How Can Secondary Teachers Have a Successful Back-to-School Season?

Back-to-school season has officially arrived. Store aisles are lined with binders and pencils, welcome emails are hitting inboxes, and first-day jitters are everywhere.

I don’t know about you, but I find this season equal parts exciting and scary. The fresh slate of a new school year is a relief, and as the years have gone by, I’ve grown more confident in my teaching skills and my ability to create a positive learning environment for my high school students. On the other hand, every new school year comes with its unique struggles, surprises, and stressors. Planning for the first days of school can be intimidating, especially when you’re preparing to welcome a new group of teenage personalities into your classroom!

In an effort to calm the chaos and give myself AND my students the best chance at a successful start to the school year, I’ve developed some key back-to-school strategies that guide my decisions. Read on for three teacher-tested tips!

1. Start with structure.

The first few days of a school year often look a lot different than all of the days that follow — and for good reason! It’s important to go over the syllabus, review classroom expectations, and get to know each other. However, when these things are done in a way that is completely different from your typical classroom routine, it can make the adjustment period harder. Think about it from a student’s point of view: you spend the first two days of school listening passively to a syllabus presentation and doing a few team-building ice-breakers or textbook scavenger hunts. Then, just when you’ve started to settle into that routine, you walk into that same classroom on day 3 and are suddenly expected to work on a bell-ringer, participate in a guided lesson, and finish up with an exit ticket. It’s a complete mental shift, and it can lead to unnecessary confusion for students and preventable classroom management challenges for teachers.

So, what can you do instead?

Consider how you’d like your classroom routine to look 95% of the school year. Will there be a do-now task on the board when students enter? Will Tuesdays be devoted to grammar practice or Wednesdays to science labs? Will breaks occur at regular intervals? Will students be asked to complete a “ticket out the door” at the end of the period?

Once you’ve gotten an outline figured out, find ways to slot those “back-to-school” activities into that schedule. Maybe the “do-now” on day one is creating a name tag with fun facts in each corner. Perhaps Tuesday’s grammar activity involves correcting errors in an “about the teacher” letter, and your midway-through-class movement break is a four corners ice-breaker. Maybe that “ticket out the door” is a syllabus comprehension check. You don’t have to pile on the content from the start (in fact, I recommend that you don’t!), but keeping a consistent routine from the very beginning can set you and your students up for success.

2. Create a community.

While reading that last section, you may have caught my recommendation to NOT focus on content during the first few days of school. Why? Because classroom community is one of the keys to a smooth back-to-school season, and focusing on that piece early on will make it much easier to jump into content later.

We’ve all heard about how important it is to build rapport, and that is certainly true. However, it is often easier said than done. Many elements — such as clear expectations, shared goals, and personal connections — go into successful rapport-building, and intentionally bringing those elements into your classroom from the start matters.

Let’s start with clear expectations. Have you ever gone into a situation and not known the social norms? It’s stressful, and it makes it difficult to connect with others. To prevent this issue in the classroom, talk about expectations during the first days of school. Co-creating norms with students can be particularly powerful, and having an “umbrella” under which those norms will fall helps jump start that conversation. In my classroom, we use “respect, responsibility, and safety” as our “umbrella” norms. If you want to borrow that strategy, here’s a great set of resources to get you started!

Shared goals help strengthen community and build a foundation for teamwork. Try making a list of goals for the year alongside your students. To avoid overwhelm, I’d suggest no more than three. Even simple goals like “create space for learning” or “ask questions before making assumptions” can work to build a sense of collective responsibility. As the year progresses, you and your students can evaluate how you’re doing and rework goals as needed.

Finally, personal connections are vital to a healthy classroom community. Ice-breaker activities (not the boring, painful, awkward kind) can support you in forming those bonds. For ice-breakers that won’t induce eye-rolls, check out our team-based trivia activity, this or that game, and personality inventory.

3. Build your boundaries.

My last — and perhaps most important — piece of advice? Create professional boundaries, and protect them throughout the school year. For me, that means my work laptop stays closed outside of contract hours, and my school email is not linked to my phone. I have found that safeguarding my personal time allows me to come to work refreshed, focused, and prepared to be my best self. These boundaries are important all year, but even more so in the beginning. In the midst of the back-to-school chaos, having time to truly unwind and disconnect makes a huge difference.

Your boundaries might not be the same as mine. Maybe you feel better having access to your work email on your phone…but maybe this year, you stop checking it after 6pm. Maybe lesson planning on Sundays helps you feel ready for the week…but maybe you limit it to two hours of work, tops. If you struggle to unwind, try some strategies from our FREE self-care sunshine resource! Find what works for you, and stick to it! Your future self will thank you, and so will your students.

No matter what this school year brings, I am wishing you lots of luck and lots of learning! You’ve got this, teacher friend.