Keeping Calm, Cool and Collected as the New School Year Approaches

As summer comes to a close, students and parents are shifting gears and contemplating the year ahead, with the new challenges and opportunities that await. Some students are stepping up to more advanced classes and an elevated workload, while others may be starting at a new school. Some students are primarily excited for the new year to begin, while others feel a level of trepidation, asking themselves, “Am I up for the challenges of this coming year?”

When the stakes are higher, it is not unusual for students to have more concern about their academic performance. Rising juniors are facing the most intense academic year to date, and the final full year that will inform their college applications. College sophomores on a pre-med track taking organic chemistry may feel increased pressure, knowing that their performance could impact their medical school applications. While some stress is completely natural and can lead to effective planning and problem solving, too much stress can shift into anxiety and negatively impact students.

Challenge vs. Threat

The essential calculus that students make when evaluating changing conditions is whether the new grade level or school, the more advanced class, the tougher teacher, the bigger courseload is a challenge or a threat.

If the student can perceive the elevated demands as a challenge, that will help them marshal their resources, recruit necessary support, and be strategic and reflective as they work to rise to the occasion. Challenges are good and necessary. They are the engine for growth.

If, on the other hand, the student perceives the new academic context as a threat, with the power to harm them, many negative consequences follow. Students will waste more time contemplating negative outcomes, pursuing off-task behavior. The imagined negative outcomes may be heavily emotionally charged and hard to ignore, stealing energy from more productive tasks and preparation. With a threat looming, students become less effective, less strategic, and more distracted from their goals. They shift resources away from the thing they want to achieve and dedicate more energy to avoiding negative outcomes.

Success Approach vs. Failure Avoidant

Psychologically, we do better when we are working towards a positive outcome, rather than trying to avoid a negative outcome. “I don’t want to fail” is a much less effective motivator than “I want to succeed.” The valence matters.

Students are always better off working towards a positive outcome, imagining and trying to bring about a positive desired state, rather than trying to avoid a negative, undesirable state. You can help students catch themselves if they are channeling energies towards avoidance and help them redirect their attention towards a positive approach.

A strength-based focus

When students are leveling up and taking on a more advanced course load, it’s helpful for them to focus on previous successes, examples of where they were able to rise to challenges. This is especially helpful if students are expressing anxiety about succeeding in the more challenging context. You can ask your student: When have you faced challenges and risen to the occasion? What strategies did you employ? What, from that experience, can you bring to this new experience?

Helping students attend to the specific behaviors which informed prior successes can increase their self-belief that they are ready to handle the present challenges. By noting the evidence of their past problem-solving ability, students learn to better trust themselves to face future challenges. This enhances self-efficacy beliefs, which has been shown to decrease anxiety and improve performance.

Contingency planning

Students who are facing the uncertainty of new challenging classes are wise to line up supplemental resources in the event they need them. What resources are provided by the school? Is there a teacher’s assistant who can help? When are office hours? What online resources are available if a student needs to supplement what they are learning in the classroom? Students who have a backup plan in place are better off than those who do not.

Good modeling helps: Be a “non-anxious presence” for your kids

Consciously or subconsciously, your kids look to you to help inform their beliefs about school, academic success, and failure. Parents who are anxious and nervous about their children’s academic performance can have a negative impact upon their student’s academic performance and self-beliefs.

Parents who are more centered and supportive can help raise more resilient kids. Carol Dweck has researched how parental response to failure informs student mindset. Parents who view failure as debilitating teach their children to fear failure and avoid it at all costs. Fearing failure and desperately working to avoid it can impact student’s academic choices and impair healthy risk-taking, growth, and success in school and beyond.

Psychologist Bill Stixrud on the Full PreFrontal podcast speaks to the value of becoming a “non-anxious presence” for your family. While parents are naturally hardwired to want to protect their children, we have to be careful that we don’t let our own fears and anxieties get in the way of allowing our children to take the essential risks and make the necessary mistakes to build their character, inner strength, and resilience. When we do our inner work and learn to better regulate our fears and anxieties, becoming a “non-anxious” (or at least a “less anxious”) presence, we give our children a tremendous gift.

Teaching your kids anxiety reduction strategies

Talk to your kids about helpful ways you’ve found to decrease stress and anxiety. What strategies were effective for you? What strategies were ineffective? Teach them about your experiences of managing stressful conditions at various points in your life—the good and the bad.

Finding a recipe for stress-reduction is a very personal thing. Some people thrive with regular exercise, while others do well with meditation, breathwork, or mindfulness practice. There is no single intervention for every student, but the conversation about self-care is an important step to begin teaching students how to think about the adaptive and maladaptive ways to manage stress.

Keeping context

We all have to learn to trust that there is a path forward for every student. Not every student is capable of achieving an unweighted 4.0 GPA. Maybe that’s the price of getting into a highly selective university, but that doesn’t mean that every student is a good fit for that rigorous of a school. Allowing students to learn and make mistakes as they develop is better than creating a high-stress environment where performance matters above all else.

Putting students into a pressure-cooker environment is not good for them now or later. There are so many good colleges out there, and the overwhelming majority take students who get Bs and a full range of grades. We need to let go of the perfect and allow our students to develop on their timelines.

Put development over outcome and work on building a healthy, resilient, adaptive young person, rather than chasing a particular prize. We can help our kids keep things in context and know they have many, many steps on their journey. There will be ups and downs, challenges, even failures, but if they always focus on growing and learning and responding to the present moment, it will be a better journey.

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