High School Stressors And How They Can Be Prevented

Since the late 90s, students have become increasingly more stressed each year due to rising expectations of colleges and universities.  As reported by The Seattle Times, many schools just like Roosevelt High experienced crisis levels of stress and anxiety.  As higher education becomes more competitive, high schools may push their students to reach for higher grades and perfect test scores. While this does make them look like a better applicant for those college applications, it can take away from the overall high school experience.  Students may often lean toward just memorizing the material, and not actually learning much about the respective subject.  This can leave them stressed and often cause them to “blank out” on tests.  As high school stressors increase year by year, we need to focus on ways to decrease the overall stress level of high school students.

A great way to do this is take some time off from learning in the form of a break and let them have time to clear their minds and relax.  This can easily be implemented by cutting off 5-7 minutes of class time for each class, allotting anywhere from 20-35 minutes for break time each day.  While this may seem like a long time, it definitely has its benefits.  Students can take this time to catch up on homework, meet with their teachers, or to just take a moment for themselves which can help reduce the effect of these high school stressors.

study conducted by Johns Hopkins concluded that meditation and mental awareness routines were key to reducing stress and anxiety. Many schools have since implemented relaxation periods and practices similar to meditation during their health classes. An overall sense of mindfulness keeps the students from stressing about certain things and gives them the skills they need to catalog many of their current stressors.

With simple meditation and break times, students have already shown massive amounts of improvement overall. This can only move forward as more and more school districts see the need for a break in their daily routine.

Just as meditation and relaxation time is important, many have also seen that field trip time is important for high schoolers as well. Spending time in museums or historical places gives them a way to relax and see what they’ve been learning in their textbooks “outside of the classroom”.  Field trips are very important to creating an interactive learning space as they decrease the stress of textbook learning.

Make sure that you have a streamlined travel request process to make sure that your district can plan and schedule beneficial field trips. This ensures that your students can experience learning outside of the classroom during their time in high school. Set up a demonstration for the Travel Tracker today and see how we can help your school plan field trips without the administrative stress and allow students the opportunity to reduce high school stressors from normal day to day high school.