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Yeah. Hi from the Salvation Army, and you're listening to Words of Life. Hey and welcome back to Words of Life. If you can believe it, at least throughout much of the U.S., a new school year has arrived and so we are launching a new series today that we pray will be a blessing and an encouragement to the parents out there. I'm being joined by a panel of friends, including a high school math teacher and a student counselor, as they share wisdom and practical advice on how we, as parents, can help our kids thrive this school year.
Check out the show notes for several links to resources mentioned throughout this series. I am Heather Hanson. I am a mother of two children. My husband Tom works here at THQ, and I have 17 and 19-year-olds. And I was a preschool teacher for about five years, a long time ago, before marriage, before children of my own.
And now I am just a mom who helps her kids succeed in school. My name is Melissa Powell. I work at the Salvation Army Territorial Headquarters in Atlanta in the youth department. I am the territorial children's ministry coordinator.
So everything for kids birth to fifth grade falls under me, which is really exciting, especially for this conversation today. I'm married and I have three kids. They are 12, 10, and 8.
So we are in the middle school years for some of them. And then definitely elementary still. I'm just a mom. I don't have any teaching, anything in my past, but I love kids. I have a heart for them.
I feel like being just a mom like overqualifies you to shorten out, Melissa. My name is Dinez Crouch. married to Matt Crouch, who's sitting next to me. We have three kids. We have a high schooler now.
15-year-old going into high school. We have a middle schooler going into She's going in the eighth grade. And then we have a son who's 10 and he's a fifth grader.
So we got one in each stage now, which is really fun. A little scary, but very exciting too. But I am A licensed mental health counselor. I received my degree in Christian counseling about. Four years ago, and I specialize working with children and adolescents.
I do work with adults as well, but I specialize mainly in play therapy, working with children, and I do trauma work as well, and I adapt it to my work with children and adolescents. My Salvation Army background. I did work for the Salvation Army for 15 years before God called me to another field. Yeah, I worked in as well here at the territorial headquarters in Atlanta in the youth department as well.
So I'm kind of seeing some of my old peeps from back in the day.
So I have some experience working in youth ministry as well. And on top of that, come from. Family of officers. My parents are retired majors in the Salvation Army. Yeah, I think I'll let Matt take over the rest.
Yeah, and that crouch, like Dines said, we have three kids. My experience has been in education my entire working career. I started teaching actually here in Atlanta where we're recording.
So it's cool to come full circle. I'm a high school math teacher, so I've done that my entire career, which is I think now 16, 17 years. Currently teach in Charlotte, North Carolina. at a big public high school and really, really enjoyed it.
So I'm excited to be part of this conversation and learn from you guys and hopefully add a little bit to it as well. But we're very excited to Be humble and hopefully grow together as we're all trying to grow each day, as the world keeps changing and our kids keep growing. Math was my worst subject. There was nothing wrong with math. It was the math teacher.
I'll save that for another podcast. That is true, though. Hey, you're listening to the Salvation Army's Words of Life. We're going to take a quick ad break, and we'll be right back. Hey, y'all, I'm Willie Robertson.
And I'm Corey Robertson. We partnered with Echo. It's a new platform, not just streaming. Movies and series that are safe for your family. Echo.
I love a podcast. Plus, Echo Daily Devotionals. Echo. Hey, Willie, what is Echo? Echo is my pet school.
Okay, Echo is not just faith-friendly, it is faith-driven. Be a part of something better. Echo. Echo. That's where I want to be.
That's ekkl.co-wheel. Subscribe now. Summer is almost over. What are kids feeling? What are the parents feeling as we're about to start a new school year?
I think it depends. But our little one, our fifth grader, he's dreading losing his summer. He doesn't want to go back to school right now. I think kids often. When you talk about what they're feeling, it's one thing.
And then when they get there and they're living it, then they're actually having a great time.
