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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/42412
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/42412
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Well, it may seem obvious, but you need research.

From your point of view it may seem really difficult, since you didn't have any experience of schools after first grade, but don't worry. Most of us writers don't have direct experience with dragons, wars, swordfights, eldritch horrors, torture, espionage, terrorism, distopian dictatorships, and so on. Researching on what you don't know about is a core point of doing a good job, so chin up.

If you have already read some YA stories, you may notice that a lot are set in schools. So you probably have a quite clear idea of what is the representation of school life in the genre. Moreover there are at least a million of tv series (not only teen dramas, I hope, even if maybe they will have a lot of what you are searching for) and films set in a US high school. Again, you may be familiar with those representations of school; if you aren't, you may consider watching some as source material.

If you want to avoid the risk of giving an overly cliché, or incorrect, representation, you could always ask someone that attended an US school about what his/her daily routine was like. This is actually a very good method of research - think about it as like having beta readers for a very specific topic. You may find people willing to help on facebook, discord servers, online communities, foreign exchange communities and of course writing forums.

Original score: 5