I am entering my twenty-first year as an educator, most years in high school, specifically in grade nine. Freshmen are my favorite group to teach. They have the perfect combination of silliness, dedication, and naivety. At the beginning of the year, they are overwhelmed by the size of the school and their classmates. By the end of the year, they have established themselves as hard-working, confident students. I love being a piece of this transformation, knowing that all of the blood, sweat, and tears I pour into these young adults is always worth it. 

Each year, as I hand out schedules and attempt to quiet nerves, I have always assured my freshmen that “by the end of next week, you will feel like you have been here forever.”

However, I need to offer a full apology and retract those statements. As a ninth-grade English teacher raising her ninth-grade son, I am becoming beyond aware of how hard the transition from middle to high school truly is on students. 

I assumed there was no considerable difference between middle and high school. While students were no longer part of a middle school team, they were accustomed to changing classes and keeping track of assignments for various teachers. However, that is far from the case. 

My son is well-adjusted and athletic, has great friends, and makes the honor roll. At the end of eighth grade, his teachers nominated him for a “Distinguished Student” award. My husband and I joke about this, wondering how two huge nerds produced effortlessly cool offspring. (I was editor of the school newspaper and performed in the Rocky Horror Picture Show. He played Dungeons and Dragons. The fact that the title of this post is a reference to a Barenaked Ladies song is a testament to my nerddome.)  I naively assumed Michael would breeze into high school like it was no big deal. He has excellent academic and social skills and a mom who’s taught freshmen for over twenty years!

The night before the first day of school, Michael was fine. A few days prior, we had cleaned and filled his backpack with fresh school supplies. We’d attended the Chromebook swap, so he had a new computer. Most importantly, he had brand-new sneakers. He was ready!

When we arrived home after our first days, he insisted the day had been “fine” but didn’t elaborate. Little by little, tidbits came out: “When we were walking in, there were a lot of upperclassmen hanging around, kind of watching us with a ‘Get a load of these guys’ vibe. I’m lucky I’m tall. They assumed I was just a new kid.” The observations became more profound over the next few hours, revealing Michael’s overwhelming reaction to the first day. “Mom, my first period, I went to art. The teacher sat me next to a grown-ass man. Mom, this kid had a beard. They sat me next to a grown-ass man!” Even though I’d told him he’d have upperclassmen in his electives, it didn’t hit him until he shared a table with a student old enough to participate in the upcoming presidential election.

The observations came out in small bursts:

“I’m so tired, and we haven’t even started doing work yet.”

“I feel like I’m always forgetting something.”

“Now I know why Napoleon Dynamite wanted to go home.”

“I’m just trying not to look like a tourist walking around with my map.”

Over the next few weeks, Michael settled into the high school routine. We are halfway through quarter one. His lowest grade is 89 (in math). He loves his teachers, and they all told us how much they enjoyed having him in class at the open house. He has a routine for setting out clothes and ensuring his materials are ready so we can leave the house on time. He’s doing this while playing baseball three to five times a week. 

After spending the last few weeks helping my child get acclimated to high school, I now know that I will be much gentler with my freshmen students, assuring them that the transition is challenging but they will come out just fine. My experiences at home helped me at school. Weeks into the school year, I check in with my freshmen. Many admit to still feeling overwhelmed and ill-prepared. Today, I commented to my students that they seem much more confident about the work than they did a few weeks ago. When I got home from school, Michael told me that he finally felt like he had high school figured out. Never again will I promise that “By the end of next week, you will feel like you’ve been here forever.: