Any sort of life change can be tough, but transitions between grades or schools can be especially rough for children and adolescents. As a teacher for almost 35 years, Mary McGann can attest to that. In the last three decades, she has taught every grade there is, from kindergarten to high school, and consistently, she has seen that the students who do best during these shifts are the ones who are the most prepared for them.

And when does this preparation start? In her opinion, as early as possible.

“You should read to your babies,” she said.

McGann says reading in an indispensable way to prep little ones for school. When she was teaching kindergarten, she said, it was clear which students had been read to and which hadn’t. The importance, she said, is that children need to hear the contrast between the sound of the written word and the sound of the spoken word. She saw that youngsters who understood that difference early did consistently better in school. That’s why, she says, reading should be a daily thing, one that continues on through the years, even after they can read to themselves. This sort of routine can give their learning habits a sense of ballast for a lifetime.

“Try to instill some value for education,” McGann said.

She says that, especially as children start to pick up reading, finding something that they care deeply about and encouraging them to study it is a valuable way to help them learn to enjoy school. Not only will this help with a child’s diction and research skills, but it will also introduce the idea that learning is a pleasure, which will make the more strenuous, academic demands of first grade easier, McGann said. To help future transitions, she advocates getting students used to doing a little bit of homework every night, even in first grade. The discipline will be invaluable in the future, she said.

During the complex and usually painful shift between elementary and middle school, many of the learning patterns and routines children have developed will be set, but they’ll be facing a new challenge – peer pressure.

McGann’s advice for dealing with this is simple, though she knows the problem is not.

“Keep your kids very active in sports,” she said. “They need to be very busy – and they still need their sleep.”

During those years of racing hormones and heart-stopping social jockeying, McGann suggests that students try to go back to the basics, to use what they have already learned about their own work and study habits to pull them through those awkward years. Socially, it will be hard on everyone, but academically, it doesn’t have to be.

“And don’t let them go on diets, especially the girls,” she said.

As for the change from middle to high school, McGann has seen its difficulty first-hand, not just as a teacher but also as a parent. After her son graduated from middle school, it was monumentally difficult for him, she said, so much so that she has far more empathy for parents in that same position than she does sage words.

“Ninth grade is really hard,” she said. “To them [students], graduation is a quarter of their lifetime away.”

McGann’s best advice is to find teens a mentor, an adult they can trust. She has noticed that by a student’s junior year, he or she has usually either settled fairly well into high school or has decided to never do so. Getting a student to fall into the first category isn’t completely in a parent’s control, but McGann suggests one way that will significantly increase the odds. It’s something that starts in preschool and shouldn’t let up until a teenager walks across the stage at his or her high school graduation.

From attending parent-teacher conferences to helping with homework to simply asking how their child’s day at school was, parents’ involvement in academics is one the biggest factors in student success, McGann said, adding that the support and energy really does matter.

“Showing that you value school makes a student value school,” she said.