As UAE kids prepare to return to the classroom, experts offer tips to tackle the back-to-school journey

As UAE kids prepare to return to the classroom, experts offer tips to tackle the back-to-school journey

Suhail star that signals the tapering of summer rigours. To me, as a child back then, there were only two things that made summers cool — luscious mangoes and a long break from school.

That part of the canvas hasn’t changed with time and place, but what has changed is the way we now perceive the exercise of our children going back to school after summer. It is no longer a quiet closing of doors on a laid-back period and stepping into an academic setting. It has now acquired grander aspects, chiefly fuelled by marketing shindigs and a buying frenzy — uniforms, stationery, books and a host of other paraphernalia that complements school life today.

But beneath the carnival atmosphere that we see in shopping centres in the days leading up to school reopening, there is a vault of emotions that is not frequently opened up for scrutiny. Schools, acutely aware of their students’ apprehensions, gear up for positive instructional mode; parents become battle ready for another year of tests and study tantrums, and children oscillate between enthusiasm and jitters, many unsure of what schooling itself means to them.

Going back to school after a long break, which we have normalised like the