Throw Back to Back-to-School Advice

For teachers:

Advice for teachers for creating strong school environments from day one: Don’t do it alone.
Senior Lecturer Irvin Scott offers: “Grow together. The work of transforming students’ lives through impactful teaching and learning experiences is too difficult and valuable for educators to do in isolation. ‘Isolation is the enemy of improvement.’ From the classroom to the school to the district, open the doors of your practice and grow together. Children will be the ultimate beneficiaries.”

Once school begins, teachers should go back to doing something that has been proven effective, especially for young students.
“Read aloud every day. It’s a good way to introduce students to academic language, great stories, and diverse characters. The students will get to know each other through their responses to the stories. Who doesn’t like being read a good story!” suggests Senior Lecturer Pamela Mason.

Some simple and hopeful advice for teachers as they start a new year from a famous source:
"Cultivate a culture of adventure. …  I continue to return to this John Dewey quote: ‘All thinking involves a risk. Certainty cannot be guaranteed in advance. The invasion of the unknown is of the nature of an adventure; we cannot be sure in advance.’ I think it’s great guidance for learners of all ages," shares Professor Karen Brennan.

For school leaders:

Put more effort into the back-to-school open house that parents usually find boring and rushed.
From her days working in Boston Public Schools, Professor Karen Mapp remembers one middle school in the district getting creative. They renamed open house to Family Fun Night. There was a jazz band playing in the lobby. The staff rolled out a red carpet for families to walk down as they entered the school, and kids were lined up along the carpet, taking pictures like paparazzi. The photos were later used to create a big family tree in the main hallway. When families branched off later to visit their individual classes, the teachers asked parents and caregivers specifically to talk about their hopes and dreams for their kids. Those answers were eventually posted alongside the family tree. “This night said, ‘We’re going to be a part of a team,’” Mapp says. “By doing this, it says I value your knowledge about your child.”

School leaders concerned about that chronic absenteeism could become a problem for some students should consider using “nudge letters.” 
Chronic absenteeism can be reduced by mailing (via the U.S. Postal Service) monthly personalized letters to families informing them of how often their child is out of school. Letters work best when they are easy-to-read, written in the language spoken in the home, mailed regularly, and inform a family of precisely how many days their child has missed so far that year, as well as how their child compares to others in the school. Why do nudge letters work? Families tend to significantly underestimate how much school their kids have missed, and they have no idea how their child’s attendance compares to others.

Training school bus drivers ahead of the school year can reduce bullying on the bus.
“Research is emerging that suggests that the school bus drivers who have training on bullying and meeting children’s needs, and who feel more integral to school operations are much more comfortable seeking support with and reporting bullying to school personnel and families,” says HGSE alum Sawyer Hogenkamp. “Rates of bullying tend to drop in this situation, even when there isn’t an adult bus monitor to assist drivers. A key recommendation would be to support bus drivers through training on bullying that corresponds with how their schools approach prevention.”

For parents:

For parents whose kids have been reluctant to do their summer reading for school, there’s still time and these tips can help:

• Start small: If 30 minutes seems too much, begin with 10 minutes to build a habit.
• Set a timer: Helps create structure and reduce resistance.
• Join in: Read alongside your child or read the same book separately and discuss it together.
• Encourage choice: Let kids pick what they want to read to boost motivation.
• Use audiobooks: Great for shared experiences without forcing a genre mismatch.
• Talk about reading: Ask questions, share reactions, and model your own thinking.
• Give grace: Not every book will be a hit — that’s okay.
• Leverage resources: Use open educational resources or library programs to supplement learning.
• Discuss difficult topics: If a book is contested or raises questions, use it as an opportunity for open conversation.

If your kid is feeling uncertain about going back to school, or starting school for the first time, pay attention to how they are expressing themselves — it may not be in words.
“I think with both children and adults who are struggling with uncertainty, it can often be very hard to articulate directly and in words what they are feeling,” says Senior Lecturer Junlei Li, who first shared this still relevant advice during the pandemic. “How do children describe feelings about things they don’t know and can’t know? But they definitely have feelings about it. We can learn a lot about how they choose to express feelings in ways that are more suited for them: in drawing, singing, dancing, and playing. I think children will always find ways to tell us how they feel, just not always in a form or language we anticipate. So by creating many different ways and spaces for them to ‘tell’ us, we have more and more opportunity to not just ‘hear,’ but also ‘feel’ their feelings.”

As older students get ready to head back to school, parents can help them rethink what it means to earn community service hours for graduation.
Instead of community service hours being seen as just a mandatory check-list exercise, community service can be meaningful if students spend time — especially with parents — reflecting on the work.

As summer starts to dwindle down, are you thinking your kid hasn’t “done enough”?
As a parent, are you thinking you need to cram more in before school starts? Don’t fret — and don’t look any further than yourself. Research shows that quiet time with family can offer valuable summer learning opportunities.

Downtime is OK!
A Usable Knowledge summer story highlighted that even as back-to-school sales beckon and schools start to remind families of important fall dates, it’s still important for families to let kids “be lazy” with what’s left of summer. That means having downtime, playtime, and family time — every day.