 1998 or 1997 or maybe 1996, have lived their entire lives in the aftermath of that burst bubble in a world with few illusions about what their mere presence in school might protect them from. 

The kids just starting kindergarten, I suspect, will have even fewer. Twenty states now require their public schools to perform regular lockdown drills. 

The Department of Homeland Security offers downloadable materials for classroom use - posters and pocket cards, in English and Spanish, about how to behave in an active shooter situation - and even a webinar: “Conducting Security Assessments: A Guide for Schools and Houses of Worship.” 

School systems ready teachers with elaborate staged scenarios involving real law enforcement and rubber bullets. Perhaps the net effect of all this is, in fact, safer schools. But enacting these means of protection requires an acknowledgement of the threat itself, which begins a certain sort of unraveling no drill can really stop.

Tennessee, where I grew up, is one state to require lockdown drills. In Georgia, where I live, no drills are required, but as of this July public schools do have the ability to decide for themselves whether to allow their teachers and administrators to be armed - this, part of a broader piece of legislation that also allows firearms to be carried at bars, churches, airports, and government buildings. 

Last year, a bookkeeper at an elementary school five miles from my house was held hostage in the front office by a 20-year-old gunman. He had a rifle and 500 rounds of ammunition and had recently gone off his medication. She successfully talked him out of killing her and who knows how many others, and got him to lie down on the floor with his pockets emptied until police arrived. 

This is not a recommended tactic. I’m surprised she is still alive. I’m surprised anyone there is still alive. Sometimes, I’m surprised I’m still alive. Sometimes I find myself joking about surviving high school and I realize I’m only half joking.

I had never heard of any of the towns where the shootings happened, just like nobody would have heard of Ooltewah, Tennessee, but the schools they showed on the news - bricky and beige and prisonlike, scraggly bushes out front and pickup trucks in the parking lot - were as familiar to me as the boys who got the schools on TV to begin with. And they were always boys. 

In the photos that flashed on screen they were almost uniformly babyfaced with greasy hair, ruddy cheeks, braces detectable behind unsmiling lips, eyes a little dead, but whose aren’t when popped with that Olan Mills flash? 

The photos were always a little bit out of date - even a few months can make a difference when you’re 14 or 15 or 16. Acne clears or drifts, jaws square off, faint mustaches descend to haunt upper lips. That’s how young they were: They had not even been themselves long enough for anyone to know who they would turn out to be.

I can’t say exactly when the possibility of a shooting happening at my own school went from nonexistent consideration to unshakeable threat, but in time the likelihood seemed to increase with every time it happened somewhere else, as if this worked the same way as picking dodgeball teams: one by one until every last one of us had been called up. 

I’d never seen a real live gun outside a cop’s hip holster or a museum display case, which perhaps made me an oddity among my classmates, who largely hailed from the kind of white, conservative, churchgoing families that, rich or poor or middle class, were all pretty much weaponed by default - for backyard target practice or weekend deer hunting or general second-amendment flexing under the guise of “self defense.” 

I had no doubt I passed someone in the halls every day who had easy access to the means, at least, for an attack.

"He’s weird, but not, like, shoot-up-the-school weird,” my friends and I would say to reassure ourselves about peculiar characters, a distinction that now seems damning in its own way.

Shoot-up-the-school: We had to say it fast like that, like it was all one word and without taking a breath or thinking too hard, the way you have to just rip off a bandage or run straight off a high dive - the way I imagine you have to pull a trigger - because otherwise you could never bring yourself to do it at all.

The boys did what they did, and everyone had an idea why: It was The Basketball Diaries or Marilyn Manson or video games or absentee parents or that trusty old whipping boy Satan himself. I favored the theory that it was other kids who’d driven them to it, up to and over the edge. 

I had seen every day for years how cruel we could be. I would not say this made me a kinder person, just more aware of all the ways I was not kind. In bed at night and on the bus in the morning and in the halls between classes I would run down the list of everything I could have done to possibly merit a bullet being lodged in my leg or my back or my head. 

I cataloged every snicker, every rolled eye, every offhanded blow I might have dealt, trying to summon the face of anyone who might at that exact moment be licking his wounds, making his own list of names, adding mine to it. I always came up empty, which was a relief but also not. It meant either I was safe or I would never see it coming.

For a while I tried to remember all the names of all the schools where all the shootings happened but eventually I gave up, the way I imagine dwellers of certain coasts lose track of all the once-looming hurricanes that eventually passed them by - there are just too many, and knowing the name of the last one won’t save you from the next. 

But some still stand out, or rather still stick: Frontier, where he opened fire on his algebra class the semester before I had an algebra class of my own. 

Thurston, where he had a name like aluminum foil on the tongue and murdered both his parents first. Pearl, where he killed his ex-girlfriend and later claimed to be possessed by demons. Heath, where he shot into the prayer circle. And then Columbine, which now sits among the so many other once-anonymous words (“Pearl Harbor,” “grassy knoll,” “September 11th”) so bloated with tragedy they’re almost impossible to maneuver without protective air-quotes. 

At first we called it “the Columbine shooting” or “the Columbine tragedy” but soon that came to seem redundant, like saying “the wet water” or “the actual fact.” It was the essence of all of its modifiers. It was anything anyone needed it to be.

I was in eighth grade when it happened, a month out from the end of middle school, bored of everything I knew of my life and greedy for everything to come. I was in class, but I know that only because it was a Tuesday in April and there’s nowhere else I could have been. 

Is it possible that my teachers stopped everything and turned on the televisions to let us watch it unfold live? 

This seems impossibly reckless, but the memory feels true: The reactions of my teachers and my friends and my parents and my sister, anything anyone might have said by way of explanation or reassurance or shared disbelief that day or the day after or the day after that - it’s all wiped out, everything except the memory of countless small square screens where grave-faced reporters used words like “massacre” and “triage” and “trenchcoat mafia,” where in endlessly looping footage students ran from the school building crying, their bodies bent double and their hands clasped against the backs of their heads, elbows up and out like wings of flightless birds.

In the days after Columbine - as in the wake of every now-forgotten shooting, just a little louder, a little more frantic this time -  swelled up the chorus of ambient bickering about what might be done to keep what happened there (there after there after there) from happening here: Did our schools need metal detectors? Bag searches, pat-downs? Armed guards? Armed teachers? 

Most of us kids could hardly manage to pack our own lunches, let alone load a gun. But the way I had begun to look at the boys with the sullen eyes and the long jackets, everyone else now looked at all of us.

The August after that April, I started ninth grade at a high school that sat between a dairy farm and a warehouse of unclear industrial function on a hillside overlooking I-24, a Frankenstein’s monster of a building circled by a 10-foot security fence topped with rusted barbed wire that angled inward. 

The fence was long-standing, but a few adjustments had been made over the summer in regards to what by then fully appeared to be our new and unbudging reality. The dress code, already strict for a public school, had been tightened so that our choices were down to two colors of pants (khaki or navy, belted at all times) and four colors of polo shirts (red, white, gray or navy, tucked in at all times). 

