Back to school

A thousand hours of classroom time, hundreds of hours of school runs, sport and extracurricular activities.

For primary-school children, there will 183 early mornings when you need to be organised to Nasa launch level. For secondary-school pupils, 167 mornings of shouting up the stairs: “Time to get up!” Steaming bowls of porridge going cold, frantic searching for lost shoes and phones, last-minute dashes out the door and making it to school before the doors close.

These morning triathlons (breakfast, clothes, schoolbag) are the stuff of Olympic suspense in most families. Somewhere there must also be utterly serene and cheerful households who make it look easy, but we haven’t met them.

Preparing for the first day of school is like packing for a long holiday: is everything on the list ticked? Have we forgotten anything (or anyone)? And, whatever you do, don’t let the dog out on the last-minute flight through the door. Hang on . . . where did I put my car keys? (We should be walking, but we’re late. . .)

The return to school is always a short, sharp shock for those directly involved, but even if you're not a student, parent or teacher, there is a sense of anticipation. That bittersweet back-to-school feeling is in the air along with the scent of sharpened pencils, schoolbooks and crisp stationery. It's the promise of a fresh start, coupled with memories of schooldays. Many adults join in the spirit of good intentions by signing up for evening classes and gym
memberships.

Next week, the sight of children heading to school in their uniforms will bring back memories of crested jumpers and hiked-up skirts, of days when getting dressed was simpler. Although, as fashion designer Heidi Higgins recalls, it can instil a lifelong avoidance of grey.

Teachers are gearing up to get their classes off to a positive start and their influence is immeasurable. Would musician Julie Feeney, interviewed in these pages, have developed her distinctive musical style without the warm yet orderly encouragement of her teacher Mary Keaveney? David Gallagher, consultant oncologist, developed a lifelong pleasure in chess, thanks to his teacher, Seamus Grace, who is remembered by generations of Blackrock College boys.

In a series of six interviews about the teachers that influenced them most, writer Joanne Hunt shows that teachers who share the best of themselves bring out the best in their students – with lifelong effects.

Apart from teachers and parents, children will be most influenced by technology during the school year. There’s so much negativity about the safety of learning online, we could forget that online learning is a huge positive for young people, changing and enhancing the way they learn. It’s the adults who need to catch up to close the digital divide between young people and older generations.

As Dr Donald Ewing writes in his opinion piece, today’s children deserve a transformation in teaching and learningstyles, particularly at second level. In his work with children with dyslexia, he has seen that all children benefit when schools adopt holistic, interactive approaches.

Even the best teaching is sedentary, with few children getting the 60 minutes a day of exercise that they need. Along with too much sugary convenience food, it’s the reason one in four children are unfit and overweight. We need a national initiative like the one described by US expert Robin Schepper in an interview with Simon Carswell. For parent-teacher associations, the lack of sufficient exercise in schools should be top of the agenda.

So too should be the crippling cost of schoolbooks, which is a perennial, Conor Pope writes.

Coping rather than changing the system will be the priority for most of us as school starts. A lot of us will be doing well just to get the kids out of bed in the mornings.

Whether you’re an old hand or your children, like Róisín Ingle’s, are just starting school, a few tips for being more organised are usually welcome. My favourite: “Don’t get hung up on the lunchbox.” It’s only five meals of the week out of 21, not including healthy snacks. Good breakfasts are more important.

Food costs seem to go up in September, when you’re buying to please everyone for all times of day, but you can feed five weekday dinners to a family of four for €49, Marie-Claire Digby finds.

Parents share tips like these at the schoolgates all the time, so think of this back-to-school magazine as your pre-term schoolgates information briefing, with a little of your old school yearbook thrown in.
Kate Holmquist