Losing the School Groove: Year Round Education
By: Keith
A huge advantage that homeschoolers have over their public school peers is the relative lack of vacation time. We don’t stop learning during summer, spring break or most other holidays. The result is that we don’t slip backwards in our learning and we don’t spend time catching up to where we left off. I have read that public schools spend as much as 1/3 of the new school year reviewing material that was covered before summer vacation because, with so much time off, kids forget what they were taught. Summer vacation, therefore, is a giant waste of time and is detrimental to progress. Well, with that being said, I have completely fallen off the wagon this Christmas. We’ve wound up taking the same winter vacation that the rest of the kids take. Meaning no school for two weeks. I’m finding myself in unfamiliar territory. I’ve never had to resume teaching after a long break, but it was unrealistic to continue normal lessons this Christmas with all the activities and festivities happening around us. Winter vacation is minor compared to what teachers must have to go through every year when school starts after a long summer break.
Some Parents Get It:
Some parents have come to understand just how much kids lose during summer vacation. They keep their kids active during the summer with supplementary education. Thus there is little slippage when school resumes. What about the kids whose parents don’t get it? Teachers have to deal with huge discrepancies in student ability because some kids maintain what they know during vacation and others don’t. How do they continue forward momentum while, at the same time, going back to review old material for the benefit of the kids who don’t keep up on their work over vacation? After all, teachers can only teach at the pace of the slowest learner, right? Wouldn’t the kids whose parents keep them going during summer suffer for the sake of the kids who don’t? That 1/3 wasted time statistic would remain as valid as ever regardless of how hard the diligent kids worked.
Back to Me:
Yesterday I had my 5 year old count money for me. It was the last thing we learned before we took this 2 week hiatus. Predictably he lost his mind and forgot how to do it. I’m not worried. Getting back in the groove shouldn’t be too difficult. They are only two kids, and they’re my kids. It isn’t like I’m a teacher with 30 strange kids running around who all have different abilities and needs. My job is an educational cake-walk compared to what public school teachers have to deal with after every vacation. No wonder so much time is wasted in public school. It’s a bureaucratic nightmare. Kids can’t get dropped for non performance. They can only be placed differently. Keeping track of it all is a giant time suck.
Year Round School:
For the reasons stated above, I think schools should implement year round education. Year round school was an idea that was floated around when I was a kid. It never got implemented because the teachers’ unions made a huge stink over it (as I remember). It seems to me that year round school would be good for teachers, not bad. It would definitely be good for kids. They could still take a series of vacations throughout the year. Perhaps one week out of every 6 or so. They could have the same amount of time off, but just not all at once. I don’t know why schools don’t do it. I can see that in just these two empty weeks that my kids have forgotten things they just learned. It got me thinking about what kids must lose over the course of a whole summer. The waste in our public schools is incredible. We’d be so much more efficient if we just had year round school, and implementing it seems as easy as reprinting calendars.
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We don’t have a “year round” school schedule out here, but have only 6.5 weeks of Summer Vacation. There is always a summer homework packet sent out by the teachers. You are correct sir..the kids do tend to forget what they learned over the summer.
.-= Denise´s last blog ..I Forgot….(See Below Entry ..Sorry!) =-.
Our local school district is pretty phenomenal and operates on a “modified year round” schedule. 2-3 weeks off every 9 weeks or so. I think it’s a great idea…for all of the reasons that you stated.
.-= Stephanie´s last blog ..A Mom 2.0 Story {why I’m opting out this year} =-.
Your assessment of what is going on in the public schools and what teachers do and do not do about it is oversimplified. I’m not saying it is inaccurate necessarily, though, I think you are not really clear about the requirements and demands of the public school teacher. Merely adding time to the school day or year (and how will this be funded, I’d like to know…in many places they are going to a four day week due to funding) is not going to solve the problems you identify and it will create others.