We were not allowed to wear coats or jackets or any sort of outerwear inside the building, with the exception of the hooded sweatshirts made available exclusively to members of the school’s sports teams. We were not allowed to wear sandals or patterned socks or shorts shorter than knee-length. We were not allowed to carry beepers or pagers or cell phones. 

We were not allowed to have backpacks with us anywhere except on the way to and from our lockers, where they were supposed to stay shuttered away during the day - so that we couldn’t tote our guns around in them - but the building’s various wings were so far-flung and the hallways so crowded between classes that the rule was unofficially suspended to avoid an epidemic of chronic tardiness.

Guns had been illegal on campus for years, and it was hard to imagine someone being discouraged by the dress code but not state law, so as far as I was concerned all these new rules did was increase the likelihood of my classmates and I being killed while wearing the same outfit.

I wanted to feel protected, just not in any of the ways anyone wanted to protect me. I understood, or at least I understand now, that the principals and teachers and all the rest of the adults in charge felt a great need to show that they meant business - to prove that they were not just feebly grasping at straws, terrified like the rest of us. 

They had 1,200 teenagers to keep from shooting one another and were working against what seemed like a viral madness that was creeping closer every day. We hadn’t been prepared for this, and neither had they. But good intentions were never going to stop a bullet.

In the spring of my freshman year, at the behest of the county superintendent, our long-running regimen of quarterly fire and tornado drills was augmented with an active shooter drill, although great pains were taken to avoid the words “active” and “shooter.” 

On a not entirely random day in the middle of a not entirely random class period, the school-wide intercom would crackle on and the disembodied voice of one of our four assistant principals would signal the commencement of the drill in the same soporific drawl used to announce bus route changes and field trip cancellations. 

“This is a safety drill,” the voice would would say. “This - is a safety drill.” At this signal we were supposed to drop to the floor and make our way to the corner of the classroom designated in advance as being least visible from the doorway, to remove us from the path of any bullets that might come flying in from the hall. 

Meanwhile, our teacher would run to the door, check the hallway for stray students, pull in any stragglers, then shut and lock the door and cover its inset window with a piece of poster-board they had been instructed to keep on hand for just this purpose. Somebody, maybe a nimble-fingered student, would yank down and twist shut the classroom’s mini-blinds, in case someone was prowling outside.

And then we would all wait there in the safe corner, huddled or crouched or piled or in whatever position we had arranged ourselves, for however long it was determined that we should wait.

After a while the intercom would crackle back on to tell us the coast was clear, and although we all knew the coast had never been anything but clear, it was with at least a small amount of relief that we pried ourselves from the safe corner and returned to our desks, often without speaking a direct word about what had just happened, or not-happened.

We were made to go through these motions frequently enough that I eventually developed opinions about which classrooms would make the best refuge on the occasion of an actual shooting. The room where my U.S. government class met struck me as the most ideal option, its stumpy L shape providing a spacious corner to huddle in at a generous remove from the door. 

My chemistry lab had heavy tables a group of us could easily slide up against the door, better than spindly metal desks for keeping a shooter at bay - not a sanctioned safety-drill maneuver, but it seemed worth keeping in the reserves. 

The semester I was assigned to study hall in the Junior ROTC rifle range was particularly comforting. The guns that lay all around were carved from two-by-fours and accented with duct tape but, I figured, could be sufficiently threatening in a pinch.

All of this was better than nothing, better than just shrugging and letting the bullets fly. But I had questions, ones I sensed I couldn’t ask or the whole thing would fall apart, or I’d be mistaken as the one lusting for my classmates’ spilled blood. 

Like: If the shooter we were practicing hiding ourselves from was one of our own - and, following the patterns of recent history, he most likely would be - wouldn’t he know all about the drill, and therefore know to work around it? 

Wouldn’t he try instead to exploit one of the many scenarios we never once prepared for: a shooter in the halls between classes, a shooter in the cafeteria during lunch, a shooter in the commons when everyone was flooding to and from the buses, a shooter in the stadium during one of the football pep rallies the entire student body was required to attend every fall? What about during a fire drill or a tornado drill? 

Once I thought that would be the ultimate irony, dying by one means while practicing how not to die by another, but then I decided, no, that would be an attack during the safety drill itself: all of us pre-corralled, pre-cowering, there for the taking, knowing those locked doors didn’t mean a thing if someone wanted in bad enough.

Between what I saw on the news and the version of reality the safety drills asked us to imagine, it wasn’t hard to see how it might all go down. 

I imagined my friends and my classmates and my teachers scattering, crying, bleeding out; I imagined seeing a boy I had seen every day for years suddenly standing there with a gun, or two, or more. 

I imagined what it would be like to be shot and die: the sudden explosion of rearranging pain, the dark draining slide into nothingness. But mostly I imagined what it would be like to be shot and live. 

When I would come across descriptions of gunshot wounds in books or magazines or on the news, I would tuck away anything that seemed reassuring. It was like getting punched or pinched hard, it was like getting poked with something hard and hot, it was like getting stung by a very large bee. 

I had felt a little bit of all these things before, I reminded myself; maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. I let myself forget all the times I cried over a stubbed toe, all the days I’d ruined with a paper cut.

Sometimes I tried to imagine what it would be like to be the shooter myself - to be stalking the halls I knew so well and blasting away anyone in my path, to be soaked with blood and not even know whose, to be so full of whatever a person needed to be full of for this to become his life. 

But I could never get far. I had never even held a gun. I just wanted to make sure the idea did not somehow appeal to me. It did not.

And then, with a walk across a stage and a flip of a tassel, I left it all behind. I went away to a tiny college in a big city where if I ever wondered which of my classmates was most likely to go on a shooting rampage or what classroom would be the best to hide in or which professor would be most likely to throw themselves between their students and a spray of bullets, it was from sheer force of habit.

There was no barbed wire, no dress code, no drills. I was no longer afraid, at least not of what I used to be afraid of.

When I would see on the news that it had happened again - another boy, another gun, another bricky beige school in some little town no one had ever heard of -  I would tsk in shock and sorrow along with everyone else, but mostly what I felt was relief. That could have been me once, I knew. That could have been any of us. But you’re safe now, I told myself. You’re safe.

And I believed it - believed that I had aged out of this threat, that my childhood exposure had somehow inoculated me against it, like chicken pox - right up until that April morning in when the news came down from Blacksburg: 17 wounded, 32 dead at Virginia Tech.

The senior business major had moved through the residence halls and the classroom buildings, unloading his handguns into rooms full of professors and students, shooting them down through the doors they’d barricaded themselves behind. He took a break to mail a package of photos and videos and letters to NBC. He knew they would want it. He had seen all this before.

And we had seen all this before. We had not seen it at a single college or university in the past four years, somehow, but we had seen it in the 16 dead, eight wounded, in eight campus shootings over the previous decade, and we had seen it, or would see it soon, so many other times in so many other places: shopping malls, movie theaters, train stations, post offices, hospitals, churches - everywhere a person might go in the course of living their life.

I was a month away from graduation, four hundred miles away, and I felt the terrible rude clarity of the world splitting itself open to show me everything I hadn’t let myself believe was there all along.

