By Shelby Moquin [email protected] Students deal with a lot stress, from maintaining grades, to extracurriculars, to socializing with friends; high school is a daunting task. Add on top of that, for some reason, you are switching schools. You are faced with the idea of making new friends, meeting new teachers, and just trying to figure out what should be happening in your life.
This happens to kids all over the world and all the time. It can happen for a variety of reasons. One example is children of parents who are serving in the military or some organization that involves a lot of moving around and a constant change of environment. Some other situations that this can happen in are a child’s parents or parent simply decide to move, or a parent has a job shift/relocation. Previous student and sophomore at CCAHS, Grace Sweet, recently moved to Linn-Mar High School. “When I switched schools it was pretty rough. I didn’t get to see my best friends that I have at CCA everyday. I didn’t know where anything was [at the new school], the school is much bigger than CCA, and I didn’t have any friends which made everything even more overwhelming,” said Sweet. This happening when a child is in younger grades such as elementary school or preschool won’t leave detrimental effects. But for students that are older such as middle school and above, might show some side-effects from the change. They might show withdrawal from peers, not talking as much, not participating in class, dropping grades or missing classwork. Or some students might be the complete opposite. Some might demonstrate large amounts of anger and violence such as disruptive classroom behaviour or episodes of spontaneous rage. These may be directed to their peers at the new school, teachers, or parents. “But after a few weeks of adjusting, finding out where my classes were, and making more amazing friends, everything started to piece together and it became much easier than I thought it would be.” Keep in mind, these won’t exactly happen the way they are described. Sometimes kids adjust quickly and have no problem adapting to new environments. But switching schools can be a big shift for anyone. It’s always important to recognize what you’re feeling if you changed schools and talk to someone for advice. “The one thing I enjoyed the most about switching schools was making new friends. I had people to sit at lunch with, people to show me where my classes were, and people [to] show me where everything was. The past three months [though rough] have been an amazing experience, and I’m glad I switched schools.”
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