So he's like, I don't want to go back to school. But when he does go back to school, he'll be having a great time and he'll be happy to see his buddies.
So there's a bit of dread there for him. older one is nervous but excited to to get back at it and Moving into high school. Bigger pool of friends that she's hoping to connect with.
So she's excited for that opportunity. Five. The school supplies have started coming in at our house. And so my ten-year-old daughter, who's in fifth grade this year, she's over the moon. She gets a computer mouse this year, so she's super excited.
And a new lunchbox and the clothes are coming in.
So it's probably less for school than it is the stuff that comes with it. But she's over the moon about that. My seventh grader, however, is less than thrilled about the future of school. As a parent, though, I am over the moon. It is time for these children to go back.
Send them to school. Let's do this. Yeah. For my daughter, she's entering her senior year. With her, there is a little pressure and anxiety, I think, that comes just with that whole thing.
You know, like now it's going to be figuring out schools and colleges and things like that. But at the same time, for her, there's a sense of relief. She's now entering her third year at this school. And just a little background: my kids have been to a lot of schools because we've moved a lot. Every time we started over, it was a whole.
Thing anxiety for the whole family, all the things, all the pressures, and finding doctors and starting over, and what's the bus route like? Or what's the car loop like? Or all of those things.
So for her now she's a pro. She's she's here. And so there's a little relief for her to step back and just say, hey, now I can just focus on Just being who I am and She's already started back to school because she's been at Marching Band Camp all week.
So she's been at school for this whole week. But yeah. I was going to mention that. That is such a good thing. And I'm sure we'll talk about this later on.
But having your kids connected to some type of extracurricular thing in school is so important. My daughter, she's 15, going into 10th grade, and she made the volleyball team last year. And so they started practice two weeks ago. And so she's only going in like three days a week, but it's at least getting her used to not waking up at noon. It helps the transition.
It helps the transition for sure. It does. And so she's seeing the school again, she's getting used to the routine of waking up. And, you know, it's only a few hours.
So it is a good transition. We pray that you're enjoying and being blessed by this conversation. We're going to take one more ad break and we'll be right back. Hey, y'all, I'm Willie Robertson. And I'm Corey Robertson.
We partnered with Echo. It's a new platform, not just streaming. Movies and series that are safe for your family. Echo. I love a podcast.
Plus, Echo Daily Devotionals. Echo. Hey, Willie, what is Echo? Echo is my pet school.
Okay, duh. Echo is not just faith-friendly, it is faith-driven. Be a part of something better. Echo. Echo.
That's where I want to be. That's ekkl.co-will. Subscribe now. What changes have you seen in your kids or in your students? Just kind of over the years, and maybe even for you, Matt, like what changes have you seen in that same age group maybe over the course of your teaching career?
We'll start there. I think sometimes kids are kids, and so there's not always a huge shift. There are definitely changes. From the beginning of my teaching career, technology has grown significantly. The way we teach in the classroom has changed too.
I would say the biggest one is that there's a bit more of a divide. When I say divide, I mean that Some of the kids just seem a little bit more distant from the engagement piece, engaging with their classmates, engaging with their teachers. I have to work even harder to reach them, whereas Some more natural things used to be enough.
So I think that's probably the harder piece is that They're not behaving any worse than they usually do, but I would say that they seem a bit more distant. They're just a bit more numbed. That's the biggest change I've seen in my students. With our kids, Dinez, you and I were chatting about that earlier. Yeah, I think we I said that there's just less enthusiasm.
He kind of grow out of the, you know, the earlier stages of like You know, being excited to see your friends, your teachers. You know, they kind of know the drill the older they get. And so there's just less. enthusiasm and engagement and like, oh gosh, school supplies and things like that. But at the same time, I think as they start their new routines and their new structures, they do fall into it.