I had left behind nothing but the haphazard rituals that had once given shape to my fear, and now I found myself teetering on the edge of the rest of my life, gasping and ashamed to not have seen how much danger I’d always been in - how much danger I was in still - how there were no safe corners, never had been, and never would be again.

But still I look for them, those places that might give me some comfort - if not when bullets are flying then at least in all the quiet waiting hours before.

I angle for back booths in restaurants, scan for exits while waiting in checkout lines, make note of nooks and alcoves like I make note of sullen-eyed strangers. Depending on the day or the hour I make vague plans to run, or to play dead. But I don’t know. After all this time, I don’t know what I would do, or should do.

I think of the little girl I read about in the New York Times earlier this year, in an article about school lockdowns:

In Louisville, Ky., the school where Rachel Hurd Anger’s daughter, Ella, attends second grade was locked down after a man with five BB guns walked onto the campus. A few days later, Ms. Hurd Anger said her daughter drew a red-and-yellow emergency button and taped it to her bedroom wall. When she presses it, she and her 4-year-old brother run to the basement to hide. “It’s kind of like a security blanket,” Ms. Hurd Anger said. “She doesn’t want to take it down.”

In high school, after a while I decided that if something did go down - something the narrow imagination of the safety drill had not prepared us for, as I suspected would be the case - I would just hide under a table and everything would be all right. I’m not sure why I ever thought this.

I got the idea from a girl who had been killed at Columbine. I heard that she had crouched under a table in the library to hide from the shooters, that one of the boys found her there and asked her if she believed in God, that she said yes and he shot her anyway. Or maybe not “anyway” - maybe she said exactly what he wanted to hear.

Years later I learned that the story was probably not even true, that none of the other kids from the library that morning remember exchange that way, but by then I had thought about it so much that the reality hardly mattered.

So many times I had thought about what I would do if it were me under that table, with a 17-year-old in a trench coat pointing a rifle at my face and asking me if I believed in God. I think I know what I would have said back then. I’m not sure I know what I would say now.

Popular School Students Get Bullied Too

Bullying on the first day of class (Wikipedia)

by Ara Sarafian, The Conversation

The stereotype that popular kids don’t get bullied has been busted by a new study that found becoming more popular at school can actually increase a student’s risk of being bullied.

The study, published today in the American Sociological Review, surveyed more than 4,200 students from the 8th, 9th and 10th grades in 19 schools in North Carolina and examined how social status affects the risk of peer victimisation.

Popularity was determined by how central students were in their school’s web of friendships. Bullying, or victimisation, was measured by analysing interviews in which students nominated up to five schoolmates who picked on them or were mean to them, and up to five peers whom they picked on or were mean to.

The study found the likelihood of victimisation increased by 25% when a typical student climbed to the top 5% of the social hierarchy.

Lead author and sociologist Robert Faris, from the University of California, found traditional patterns of bullying, such as on vulnerable kids who had few friends or poor body image. “But we also found evidence of a second, counter-intuitive pattern where relatively popular kids are being targeted,” he said.

It was only when students reached the very peak and were within the top 5% of the social hierarchy that their likelihood of being victimised dramatically decreased. “The climb to the top of the social ladder is painful but the top rungs appear to offer a safe perch above the fray,” Dr Faris said.

Social psychologist Norman Feather, from Flinders University, South Australia, said it might be because these high-status adolescents have more power and influence with the capacity to cause harm if attacked in some way. “They may also be seen to be entitled to and deserve their high status,” Professor Feather said.

The harder they fall

The study found that in rare cases when those at the very top do get victimised, the negative consequences are magnified. High-status students experienced more depression, anxiety, anger and social marginalisation as result of a given incident of bullying.

The study said this could be because they had more to lose or perhaps because they were more unsuspecting victims.

Social psychologist Mark Rubin, from the University of Newcastle, New South Wales, said it was a case of “the bigger they are, the harder they fall". “Although these highest-status children are less prone to victimisation, I wonder if they are nonetheless stressed out about the possibility of an attack on their high-status position,” he said.

Tall poppy syndrome

This research relates to tall poppy syndrome, where people of genuine merit are resented or cut down because their achievements distinguish them from their peers.

Professor Feather’s research showed that people who are low in status and self-esteem are more inclined to feel happier when tall poppies fall. “It brings them closer to their own position,” he said.

His research found that people are more accepting of tall poppies, and of other people with higher status, it they think the higher status was earned. “People are less happy about the fall of a tall poppy if a tall poppy deserved their high position and did not deserve a fall from grace,” he said. But if the failure was deserved, people expressed pleasure and satisfaction at the misfortune.

Dr Rubin’s research also showed that the need to be fair and equitable may influence people’s behaviour towards others.

Out of school

These sorts of social psychological processes may not be limited to school environments. “They are likely to occur within many social groups, including businesses, politics, even among scientists,” Dr Rubin said.

“The need for social status may be driven by a more general motive for self-esteem. Most of us want to feel good about ourselves, and knowing that others value us provides an important means of establishing our self-esteem.”

Professor Feather said it would be interesting to see if the results of this new American study replicate in Australia, where we emphasise equality as well as achievement. “We need to protect the tall poppies who deserve their high status because they may do much to promote the advance of our society and culture,” he said.

A new approach to bullying

Bullying intervention programs often focus on addressing a lack in social skills in and empathy for those who are bullied. But Dr Faris said the new research showed that the competition for prestige was also a cause.

“To reduce bullying, it may be useful for schools to dedicate more attention and resources to de-emphasising social status hierarchies, perhaps by fostering a greater diversity of activities that promote a variety of interest-based friendship groups and not celebrating one activity - such as basketball or football - over any other.”


This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

How We Went Back to School, Macklemore Style

Activist Frida Berrigan, 2007 (Wikipedia)

by Frida Berrigan, Yes! magazine: http://www.yesmagazine.org/happiness/back-to-school-shopping-it-doesn-t-have-to-cost-you-and-the-planet

Frida Berrigan wrote this article for WagingNonviolence. Frida serves on the board of the War Resisters League and is a columnist for WagingNonviolence. This article originally appeared at WagingNonviolence.org.

Back to school. The words sent a wave of terror, thrill, and itchiness through my body. The thrill and terror should be fairly universal, but the itchiness deserves a word of explanation.

Every year, right before the beginning of the school year, our family spent the weekend at a retreat center in the Poconos.

The adults prayed, did "life-sharing," and discussed nonviolence. The kids played capture the flag and hide and seek, climbed trees, and fought apple wars. There was lots of poison ivy.

For the first day of school, the kids at my school set the bar pretty high. The name of the game at Mount Royal Elementary Middle School was color coordination. Kids came back to school looking like they had spent all summer matching their pants to their shirt to their socks to their shoes.

And everything was brand new - the clothes, of course, but also the tennis shoes, lunch boxes, thermoses, and backpacks.

The problem with matching, though, is that it's hard to do if all your gear is second hand. As die-hard Catholic anarchists and peace activists whose monthly salary was in the low hundreds, my parents were no more going to buy us new clothes than start working for Lockheed Martin or the Pentagon.

