Step Into My Sessions: Help Students Name—and Navigate—Back-to-School Emotions

Returning to school is often filled with LOTS of feelings.

Heading back to school is one of the biggest annual transitions our students face. 📚

New classrooms, new teachers, new expectations—and all the social dynamics that come with them. Even students who seem ready can experience a swirl of emotions under the surface. 😳💫 It’s a time of excitement, uncertainty, and adjustment, which makes it the perfect moment to pause and support students in identifying how they’re feeling.

That’s where SocialScales: Making Social Learning Visible can help—by making emotions and internal states visible, concrete, and easier to talk about.

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​My go-to back-to-school SocialScale activity

Here’s a favorite activity I used during back-to-school time last year—perfect for those first sessions as students get used to working with us (especially if we’re new to them) and with each other.

I pulled up a SocialScale, and together we word-smithed the continuum until everyone was happy with how it was phrased. Then each student took a moment to consider their thoughts and feelings about returning to school and placed themselves on the scale. 🤔💭

Two students placed themselves at different points on the SocialScale—an important reminder that it’s completely normal to feel ambivalent about big (or even small) changes in our lives. We can hold contrasting feelings at the same time, and move back and forth between them.

Over the next few weeks, we revisited this SocialScale, checking in on how the five boys were feeling. Each time, it sparked thoughtful conversations, plenty of laughter, and helped us ease into our sessions feeling connected and ready to work. 😊

If you’ve purchased SocialScales: Making Social Learning Visible, you’re warmly invited to this month’s Office Hours! We’ll be focusing on how clinicians are using the scales—sharing ideas, asking questions, and exploring creative ways to adapt them for individual students. I hope you’ll join the conversation!

I hope your school year is off to a strong start. 🏫

Happy learning!