Practicing Adulthood in High School

  When we think of what we learn in high school, our minds probably go first to history, math, science, some electives–you know, the basics. There’s more to it than that though. High school is a time when we learn a lot of other intangible skills and those can be valuable parts of high school graduation. 

In my role as a school counselor, I think of the big picture of my students. It’s important that they learn the ins and outs of those basic subject areas, but I think it’s equally important for them to learn how to be effective adults. I tell my students that my goal for them is to walk out of our school’s doors on graduation day prepared to function like an adult. So, I encourage them to utilize opportunities they encounter in high school to practice adult skills.

A common example of this is self-advocacy. Let’s say a student got sick and missed a few days of school. The day they get back a teacher makes them take a test without considering some important concepts covered on the test were delivered via a lecture while the student was absent. So, the student doesn’t do well on the test.

All too often, a situation like this results in a phone call or an email to me from the student’s parent, and that’s simply a wasted opportunity. What would be better, is for the student to practice sticking up for themselves. Before getting parents involved, I would coach and encourage the student to speak to the teacher first. I might say, “I want you to find a moment to speak to Mr. Smith when he can focus on you. Maybe try to catch him before or after school and not in the last three minutes of class when he probably has a lot going on. Respectfully explain that you don’t think you were prepared for the test because you were absent when half of that stuff was taught and see if he has a reasonable solution for you.”

In most situations, a rational teacher is going to be supportive here, and the student gets the chance to practice acting like an adult. Complaining to mom and making her do the dirty work or just turning a half-finished test into Mr. Smith and declaring, “This is BS, you didn’t teach me anything on here,” while he has a line of three other students trying to ask him something does nothing.

Many parents are great at finding situations where their children can practice being adults, but not all are. A parent can always be there to back up their student if their effort doesn’t work out, but they’d do well to let their student practice first. When your child complains to you about a problem they are having in school, seek a way for them to try to solve it first.

Changes in Circumstance and FAFSA

            In the fall of senior year, the family of college-bound seniors are asked to complete the FAFSA or Free Application for Federal Student Aid. The FAFSA opens for the following school year on October 1st and uses the prior year’s tax return as the information source in making determinations about financial need. So, a student who plans to graduate high school in 2023 and enter college in the Fall of 2023 should complete their FAFSA as soon as possible after October 1, 2022 and will use their tax return from 2021 to do that.

            A lot can happen in a given year though up to October when the FAFSA is completed. What happens if your life is disrupted in some way that will make your financial situation very different in the 23-24 school year than it was in 2021?

            The people who work in a college’s financial aid office aren’t cold and heartless. They understand the ebbs and flows of life and families, so the key is here is to communicate. There’s no limit to the number of things that could happen to a family. A family business could burn down, A parent could have to leave their job to take care of a terminally sick child, a parent could walk out on their family, a parent could pass away–as as example though, let’s just say the primary bread winner of a family lost their job and has been unable to find work. What used to be a family that did just fine, now struggles to make ends meet. 

            So here is what needs to happen: Go ahead and complete the FAFSA as soon as possible after October 1 with your prior year’s tax return. At this point, few students will already know which college they are actually going to, so you’ll send the FAFSA to all the schools you are applying to. If the student is applying to colleges in the fall (they should be) they should start receiving admission decisions in late fall, into winter and spring. The schools that accept the student will soon follow up with financial aid packages. This is the fruit that grows from the FAFSA seed and what your target is. As soon as the student has made their firm decision on the college they plan to attend, whether they have already received their financial aid package or not, it’s time to call the financial aid office at that school.

            “Hi, my child has been admitted and will be joining you in the fall. We completed the FAFSA, but I’m afraid our life has taken a turn that has significantly changed our finances. Can we talk about this?” A financial aid officer will hear your story. They will likely ask for some form of proof, so don’t be offended if they want to see some documents like divorce papers or death certificates. Ultimately, what they CAN do (they are not obligated to do anything, but again, they are humans) is issue what is called a Professional Judgement. Basically, they can manually adjust your FAFSA or financial aid package and increase the amount of aid offered to you. 