Every summer, we spent one stressful unsatisfying day shopping with our mom to get ready for school. We bought new (off brand) shoes, underpants, and socks and then hit the thrift store for clothes.

Mom was not looking for the trendiest brands or the most stylish threads. She made sure they fit and were not worn out, and that was pretty much it. I tried to be fashionable, but it wasn’t easy.

Of course, the poison ivy made everything more difficult. My efforts at thrift shop stylishness were always hampered by having to work around itchy, oozing, red splotches all over my body.

Should I wear long sleeves to cover the poison ivy? It looks better, but then the fabric sticks to the itchy patches and September in Baltimore is still high summer. It was hard.

Once I jazzed up the previous year's brown tennis shoes by sticking reinforcements all over them - like the little white circles used to extend the life of three-hole lined paper in a Trapper Keeper. Do you think anyone asked me where I got my awesome shoes? Not a chance.

When Shaker knit sweaters were the thing (actually, the year after they were the big thing), I showed up wearing two - along with two matching pairs of socks scrunched just so beneath my rolled-up jeans. Red and yellow? Blue and green? I can’t remember, thankfully.

And, I have another dim memory - best forgotten - of showing up to one first day of middle school wearing a three-cornered hat. It was the coolest thing I had ever owned right up until the moment the other kids saw it.

I can comfort myself with the knowledge that I was way ahead of the curve. Have you heard the strong anti-conformity messages being piped out of your radio today?

My man Macklemore is making bank singing about shopping in thrift shops and wearing your grandfather’s clothes. And Cee Lo Green and the Goodie Mob have a back-to-school-worthy anthem called “ Special Education.”

I don't wear the clothes you wear
I'm just different and I don't care
It's kind of sad and it's a shame
Everyone wants to be the same.

Lest you think I am super hip for these au courant culture references, I heard the Goodie Mob song on National Public Radio earlier this week and my father-in-law introduced me to Macklemore. My geekness remains in good standing.

It doesn't sound like most people in the United States are getting Cee Lo's message. Back-to-school spending in this country is out of control. Only the capitalist craze of Christmas is a bigger bonanza to retailers.

This back-to-school season, the average U.S. household will spend $634.78 on apparel, shoes, supplies, and electronics, according to the National Retail Federation. That is down more than $50 from last year.

Total spending on back-to-school merchandise is expected to reach $26.7 billion, but when combined with back-to-college spending, the total will climb to more than $72 billion. How many Trapper Keepers do we really need, people? Do we really all want to wear the same clothes?

But, here is the statistic that staggered me: "95.3 percent of those with school-age children will spend an average of $230.85 on fall sweaters, denim, and other chic pieces of attire. Additionally, families will spend on shoes ($114.39) and school supplies ($90.49)."

It's no wonder Americans have so much credit card debt. My husband Patrick and I, however, did not keep up with the Joneses on this one and our credit rating thanks us for our miserliness.

We bought his daughter Rosena some new (to her) clothes, as well as a new backpack. And her mom bought her new shoes. But that was all.

Patrick is with me 100 percent on this one. He remembers wearing his first-ever brand new pair of jeans (a size too small) on his first day of junior high.

We walked Rosena to her first day of first grade on Wednesday. She looked great (and more importantly) felt comfortable in her thrift shop finery. She was a little nervous and very excited as we got closer to her school.

But all the nervousness disappeared when she saw the other kids. We could hardly get her to stand still to say goodbye to us before she ran off to join the throng.

Watching the kids scamper into the building, I heard the Goodie Mob refrain and was heartened. No two kids looked the same. They were a riot of color and pattern - stripes, especially, were big.

Some were dressed up, but mostly kids looked clean and fresh and comfortable and ready for the fun of learning. Also, a bonus: Rosena did not have poison ivy. It was beautiful.

Going Back to School and Finding Success

by Brett A Bowen

Most people at one point or another have considered going back to college. It is a huge decision and some find it to even be too huge to comprehend.

While it can be daunting, if you are doing it for the right reasons, you'll come to a decision fairly quickly. Most people realize that going to college and getting a degree is extremely beneficial in life.

Here are a couple things to take into consideration when thinking of going back to school:

Money shouldn't stop you from going

There are so many options besides paying out of pocket for college now with things ranging from scholarships, loans, and grants. Scholarships are the most popular because it's free money. The same goes for grants, as they don't have to be paid back.

Loans are definitely tricky in that each one has fine print that most people either don't read, or don't know about. Some loans even allow you to wait up to six months after graduation before you have to begin paying it back. That is always helpful!

You don't have attend on campus

Many colleges offer online courses now instead of the traditional on-campus attendance. In some cases it may even be cheaper to do it online. This allows for more flexibility. If you need to work while going back to school you can tailor the classes and work around your work hours.

If you work mornings, you could do school in the evenings. There are also long distance colleges as well that send you books and assignments that only need to be submitted online.

You can pick and choose your workload

A big complaint I hear from friends currently in college is that they say they've taken on too many classes, and I always say, "Well why did you start out with that many when you didn't know how much work could come with them"?

You don't have to start out with five or more classes. Just take the minimum required and see how you handle the workload. If you find it easy then next semester you can take another class on top of what you're already doing. However, it's silly to take on a ton of classes, yes it can help you graduate faster, but if you're running yourself into the ground, your grades are going to suffer.

Going back to college is a huge commitment and responsibility, but there are so many reasons why you SHOULD go back. It's not for everyone though. If you're going just because of an obligation, you'll find that you are going to hate it. If you go because you are in search of a better education and future, you'll love it!

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How to Go Back to School After Having a Baby

While You Are At Work (Wikipedia)

by admin, Find a Nanny: http://www.findananny.net/blog/how-to-go-back-to-school-after-having-a-baby/

Whether your child is planned or a pleasant surprise, adjusting your life to accommodate their birth can be a complicated juggling act.

If you were planning to attend school or were already enrolled when you discovered your pregnancy, getting back on track will require a bit of creative scheduling, but it certainly is not impossible.

Having a baby and dreams of an education are not mutually exclusive, you’ll just have to work a bit harder than some of your classmates to juggle all of your responsibilities.

Build a Support System

The most important thing for a student mom to have in place is a strong and reliable support system. Not only will you need help with childcare and managing the needs of your new baby while keeping up with your studies, you’ll also need a shoulder or two you can cry on when things get difficult.

Finishing school as a parent will be a challenge, and having a few people in your corner can make all the difference.

Create a Routine That Works For Your Family

There is no hard-and-fast rule about how you have to structure your household routine, especially when your little one is still an infant. Find a schedule that works for you and build around it. If online classes are more conducive to learning and completing assignments than a traditional classroom setting, that’s the best solution for you.

On the other hand, getting out of the house and interacting with your classmates may help you manage the demands of parenthood more easily. Whatever works for you is the best solution, regardless of how well it would work for someone else.

