O’Neil: Help your teen set summer goals

With summer only weeks away, it’s a good time for teenagers to develop a game plan for how to spend that time. I recently asked a group of high school seniors to share advice on how younger teens should spend a summer.

They shared recommendations as well as some regrets. Their responses are rich with personal experience and wisdom. This is their advice to younger teens.

• Get a job. Build your work ethic and life skills. A job will keep your summer structured, help you stay motivated, and make your return to school in August much easier.
• Pursue a current hobby or find a new one. Learn new things.
• Invest in your current friends and make new ones.
• Read a book (or several books) for pleasure.
• Keep your academic skills sharp, like math.
• Get outside.
• Build your resume for your college applications, especially during your freshman and sophomore summers.  
• If you’re an athlete, attend open gyms to build skills and relationships with teammates.
• Volunteer at a local nonprofit and include your friends.
• Have fun.

These seniors speak for me. I don’t have too much to add except a few words of advice for parents of teens.

1. Set summer goals. Have your teen set them or craft goals together. Maybe take it a step further and have your entire family set summer goals.
2. Teach personal finance through your teen’s summer job. If your teen is earning summer money, set a simple standard for how to allocate those dollars. I recommend distributing income to three buckets: spending money, personal savings, and college money. I’m a big believer in having teens participate in saving funds for college expenses, such as first-semester tuition or books and materials. They also need skin in the game.
3. Summer learning loss is real. To curb it or move the needle the other direction, set some reading and math goals. Reading for pleasure, doing an SAT/ACT problem each day or working through a Khan Academy course can make a big difference.
4. Help them find a one-week summer job internship or a one-day job shadow. I’m amazed at the number of teenagers (even ages 13 and 14) who already have some ideas of what they’d like to study in college or who already have a career interest.
5. Share the seniors’ advice with your teens.

Returning to the seniors I interviewed, one shared with me some hard-earned wisdom of what not to do.

“Don’t sleep until noon every day and play video games until 1 a.m.” Setting up a summer game plan, sooner than later, is a great first step for teens to have a healthy, happy, and productive summer.

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Steve O’Neil is the head of school at Vail Christian High School in Edwards.