Students must re-do their FAFSA every year, so whatever your change in circumstance is, that should be reflected when you file your taxes again the following year and all will be well. Whatever the case, just remember that a little communication with actual people goes a long way.         

Resolving Conflit With the SEAL Technique

In high school nearly all teens face significant conflict. This conflict can happen with many people and forms of relationships in the teen’s life….parents, teachers, siblings, boyfriends, girlfriends, best friends, and enemies. What’s certain is that it will happen and teens will do well to be equipped with the tools required to deal with that conflict. Those tools must be learned, so let’s examine a technique here.

This technique is called SEAL and I am shamelessly stealing it from self-help author Rosalind Wiseman. Her work was the inspiration for the movie Mean Girls and I personally think she is amazing. She specializes in adolescence and her insight into the teen psyche is spot on. If you’re a parent of a teen, check out her books.

 Anyway, what is SEAL? This concept works with the notion that the best way to solve a conflict is to communicate and talk about the nature of the conflict. Let’s take one letter of the acronym at a time. S is for stop and set-up. Take a moment to think about the root of the problem and then consider the best situation to have “the talk”. That might be best with both parties have something else they can focus some attention on, like playing a video game together, meal prep, or even walking together.

E is for explain. It might seem obvious to you, but it is important to fully give the party insight into your perception of the conflict. If they’ve mistreated you, give them instances of the mistreatment and some insight into how that made you feel. 

A is for affirm and acknowledge. Affirm that you have a right to resolution or to be treated better than you were, then acknowledge anything you might have done to contribute to the conflict. This step goes a long way towards giving you credibility in being a part of a solution.

Finally, L is for lock. This could mean to lock in the relationship for a longer term, or it could mean to lock out the relationship for some period of time. Either way, this step provides the desired resolution. This is where you state the direction you want the relationship to take.

Now, it’s important to note that you can do all of this in “regular” teenage words and vernacular so here is how the conversation might look.

(S) Okay, we’re playing video games now, here is my chance to bring this up where I don’t have to make eye contact the whole time and we can both just stare at the screen. 

 (E) “Hey, what was up with you joining in when those guys were making fun of my shoes the other day? You’ve done stuff like that before and it’s not cool. I can’t help that my family doesn’t have as much money as you guys do and when you do that, it really makes me feel like crap.”

 Him: “Whatever dude. I’m sorry.”

 (A) “Just don’t do it that anymore. If we’re really friends, you can try to change the subject or something when people are dissing me instead of piling on.”

 Him: –just stays quiet and keeps playing video games. 

You’re probably not going to get a flowery emotional apology. But, laying everything out on the table is going to be impactful. Your words might even have to sink in a little later. The last step is closure and decided the direction you want the relationship to move forward in. In this case, let’s say you still want to be friends. 

 (L) “Just think about it, man. Anyway, do you want to go to Chik-Fil-A before the game on Friday?”

 You’re suggesting future plans which solidifies a future for the relationship.

 The SEAL technique is a great format a teen can use to undertake the awkward process of resolving conflict. That’s inevitable, so take a few minutes to think about how you could have used SEAL on past conflicts and that can be good practice for the future. 

Starting The College Application Process

 There’s an old saying that’s something like, “a journey of a 1000 miles begins with a single step.” To many, starting the college application process can seem like you're embarking on a 1000 mile journey. The task is big and there are many elements to prepare for, but it’s not so bad if you break it down to that first step.