Set Realistic Goals

You may have planned to take on a full course load before your pregnancy, but that may not be realistic after the birth of a child. Rather than setting goals that aren’t feasible and being disappointed when they prove to be a bit more than you’re ready to handle, take your time and make a plan that you can actually adhere to. Celebrate each milestone along the way and stay focused on each smaller goal as they approach.

Work Out a Reasonable Timeline

Finishing school on the standard time table may be out of the cards for you as a new mom, and that’s okay. The goal is to finish, so take the time to figure out when you can realistically complete your studies.

You may have to shoulder a lighter burden in terms of classes and finish later than some of your peers, but you’ll still leave with a diploma, which is better than trying to take on too much only to end up burned out and frustrated enough to quit school altogether. You may also have ideas of returning to school days after the birth of your child, however, that may not be possible.

Finding the right time to return to school after you recover from delivery and have bonded with your new baby may be a bit more complicated than simply returning as soon as you’re discharged from the hospital.

Find a Caregiver You Trust

Your child will have to be cared for while you’re at school since you won’t be able to take her to class with you. To make the transition into school after becoming a new parent, you’ll need to make sure that you’ve found a childcare provider you absolutely trust and have no qualms about leaving her with.

If you’re distracted and worried about your child’s safety while you’re in class, your academic performance probably won’t reflect your actual abilities.

Prepare for a Bit of Separation Anxiety

Regardless of how excited you are to get back into school after your maternity leave ends, you will feel at least a little bit of separation anxiety until you adjust to the idea of no longer spending the entirety of each day with the fascinating little person you’ve created.

If you’re prepared for the stress of leaving your child in someone else’s care and understand that it’s just temporary, it can lessen the sting and help to make that pain a bit more manageable.

Don’t Be Scared to Adjust Your Schedule

As a new mom and a student, your schedule may have to be adjusted a few times until you find the one that works for you. Making adjustments is not the same as admitting defeat, so don’t be afraid to finangle things until you find the methods that work best for you and your new family.

10 Bad Ways to Teach Kids to Deal with Insults

Verbal Behavior by B.F.Skinner (Wikipedia)

by admin, Nanny Jobs: http://www.nannyjobs.org/blog/10-bad-ways-to-teach-kids-to-deal-with-insults/

There are good and bad ways to deal with your child’s problems, and as a parent it’s your job to know the difference between the two and to act accordingly.

When it comes to verbal abuse, such as taunting, insults and hate speech, the problem can only be exacerbated if you choose an inappropriate response. If your child is dealing with insults from his peers, try to avoid using any of the following 10 approaches:

1. Physical response is generally not a wise course of action, for kids or adults. This is particularly true when used in response to words. Kids should be taught how to address such behavior without resorting to violence.
2. Retaliatory insults can be fun if the general spirit of the insults is more playful and not personal or aggressive. The tit-for-tat approach is not, however, advisable when the insults are coming from someone who is attempting to hurt, discredit or embarrass a child. A like response merely adds fuel to the fire.
3. Keeping it to herself and biting her lip isn’t healthy. If the situation is causing her genuine discomfort or hurt, she needs to know she can share that with you, or someone in authority who can address the issue at school.
4. “Just tell me who it is, and I’ll kick their butt” isn’t an altogether brilliant solution coming from a parent either. Violence isn’t wrong for just kids; it’s not a wise choice for anyone.
5. Suggesting that your child and the insulting party settle the score mano y mano under your supervision might get you famous on YouTube, but not for the right reasons. Be the adult and set a solid example.
6. Gossip and backbiting may provide some measure of revenge, but it also places your child in the same negative light as the recipient, regardless of how deserving that person may seem.
7. Advising your child to use her position to exact revenge is a poor choice too. For instance, as captain of the cheerleading squad, it would be inappropriate for her to exclude someone from the team based on a personal issue.
8. Using pranks or sneaky behavior in retaliation isn’t mature either. There may very well be some imaginatively devious ways to make someone look bad for insulting your daughter, but the idea is to remain above that sort of behavior.
9. Kids do tend to be cruel to each other, but sometimes it’s not in a threatening way. You don’t necessarily want your child to automatically snitch on someone who is merely acting immature. Only such behavior that can genuinely be considered threatening or abusive need be reported.
10. Being overly protective can be a tempting solution for some parents, however, you can’t shelter your child from every unsavory aspect of growing up. Avoid the temptation to restrict her social activities just because one or two people are behaving badly.

Reducing Anxiety When Speaking English As a Foreign Language

An anxious person (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

by Lena W Brown

Why does trying to speak another language make us so nervous?

It's incredible how someone can be brilliant in other highly complex subjects and have panic attacks when they have to learn another language.

This is so common that there is even The Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS). So how can you overcome this common problem?

Below are a few ideas that could help.

1. Acknowledge the difficulty of the task

Learning another language is hard and feeling nervous about learning it is normal. It's like having to give a presentation about what you've learned every day. That's not expected in any other subjects. You are often given weeks or at least days to prepare to present in other circumstances. Learning a language is different in so many ways.

2. Surround yourself with support

It's critically important to feel comfortable with the people around you, particularly when you are learning. Make sure you have a teacher who is supportive and helpful. If not, find a new one.

3. Role play

Role playing is one of the most helpful things you can do to reduce your speaking anxiety. As I mentioned in item one, speaking a foreign language is like having to present constantly.

When I have to give a presentation at work, I prepare extensively to help me feel more comfortable, including scripting and rehearsing it as many times as I can. The same steps can be applied to language. What are some common conversations that you have that you can script and rehearse?

4. Narrate activities when you're by yourself

Practice is the key to all language acquisition, but you don't always have someone to practice with. Also, if you are suffering from anxiety, you may not have the nerve and motivation to practice with another person.

A way to practice on your own is to narrate your activities. When you are getting dressed in the morning, try saying the steps out loud, like "I'm going to take a shower" and "I'm putting on my shirt".

5. Keep a journal

Sometimes identifying what triggers your anxiety can be a big step in controlling it. Try and keep a journal of when you feel anxious. Is it a certain person that makes you nervous? Is it a certain situation?

I've said it before and I'll say it again, learning a new language is hard work. Don't give up, keep trying and you will get better.

Need more help with your English? Visit my website for details on my online English tutoring services, http://girlenglishteacher.com/.

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Healthy Eating in College - 10 Tips For Students

Vegetables (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

by James G. Carrington

Healthy eating in college can be difficult on a budget, but just because you have little money does not mean you need to eat food with little nutritional value.

With these few handy hints and tips, healthy eating in college can be simple ...

1. Make a list

If you make a list when you are going shopping you are less likely to be tempted by pricey, unnecessary items. On a side note, eating before going shopping will make sure that you do not impulse buy and keep to your shopping list.

2. Plan your meals

If you plan your meals for the week, you'll know what to put on your shopping list and it will motivate you to cook in the evening. Meals don't have to be difficult, look for easy recipes online.

3. Buy value ingredients

Just because ingredients are in the value range, it doesn't mean they aren't as good. It may be that the vegetables are different shapes and sizes, but they will all taste the same in the end. People shopping with their eyes instead of their head is the main reason supermarkets can charge more for standardized looking vegetables.