But that's just something we've noticed in our kids. I think I've seen my kids become more independent over the course of elementary school. And like my soon-to-be seventh grader is much different than he was back in like fourth grade, even. Seeing him be able to handle his homework on his own now, like it's not something that we have to say, hey, Ben, did you do that? Did you do that?
Don't forget you have to do this. Like he just, he knows the routine. He knows when he comes home, like he gets it done.
So it's been nice to kind of see him take that on without us having to constantly be on him for that. That transition is a little scary though at first, too, because all of a sudden they're not telling you about their work or, you know, what they're studying as much. And so you're like, are you doing it? Yeah. And then, of course, that's when being connected with your kids' teachers and actually going to the parent-teacher conferences and stuff is important because then they will kind of fill in those gaps that maybe they're not telling you about anymore.
Exactly.
Well, my family having to start over and my kids having to start new schools, we have walked them through. Grief, panic attacks. Loneliness. All of those things, the fear. But I've also seen the big change in both of my kids is that they have learned how to cope.
And adapt to things and overcome some of these things. Thank you, Lord. Becoming more independent about things. I'm so proud of my kids because I feel like all of these experiences have also made them stronger in their faith. They've become unafraid of things and they've had big Successes.
I've just seen my kids just overcome a lot of things and grow and change and become. even better humans I could have even asked for. For my daughter, what was interesting is up until ninth grade, she was in a private school. We knew we wanted her to have a public school experience at some point. And so we had her go into public school the year before high school.
So it wasn't like a huge jump into the big school. But one interesting thing that kind of happened is just being in a larger school with so many more different types of people. Previously, there wasn't a lot of diversity. And my other half of my family is Hispanic. Most of her school is minorities.
That does mean something, I think, to just be exposed to more. And also, even just while you're figuring out who the heck you are when you're a kid, seeing more people that also kind of look like you. Yeah, it's been cool to just kind of see her coming out of her shell more. As we're going into this new year. How can families, us as parents, intentionally prepare spiritually?
I would say we should be praying for them. There's Something kind of terrifying sometimes about just dropping your kid off at school, right? When they were young, especially. I think when we can pray, it gives us a confidence in something. bigger than ourselves, something that We obviously aren't.
physically controlling, but it's a beautiful thing to be able to trust the Lord that he's going ahead of our kids. The second thing I think that I try to do is try to bring some stability, try to bring some calm. As the school year starts ramping up, the nerves start coming and I try to just consistently remind our kids of who they are in Christ and that their identity doesn't change. based on who their teacher is and whether their friends end up in their class or not, or even the grade, or their grades, 100%. And keeping the door open, right?
And not just having like a one-off conversation, it's a continual check-in. Of, hey, how are things going for you? And then being open yourself, being authentic and disclosing, hey, yeah, I'm feeling a little nervous about it. What are your thoughts? It just helps our kids get those emotions and those thoughts out that they would otherwise be harboring or keeping inside.
Even if, as a parent, you're like, well, they're not going to say anything. That's okay. The point is that you are getting that anchor, that... person to check in with. The Salvation Army's mission, doing the most good, means helping people with material and spiritual needs.
You become a part of this mission every time you give to the Salvation Army. Visit SalvationArmyusa.org to offer your support. You can subscribe to Words of Life on your favorite podcast store or visit SalvationArmysoundcast.org. Join us next time for the Salvation Army's Words of Life. These are the words, these are the words of life.
These are the words, these are the words, these are the words of life. Thanks so much for listening to Words of Life. We want to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the show. Visit lifeaudio.com where you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They have shows about prayer, Bible studying, parenting, and more.
Thanks again for listening. We'll see you next time. I'm Mark Vinette, host of the Historical Jesus Podcast, which presents the new series, Miracles, focusing on biblical miracles from the Old and New Testament. Join me on the Historical Jesus podcast as I explore the interesting, compelling, intriguing, and wonderful miracle stories of the Bible and the many great miraculous events inspired by the words and deeds of Jesus Christ. Thumbtack presents.
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