The college admission process is intimidating. It’s not something most people do often. Many parents of college-bound students never went to college themselves or if they did, the admissions process has likely evolved significantly. Also, there are a lot of moving parts. You have to meet deadlines, you have to get your high school transcript there, you have to get your standardized test scores there, you have to write an essay or statement that’s basically going to define you–and then what about financial aid, and housing, and choosing a major. And what’s the difference in early decision and early admission? Should I apply for summer? I heard it’s easier to get in. Should I apply through the common app or on the school’s own application on their website? Maybe I should start at a community college. Wait, I can get in-state tuition from an out of state school? Oh no, I’m still in high school and have an economics test tomorrow I forgot to study for. Wait, this school is requiring me to complete the CSS Profile By Friday. What the heck even is that? AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Stop. Breath. I think the runaway train of thoughts above is how too many people approach the process, but you can’t look at it this way. Your head really will explode. I talk to parents and students all the time who are so intimidated by the process because they look at all these pieces as a whole. As a result, they can’t figure out how to dive in and they languish in starting the process. 

A better approach would be to focus on that very first step in the journey. Colleges and universities know the process is challenging and it’s one that few people have a lot of experience with. So, I think colleges do a really good job of walking applicants through the process. You don’t have to answer all those questions above when you start the journey and you don’t have to complete the journey in one sitting. (Well, you probably should plan not to which means you do need to be aware of deadlines. Starting your application at 11:35pm when it’s due at midnight is a terrible idea). 

I tell my students, that just about every college has a big button on the landing page of their website that says “Apply Here”. That very first step simply begins with clicking that button. You should very shortly see a box that says “First Name” and I fully believe it is best practice to type your first name into that box. Keep going one step at a time in this way, and you’ll soon find that you’ve made real progress in the application. Just as it tells you where to type your first name, it will tell you when it’s time to make some more difficult decisions. Just take those as they come, save your progress and consult about things with parents or high school counselors if you need to, and then move along with whatever makes the most sense for the situation. Keep taking one step at a time and you’ll be 1000 miles down the road before you know it.

What is Grade Inflation

       Much has been in the news of late concerning economic inflation. In simplest terms, this means that prices for the things we buy are increasing. However, this is not the only type of inflation a family with a soon-to-be college student should be concerned about. There’s also such a thing as grade inflation.

After a round of admission decisions was released at a coveted university near my high school this spring, an in-the-know parent inquired as to why we’re not able to get more students who seemingly work harder and harder and churn out better grades and test scores than in years prior into that school. The answer? Grade inflation.

This is a very similar concept to economic inflation where something that used to cost $1 now cost $2. While it used to take a 1250 SAT score and 3.75 GPA to get into the school referenced above, I feel like a student really needs around a 1350 score and a 3.9 GPA now. This is all simply due to the fact that when it comes to college admissions, students are very much in competition with each other and that competition inevitably brings a raising of a bar. The repercussions of this grade inflation are far-reaching.

At the student level, it means that students have to perform better in more difficult classes. If they really want to get into that college of their dreams, they may well have to spend more time doing homework and standardized test prep. Indeed testing is where grade inflation might be most pronounced.

It might be easy to argue here that this is exactly why colleges are starting to move away from testing, but I fear we could see the opposite effect. Before standardized testing was a thing, college admissions were based mostly on grades as well as how well a student could bolster their resume. Unfortunately, that bolstering often served as an indicator of one’s background and financial means and this is what often decided whether a student was admitted or not. Standardized testing was introduced as a way to mitigate this effect. 

Grade inflation is a problem when it comes to test scores. All students can’t make a perfect SAT score, but I’m not sure that moving away from them all together is the answer as this will force students to do more to build those resumes. That’s probably easier to do for more advantaged students and we could end up back where we were nearly 100 years ago before the advent of standardized testing. Perhaps a re-calibration of standardized test scores is a potential solution. 

Anyway, for now, many colleges are still requiring test scores. Those seem to inch up every year as do GPAs, the rigor of courses students select, and the quality of their involvement in all sorts of things outside of the classroom. This means today’s students must work harder than yesterday’s, and they’ll have to work even harder tomorrow. 

Understanding the Modern Student

         I’ve started to notice a slight uptick in the level of frustration parents and some veteran teachers have towards their students. So, I’ve spent some time dwelling on the cause of this and believe much of the divide might be in the lack of understanding of what makes the modern student tick. I think it’s worth taking some time to discuss the evolving learning style of today’s high school student.