4. Keep an eye out for bargains

If you have a freezer, bargain shopping is easy. If something is buy one get one free, eat one and freeze the other. It is also a good idea to keep an eye out in the clearance section, although the food may be going out of date in a day or two, if you freeze it, it can last for months.

5. Buy tins

Fruit can be expensive and goes off quickly, but tinned fruit will last for months and is still just as good for you. It makes a great snack, try it with some frozen yoghurt. You can also buy tinned vegetables - be aware of what the fruit and vegetables are preserved in though, avoid salted water and syrup and look for those stored in water or their own juice.

6. Frozen foods

Frozen vegetables actually hold their nutritional value better than fresh and are far more convenient, they will also last longer so take advantage of buying larger packs as they are generally more economical.

7. Drink water

Although in can be tempting to hit the fizzy drinks, your body needs water, particularly if it has been put through the wars with alcohol! Water is healthy and free, so try to drink 7 - 8 glasses a day.

8. Eat breakfast

Eating breakfast will stop you feeling hungry during the day and prevent napping in lectures. Breakfast does exactly what it says on the tin, it breaks a fast, so make sure you grab something in the morning (even if you are running late!). It needn't be a cooked meal, keep some fruit and cereal bars handy to throw in your bag on the way to lectures.

9. Healthy snacks

Often people fall down when they are having an energy slump and reach for the chocolate or other naughty snacks. Keeping some healthy snacks on you is a great way of avoiding the sugar cravings, fruit and vegetables are obviously a great option, but if you are in need of something a bit more interesting, try taking some vegetable crisps instead.

10. Variety

A varied diet is important for health and to stop you getting bored. Try something new each week to keep your diet interesting. Variety is the spice of life!

Follow these simple guidelines and healthy eating in college really can be a breeze.

James Carrington lives in London, UK - and provides nutrition advice for sport and general health.
James help many people achieve their dietary and fitness goals via his website http://healthyeatingand.me.

For your FREE introduction to healthy eating guide please CLICK HERE

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Back to School Guide for Students

Tablet Computers at Yahoo! (Photo credit: jzawodn)

by Edvinas R P

It's never too late or too early to start getting ready for school. Even if you have just missed out on the latest offers there's still something you can do. After all, the best things in life are free right (at least some of them anyway)?

It is vitally important to stack up on pen and paper for taking those life-saving notes. These are usually cheap as chips and if you're a university student, you can pull it off with only a couple of notebooks for your notes.

And if you have a tablet or a laptop with you most of the time, you can go ahead and download some free note taking apps, which will save you the money and the effort for buying pens and papers and keeping track of them.

Speaking of tablets, it is a nice thing to have for a student. It's really convenient to carry your books there, view slides and take notes. Saves loads of space and does not weigh as much as a book would and it may provide you with some great spare time activities or even let you start off with writing your papers early (doubt anyone does that anyway).

If you want a tablet, but don't know which one to buy, you can do a search for best tablets for students and you should definitely find something that will suit your needs.

If you're a fresher this year and are heading out to a different city or even a different country, you may consider getting a smartphone. You'd be surprised how many times you'll be saved by the map on your smartphone or the fact that you had internet access when you needed it the most.

If you have no idea what's on the current market, you can have a look at best top 10 mobile phones lists on Google and hopefully you will find a thing or two worth your attention.

This should get you started on getting out and about on piling up the precious resources for learning. All you need to remember that there are ways you can do things for the cheap.

Keep an eye out for the best deals and note down some good websites, preferably blogs, which throw out good tips and tricks (such as the best note taking apps ) on what should an everyday student have and how will it make your life easier.

http://www.darkforestgroup.com Technology Blog

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Pink Slime Mandatory in US Schools

YUMMY!

by Frank Lake, Weekly World News: http://weeklyworldnews.com

WASHINGTON - The U.S. government is reportedly mandating that all American school kids eat pink slime.

The company that sells ground beef treated with ammonia proclaims their meat mixture is good for America’s schoolchildren, even though parents across the country are seriously questioning the safety of what has been dubbed “pink slime.”

Beef Products Inc. (BPI) made the declaration about its “lean finely textured beef” or LFTB over the weekend to The Daily, which broke the news that the federal government plans to buy ground beef that contains 7 million pounds of the product in the coming year. After the report, “pink slime” became the most searched topic on the internet.

The U.S. Depart of Health and the USDA stepped in and they reportedly investigated the pink slime. “We found that the pink slime is actually some of the best food we’ve every analyzed. We are recommending that all students eat pink slime every day of the school year,” said a source in the government.

The USDA reportedly feels that the pink slime will help kids grow stronger, taller and make them smarter and more focused.

Pink slime accomplishes three important goals on behalf of millions of kids,” said a spokesperson for the pink slime industry. “It improves the nutritional profile, increases the safety of the products and meets the budget parameters that allow the school lunch program to feed kids nationwide every day.”

To read further, go to: http://weeklyworldnews.com/headlines/45186/pink-slime-mandatory-in-schools/

A Second Chance in Life - Back to School

Image via WikipediaBy Irena Pergjika

Nothing is certain when it comes to our sharply competitive world. Amidst bank bailouts, and economical crashes it is difficult to keep a job, let alone find one, especially when the people lining up for the job you want have five different degrees. The harsh reality is that we are all replaceable no matter how effective we might be at performing our job.

Right now you probably have a job that keeps you comfortable, a job that in all likelihood you dislike, but have no choice but to deal with it since you have nowhere else to go and a family to feed.

I would like you to imagine leading life as the poorest citizen of this country. Without a high school diploma, you have settled for a dead end job that pays just enough for you to afford the rent. Strapped for cash, you try to figure out ways in which you can satisfy your personal needs, yet come up short every single month.

The only thing certain in your life are the bills which come in, like clockwork, every single month. Living such a life would lead one have constant anxiety for fear of running out of cash. Fortunately for you and for many others who fell short on completing a degree or a high school diploma, there is hope!

Ask yourself, is it a good idea to go back to school?

In short: YOU BET IT IS! Getting your GED is the first step onwards to your personal success. The more rungs you reach on the educational ladder the more doors you will notice opening up. However, going back to school is not an easy task to do after years of being away from the education arena.

Initially it might be tough to get back into the rigor and routine required of a student. Change is and will always be something difficult to achieve, and going back to school will require you to change your lifestyle. Once you me the decision to go back to school there will be no more watching TV for endless hours, catching up with friends every weekend or going partying as soon as you get the chance.

All the free time you have now will be replaced with endless hours in front of your computer completing an assignment, reading material on your way to work and the 8 hours of sleep you get every night will be replaced with "I'll sleep when I can." Just like everything else in life school requires serious commitment.

Although it is going to be hard and you'll be restless for half of the year, nothing beats the satisfaction of achieving your goal. Once you submit that final paper and finish answering the last question on your test booklet, it is all worth it once you see the straight A's across the board.

I like to think of it this way: Day by day, semester after semester, I'm a step closer to fulfilling my dream. You can do it, everybody can, you just have to set a goal and do everything possible to complete it! Don't give up as soon as things get harder because at the end it's all worth it, trust me.

