Students move to a new school for varied reasons that they may or may not have control over. Students may not be happy with their current school or may be forced to join a new school if their parents move to a new place or if the school does not offer the courses they would like to pursue. Whatever may be the reasons for leaving previous school, when students go to a new school they often face problems fitting in.
The biggest problem for a student joining a new school is the very fact that they face a major change in their life. Students are familiar with the teachers, fellow students and processes of their present school. Moving to a new school requires leaving all this behind to join an institution where they are a complete stranger. Schools must realize this and do everything to make the students feel at home.
The first task for the school administration to make new students feel comfortable should be introducing students to the school area (buildings and classes) and briefing them about how things work there. The second and most important thing is to help new students find friends and mingle up with the old ones.
For this purpose teachers can play a very vital role by making sitting arrangements such that the old students sit with new ones and allowing them to introduce themselves to each other. Conducting a group activity making old students and new students to interact each other to complete a task may also provide a solution to the problem. Once old and new students become friends, there is nothing much left in adjusting the new students.
In their initial lectures teachers should try to keep involving new students in the lecture by asking them whether they are understanding the lecture or not or by asking any questions relative to the topic. Lastly, a new student may still face issues that are best known only to him or her. Thus, it becomes essential for the school to have a counseling section that gathers feedback from the students and their parents.
Schools can arrange for fortnightly or monthly sessions that are compulsory for the new students in their initial months. Corrective actions must be taken if the student is facing any difficulties. Also, parents should be called over for meetings with the teachers as there could be school-related problems that a student can easily share with his/her parents but not with the teachers. Parents may help as intermediaries in resolving any such difficulties that the student is having.