As I write this in 2022, I can say that parents of most current high school students came into their own right alongside the internet. I graduated high school in 1997 and can probably put myself in this category. I remember well the ridiculous sound of my dial-up modem I used to check my primitive email. I don’t think I probably used the internet at all for research in high school, but by the time I graduated college I was pretty good at it. I certainly didn’t have a computer in my pocket at all times during my formative years, so in some ways I think I got the best of the old school and new school.

Today’s high school student has literary had the world’s collective knowledge at their fingertips since pre-school. They know they can access whatever they need to know at any given time. They can just “google it”, right? But, that ubiquitous verb didn’t exist during the formative years of other generations. We had to know things. We hoarded information because we knew that if and when we needed it, we’d have to already have it.

Not so anymore. The modern student keeps a tidy information bank. Remember when you used to go on a trip and you’d print out maps or write out directions before you left? Ha! Now, we just figure out when we get there with our phone. We just don’t need to know as much already as we used to.

The modern student knows this and so the line our parents and teachers used to feed us “you might need to know this one day,” falls flat. The only thing they have an interest in is, “you will need to know this one day.”

I think there is a middle ground here. The modern student and their predecessors will both do well to understand each other. Today’s high school students should understand that the more they know, the more enlightened they are and the clearer the world’s intertwined concepts will become. Older generations should recognize too though, that the modern student is kind of right. They don’t need to know as much as we did. Before they take off on that trip, they’ll be fine if their dad never taught them how to change a flat tire. There are thousands of other dads with instructional videos on the internet they can watch if and when they get a flat. 

From the educator standpoint, we need to work at finding this balance and make sure we draw connections between what we teach and its practicality. We have to say, “you need to know this because…” Students must understand that you can’t google everything on-demand, in the moment, and learning how the world works just means you’re not going to be an idiot as an adult. If students and educators can find some middle ground here, we’ll both get a little farther down the road.

Electives vs. Rigorous Courses

         It is my belief that the primary purpose of high school in America is to give us all a foundation of understanding as to how the world works. By the time we graduate, we should know how to read and write, how to figure out some mathematical problems, we should have a basic understanding of a variety of sciences, and be in position to form educated decisions on a variety of the social studies. In our educational system, it is the job of post-secondary institutions to build on top of that foundation and provide a skill that can be translated into a meaningful career. 

            Furthermore, within the American educational system that has evolved, we spend an incredible amount of time at the high school level strategizing for what comes next. As the college admissions process grows increasingly competitive, families hone in on maximizing every possible advantage they can conjure and for too many, high school has shifted from a place to learn and into a place to audition for the university of their choice. What is the cost of that? 

            If high school is our opportunity to learn about the world, there is so much more to it than language arts, math, science, and social studies. High school electives are an opportunity to learn about the other things the world offers. Some electives can provide extremely valuable insight into facets of adult lives that parents don’t often do well in teaching their children. Others have the potential to spark interest in areas that can lead to lifelong fulfilling careers. 

            My concern is that in our pursuit of college admissions, we have strayed too far from the idea that high school can do more for us than teach us the basics. An intense focus on college admissions might prevent a student from taking an elective that intrigues them, for whatever reason, in favor of a more academically rigorous course that will be more appealing to the university. For example, a student might choose to take AP European History instead of art even though they’ve demonstrated considerable talent as an untrained artist. I believe European History is an important subject but which subject stands to best further the development of this individual?

            I believe college admissions is extremely important. I’ve done as much hyper-focusing on that at the cost of other options as anyone. I don’t always feel good about it though, especially when I’ve felt like I’ve steered a student away from a class that might have been a good fit for them even though another course made more sense for the college admissions strategy.

            I think the key here is balance. We can still take all those rigorous classes, but we shouldn’t always shy away from taking a class we just want to take because we just want to take it. Maybe this means being creative and figuring out how to take an additional class so we can do both. Whatever the case, I think it’s okay to indulge and let yourself learn something you want to learn. Perhaps, if you take time to explain that to the college you’re interested in, they’ll even be okay with that.