Getting started

People drop out from high school for many reasons. There is the inability of balancing both work and school, being left without a choice by having to work in order to provide for your family, or simply peer pressure. You can always consider GED - life's second chance to pursue your dream and making it in this world.

You might think it's too late for you to attend school since you've been away from school for so long but you're wrong! No matter what your age group, it is never too late to continue with what you left unfinished. Open a new tab and start searching for the nearest GED center that will provide you with the class schedule and the examination booklet.

Attending class and keeping up with your daily schedule can be hard, and in some instances may act as a set up for failure. Thankfully, there are programs that you can easily find online which provide you with the assistance and preparation needed to ace tests and the final exam without you having to go any further than your computer. It only gets better!

If you feel that you don't need the extra practice tests and the courses, you can proceed to the final examination right away. However, I personally recommend for those who have been out of school for some time, and didn't keep up with the material to take some courses just to become more familiar with the material in order to refresh your memory.

What's next?

After you successfully complete your GED, it's important that you continue your education. Two year schools offer Associate Degrees in many fields such as Nursing, Arts, Early childhood education and many more. To complete an Associate's Degree you usually require 60 credits but that number might vary on what major you decide to pursue.

Many colleges offer morning and evening classes to best fit everyone's schedule, but online courses are available as well. You can also seek programs that don't require two years for completion. You can get training and start working right away after just a few months. Such trainings are available for EMT's, Mechanics, Motorcycle mechanics, home attendants and more.

It all sounds nice and dandy and I'm pretty sure your heart is pumping fast from all the exciting possibilities, but when it comes to paying for all these programs many people fall behind and end up dismissing the idea of going back to school all together. This is where many people are wrong!

There are many ways you can pay for school, such as applying for financial aid or creating a payment plan with your school. For many students financial aid helps pay for most of their tuition, and whatever is left gets paid for out of pocket. Alternatively one can set up a payment plan with the school. Other options are available depending on which school you decide to attend.

So in the end, this is only the beginning for you. No, there are no more excuses to make. The doors are open to those who are willing to walk through them. As I stated here, it does take time and commitment, but the pay off is tremendous. Not only is the prize an upstaged lifestyle, but the feeling of accomplishment. It is time to grab the steering wheel of your life, and turn towards success! Do not deny this to yourself any longer, and go back to school!

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21 Days To Back-To-School Bliss

Cover via Amazonby Susan Kruger

Tips for getting your school year off to a relaxed and productive start.

Gearing up for back-to-school can be a bit overwhelming; there is a lot to do, a lot of transitions to navigate, and often a sense of blues as the realization that summer has, once again, gone by too fast.

However, you can easily turn back-to-school anxieties into positive anticipation for a great school year with the following action plan. Plug these steps into your calendar right now and see what a different they can make!

One Week before School: Week of Preparation

Day 1 (seven days before school): Ease into a "school" bed-time schedule. Slowly transitioning into a "school" sleep schedule ensures proper rest and encourages a positive attitude towards going back to school.

Day 3: Create a place for everything, so everything will be in its place. Designate one basket for each child to store his shoes, bookbags, and jackets. Give each child a container filled with standard homework supplies that can be transported from, for example, the kitchen to the computer room. Finally, establish a place for each child to store extra papers from school - a section of your file cabinet or a designated box under his bed.

Day 4: Purchase supplies. Keep the supplies minimal and simple. Fancy folders and notebooks are bulky and hard for students to use. The best system to use is a one-inch binder with a plastic folder for each class, keeping all folders in one place.

Day 6: Set goals with your children. Help your children look forward to the new school year by having each person (including you) share at least two goals for the new school year: one academic goal and one "fun" goal.

First Week of School: Week of Routines

Day 7 (night before school): Have a "Sunday Night Meeting" every week! Each member of the family should grab their planners/calendars for a 10-15 minute "meeting." Ask your children what they have scheduled for the week (such as sports practices), share your plans for the week (children like to know what to expect, so tell them if you will have a late night at the office or will have to attend a meeting at school), arrange rides home from after-school activities, etc. Your week will be much less chaotic because everyone will be on the same page!

Day 8: Establish a routine for papers that need your attention. Purchase magnetic clips for each child and post them on the refrigerator. Have your children clip papers here that you need to fill out, sign, etc (expect to spend four hours filling out back-to-school papers this week).

Day 10: Get ready for school at night, before you go to bed. Avoid chaotic mornings and forgotten school supplies by having everyone pack up their homework, bookbags, lunch/lunch money, etc, before they go to bed. They should also set out their clothes, shoes, and jacket at night, too.

Day 11: Is everyone using their school planners? All students need to use a homework planner! Check planners every night until they are part of everyone's routine.

Day 12: Clean out bookbags once a week. Cluttered book-bags are the root cause of lost assignments and must be cleaned out regularly (the Sunday Night Meeting is another good time to do this).

Second Week of School: Week of Cooperation

Day 14: Hold your second "Sunday Night Meeting" of the school year.

Day 15: Give each child a choice about something today. The more you can give your children choices, the more cooperation you will get from them, especially when doing homework. Some choices may include giving two options for dinner or two different times to do their homework. When you give choices - and honor their choices - your children feel empowered and will be much more cooperative.

Day 18: Catch your children being good today! Improve cooperation by giving compliments to your children. Keep them specific and succinct (most children are embarrassed by mushy-gushy compliments). For example, "Thank you, Kristen, for coming home and starting your homework right away. I appreciate that." Positive praise works wonders!

Day 21: Give yourself a break! Congratulations, you have survived the first two weeks of school and you are well on your way to a happy, productive school year. Celebrate by scheduling some time for yourself. You deserve it!

(c) 2008 Susan Kruger, All rights reserved. You are free to reprint/republish this article as long as the article and byline are kept intact and all links are made live.

About the Author

Susan Kruger, M.Ed. is a Certified Teacher and the author of the book SOAR(r) Study Skills. Her exclusive Homework Rx(r) Toolkit at http://www.soarstudyskills.com/toolkit/index.html includes 25 Ways to Make Homework Easier ... Tonight!, Homework Scorecard, Homework Inventory for Parents and a free subscription to the Homework Rx(r) eNewsletter to help you and your child enjoy homework success.

Young Kids and Back to School Anxiety: How to Shrink it Down to Size

Image via Wikipediaby Dr. Joan Simeo Munson

As the start of the school year approaches, have you seen your first grader go into meltdown mode at the mention of school, or watched your soon-to-be kindergartner regress back to baby talking and thumb sucking? Rest assured that you’re not alone.

Each fall, millions of parents deal with their children’s beginning-of-the-year anxiety. For younger children starting school - whether it’s pre-school, kindergarten, or a transition into the first or second grade - having a grown-up lean down and say, “How exciting, you’re starting school soon,” can be similar to telling an adult they’re going to be scaling Mt. Everest next week!

