How’s High School Going? What Students in Every Grade Want Their Parents to Know
The first writing prompt of the year usually gets me a lot of sighs and one-word answers. So this year I tried something simpler. I asked my students to write, in class, on a plain piece of paper: If you’re in high school, what grade are you in, and tell me how it’s going for you.
I expected a paragraph at most. Instead, most of them filled the page and asked for another. A few folded their paper in half when they finished and sat there looking at the ceiling. One girl wrote a list. One boy wrote the same sentence over and over with different punctuation. The responses weren’t about grades, assignments, or college applications. They were about how it feels to be a certain age in a certain building.
After I read all of them, I noticed something: the answers grouped themselves by grade. Freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors are not just at different points in school. They are in entirely different emotional environments. Here is what they told me, and what I think it means for the adults who live with them.
The freshman essays all had the same shape. They started with the hallways, a list of rooms they got lost looking for, a story about opening the wrong door. One girl wrote about the first week, when she sat in the back of a crowded lunchroom with a slice of pizza she didn’t want to eat, because she was afraid to sit with people she didn’t know. She wasn’t sad about it. She was describing the facts.
What stood out to me was how much they wanted someone to tell them what was normal. They asked questions like, “Is it supposed to feel this fast?” and “Will I know where I’m going eventually?” They didn’t need answers. They needed to know the questions were typical.
For parents, this is a good time to be very literal. Walk them through the morning, the locker situation, how to pack for a six-hour day. Don’t say “you’ll figure it out.” Say “let’s figure it out together.” One student wrote that her dad drove her to school every day for the first month and never said anything about it. She remembered exactly how his car smelled and the order of songs on the radio. She never told him why that mattered. She just needed to be held in place before the day started.
The sophomores wrote the least. Not because they had nothing to say, but because they were tired of saying it. There is a middle to high school that nobody talks about. Freshman year gets the sympathy. Junior year gets the attention. Sophomore year gets a shrug.
One student wrote about a teacher who forgot his name. Another wrote about getting a B- on a test and realizing her parents weren’t going to ask. A boy wrote, “I’m in 10th grade and I honestly don’t know what my parents think I’m doing all day.” That line stayed with me. It didn’t sound angry. It sounded like a question he had been holding for a while.
If your kid is a sophomore, you can ask them direct questions without a lecture attached. Not “how was school” but “who did you sit with at lunch” or “what’s the hardest part of the day that has nothing to do with classes.” They may not answer right away. But the fact that you asked a specific question changes the texture of the silence. One student told me later that her mom started leaving a notebook on the kitchen counter where both of them could write notes. Nothing important. A grocery list, a word they liked, a date they had to remember. It gave them a way to communicate that didn’t require eye contact and did not trigger a fight.
Juniors wrote the longest responses, and the least honest ones at first. They all started with schedule talk. AP classes. SAT dates. The counselor meetings where they were asked about their careers and felt like they were blanking on a pop quiz. Then they got to the real part. One wrote, “I’m not tired the way I’m tired when I stay up late. I’m tired the way I’m tired after I run a race.” Another wrote about crying in the bathroom after a teacher gave a speech about how junior year matters more than any other year.
The anxiety is not always visible. It often looks like irritability, or like spending a long time in the shower, or like suddenly caring about a hobby they used to shrug at. Juniors are trying to build a future out of fragments, and they are doing it in the middle of a real life. They still want to go to the mall on Friday. They also want to be valedictorian.
Parents of juniors can help by separating logistical pressure from emotional pressure. Talk about deadlines. Talk about the schedule. Write down the SAT date in big letters. But don’t say, “This is the year that matters.” They know. They are already drowning in that knowledge. One student said her mother would sit in the kitchen while she studied, doing a crossword puzzle, not talking. The mother never checked on her. She just stayed in the room so that the door never felt like a wall.
Seniors surprised me the most. I expected them to be checked out, counting days until graduation. Instead, they were deeply nostalgic. They wrote about the parking lot, the football games, the teacher who let them nap during homeroom. One boy wrote about the time he dropped his tray in the cafeteria and three seniors helped him clean it up. He had never told anyone about it. He had been holding that memory for three years, and now he was holding it more tightly.
Seniors are in a strange in-between. They love the place they cannot wait to leave. They feel like adults and are treated like children. They are planning to be something else while still being who they are. A lot of them wrote about their parents with more generosity than I expected. One girl wrote, “My mom does not understand me and I love her for trying anyway.”
If you have a senior, the best thing you can do is stop trying to fix the schedule and start being present for the last ordinary moments. Ask them if they want to drive to school with you even on the days they could drive themselves. Offer to make their favorite dinner on a Tuesday. Don’t make every week feel like the “last time” for something. They are already feeling that weight. They don’t need an adult narrating it.
After the assignment, I noticed a change in the classroom. Students started mentioning things they had written. A junior asked me if I ever read the one about the bathroom. I told her I did. She nodded and sat down. That was the whole conversation. Some conversations don’t need to go anywhere.
If you want to know how high school is going for the teenager in your house, you can ask the direct question. You may get a shrug. That is not because they don’t know. It is because the answer is too tangled to speak out loud.
What helped me this year was treating their answers like weather reports. Freshmen are trying to find their way through fog. Sophomores are trying to figure out why it all got quiet. Juniors are standing in the rain waiting for a storm that already hit. Seniors are standing in the sun, wondering why they don’t feel more relieved.
You don’t need to fix any of it. You just need to stay on the line.
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