And the fears children have about school can be very real: they may be apprehensive about separating from their parents, riding the school bus, or meeting a new teacher. The emotions your child experiences before the start of school can also lead to a general sense of anxiety - a feeling most children won’t be able to articulate.

It’s important to remember that when placed in any new situation, all children (and parents, too) are going to need to take time to adjust. Realize that your child will require a period of time to figure out their comfort zone and what’s required for them to fit in to their new environment.

Fortunately, there are steps you can take as a parent to make the prospect less daunting – the key is to prepare your child both emotionally and physically so that they can have the best start possible this school year.

Take away as Many “Unknowns” as Possible

One way you can help ease your child’s anxiety is to show them what their school year will look like. Anxiety often feeds on fear of the unknown, so try a common sense approach to take away as many of these from the equation as possible. A few weeks before school starts, consider doing the following:

Talk to your child about what they’re going to be doing in the upcoming school year. If your child is starting school for the first time, see if there’s a kindergarten orientation or a way to meet their teacher before school begins.

Whether they’re starting a new elementary school or going back to the same one, go explore it with your child. Review where their class will be, visit the cafeteria, the library or the art room. Take them to the playground (with a friend who’ll be going to their school, if possible) to help them get adjusted and feel comfortable at the school.

Give your child a “preview” of the new faces and places they’ll be seeing. This can help to “right size” the school in your child’s mind and take the fear and mystery out of it.

Many schools post their school itineraries online so parents can review what their children will be learning, what activities they’ll engage in, and what fun things they may do during the year. Use this information to get your child excited about school.

Talk about your own school days, the fun activities you loved, and what made your school experience special. Kids love to hear stories from their parents’ childhood because it helps normalize any difficult feelings they are experiencing (as an added benefit, I’ve found that these talks with my own children have become a springboard for them to ask questions about their own hopes and fears concerning school).


“But Who Will I Play with at Recess?”

Many kids, even those aged 7 and younger, initially experience anxiety over how they will handle social situations in the new school year. They may worry that they won’t have anyone to eat lunch with or play with at recess, or they might be afraid - and rightfully so - of last year’s class bully. Try the following tips to help your child feel comfortable in social settings at school:

If your child hasn’t seen school friends over the summer, it isn’t too late to invite them over to help your child get re-acquainted with them and excited for school. Visits to the park, pool, or movies with old friends - and new ones, too - can make your child feel more comfortable when they encounter their peers at school.

Try doing some role plays with your child to help ease their fears. For example, if you discover that your child is afraid of riding the school bus, set up an area in the house and do a “pretend” ride to school. Take turns being the bus driver, your child, or his or her classmates. Come up with ideas together to make riding the bus a less scary prospect.

If your child was in school last year, talk to them about any social situations that caused them stress. Reviewing strategies on how to handle bullies or other negative social situations can relieve the tension your child may have prior to school beginning. Remind them of their options when another child is bullying them.

For example, they can walk away from the situation, inform the teacher, or yell loudly, “Stop it, I don’t like that!” (and as a parent, don’t forget to talk with your child’s teacher about any classroom policies they might have regarding bullying).

If your child bullied others or acted out in the classroom, set up some guidelines for what you expect of him or her socially this year, along with consequences of what will happen if he does not comply. Equally important, create a list of possible rewards for improved behavior. Remind your child that this is a new year and express your confidence that he or she will behave better now that they’re a year older.

If Your Child’s Anxiety Persists

It’s not uncommon to do all the right things and still have a young child who will have a bad case of the nerves - or even more extreme anxiety - before they begin the school year. Many kids will report physical symptoms such as a stomach or head ache. Others will regress to earlier behaviors, including thumb sucking or wetting the bed, while other kids may act out aggressively, fighting a lot with siblings, or talking back to their parents.

Keep in mind that the age of your child offers no reassurance that they will experience less anxiety. Whether you have a tender-hearted preschooler beginning school for the first time, or an outgoing child entering first grade, each may experience nervousness and stress at the beginning of school. Here are some ways you can talk to your child to help reduce their fears:

Know that a child starting pre-school for the first time may experience more anxiety than an older child. In simple terms, tell them that everyone will be new - and is feeling the same way they are!

Promise your little one a special surprise after their first day. This can include a small toy, a new book, or special time with a parent. To normalize your child’s feelings, remind them that everyone, including other students and even their teacher, feels a little nervous on their first day - or even throughout their first week - of school. If you can, talk about your own experiences of being scared about school and what your fears were when you were young.

Allow your kids to talk about their fears and give them reassurance that this is normal. With some kids, you may have to probe a little: Are they afraid they won’t get a nice teacher? Are they nervous about not having any friends? Does the school work scare them? Whatever it is, continue to emphasize that all children have these fears and they are not alone.

Try coaching your child in problem solving. For instance, if they’re afraid to ask the teacher questions, do role plays together on how to speak up in class. For shy children, you can also practice the art of social skills together: role play introducing yourself to peers, sharing, and using words (instead of hitting, grabbing or pinching) when you interact with others.

If your child is scared of school work, talk about ways you will help them when they get home. Let them know how they can work on areas that they struggle with (like reading out loud or spelling) and ask, “What would be helpful for you when it comes to spelling?”

If the first couple of months of school pass and your child still exhibits signs of difficulty adjusting, begin by talking with his or her teacher to see if there are things you can do together to ease their anxiety. If it still persists, talk to your pediatrician about what your options are.

I also advise parents to make the first week of school a special event for your family. If both parents work outside the home, consider adjusting your work schedule for that first week (if at all possible) to make your child’s transition smoother.

Research shows that the first week of school is really tough for kids, no matter the age. Younger kids going through a lot of new and challenging experiences need to feel secure at the beginning of the school year to help them adjust appropriately for the rest of the year. It would be a good idea for a parent or trusted caregiver to be home after school during the first week to talk with your child, but this may not always be possible.If not, set aside a time in the evenings to discuss how your child’s day went and to listen to any concerns.

Other ways to celebrate the first week include having family meals together, making your kids’ favorite foods for dinner, packing special notes in their lunch, or going out together as a family for ice cream after dinner.

Going to school offers a wide range of emotions for parents as well as children. Whether it’s dread or excitement, fear or euphoria, all of these feelings can be bottled up inside our kids. Remember that any one symptom of distress does not cement a child’s fate or mean that their school year will be a failure.

All kids, at some point in their academic career, will struggle, so try hard not to view their setbacks or anxiety as a permanent threat to their school career. Every year that your child goes through school will be filled with highs and lows, good moments and devastating ones. However, through encouragement, support and keeping your finger on the pulse of you child’s emotions, you are laying the groundwork for their future success in school.

Young Kids and Back to School Anxiety: How to Shrink it Down to Size is reprinted with permission from Empowering Parents.



About the Author

EmpoweringParents

Dr. Joan Simeo Munson earned her Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from the University of Denver. She has worked with incarcerated individuals, families, adolescents, and college students in a variety of settings, including county and city jails, community mental health centers, university counseling centers, and hospitals. She also has a background in individual, group, and couples counseling. Dr. Munson lives in the Boulder area with her husband and three energetic children, ages 14, 11, and 9.