As a public school teacher and a single parent of four children and sole provider (which means I don’t have the luxury of home schooling my children), I can tell you this…I’ve worked in large school districts with year around school and I hated it. Summer isn’t vacation for the teacher…it’s recovery.
.-= thewildmind´s last blog ..Sex or Making Love? Who Is Confused? =-.
Thewildmind, It’s offensive to me that you seem to believe that you are the only person who understands hard work. Are you suggesting that teachers deserve a whole summer of vacation while other professions do not for the reason that public school teacher work harder than everybody else? If that’s what you’re saying then I’m afraid we don’t have much to talk about since you are clearly not thinking straight. What the heck are you talking about with the funding? I don’t want any time added to the school day (I never said that — you didn’t listen). As a matter of fact, I would be in favor of shortening the day. I also never suggested adding any time to the school year. I said to spread the vacation out over the course of the year rather than have it clumped all together. Explain how that requires extra funding. Seriously. The problem (one problem, not many) that I identified is that kids are forgetting information over the summer. This is not rocket science. And, no, it is not complicated at all. You may not know this but I used to be a public school teacher myself. I’m sure you think you’re pulling one over on me by saying how hard teachers work. let me tell you. I’ve been a teacher and a martial arts instructor and a statistical analyst. The hardest job, by far, was my statistics job — not teaching. I guess I deserved a summer vacation to “recover”. Please. And, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t suggest what I do is “luxury”. I was being polite when I said how hard teachers have it. They don’t have it easy, but it’s no harder than many professions.
Wow, Keith, cool down!
Sounds like I pushed some buttons here.
Let’s review. I did not ever once say or imply that teachers work harder than everyone else. What I did say is that you oversimplified a very complex issue.
There are many reasons, not just one, why children fall back during summer (or any break) and one solution won’t address every cause. Since there is no way to determine all the variables effectively, it is really a shot in the dark to see if that one solution works for every child and how would you do the research anyway in order to determine your whether or not your intervention (year round school) effectively fixed the problem for your particular students? I’m guessing that the children who have the biggest problems with fallback are also the ones dealing with far more serious issues that year round school in and of itself will not even come close to addressing. And that’s assuming that the people looking at the data and making decisions about funding, teachers, whether or not progress for each individual child is being made as it should, even care about the fallback. The problem is they don’t. The reality is there are very effective ways to deal with it that don’t include going to year round school.
I might add that if you’ve been away from teaching for a while, even six years, you are probably not really familiar with the changes that have been federally and locally mandated for teachers. Nor are you aware, maybe, how incredibly scientific everything has become. We don’t just pick up and teach something now because it seems a good thing to do. We don’t get to plan our own schedules. We are more and more very strictly regulated by outside forces. Not a bad thing, necessarily, but not your mother’s school experience or even yours or mine. Some (not all) of this change has resulted in increased demands and workloads with a reduction (not a maintenance) of time given to plan or prepare. I don’t know about you, but I do need some time to prepare materials, organize resources and think about the best strategies to use in order to differentiate my learing for all 32 of my students (some of my colleagues are pushing 40 students in their rooms at elementary grades). If I just wanted to go in and “deliver” lessons that’s one thing, but I am held to the standard that my children perform at a certain level. That’s a very different thing. You can’t do that every day on the fly.
Further, you tell me what other professional position out there is required to have a graduate degree, gets 1 ten minute break a day to go to the bathroom, 1 thirty minute lunch that MUST be used for preparation, and is required to continue their training and education on their own nickel while getting significantly less compensation than other professions that require the same things and still spends a good deal of their discretionary income on materials for their classroom. I’m not complaining about it, I chose it, but when you deal with other professionals and their perks and ours you are comparing apples to zucchini. Many professional occupations out there will end up getting the same amount of vacation time I get (or nearly so) with nearly double the pay and far better benefits for the amount of time I’ve been teaching. So the comparison thing is really a non-issue, it doesn’t fly and I wasn’t making that statement.
As for the funding, let’s look at this logically, If you take the same amount of instructional time and spread it out throughout the entire year without adding time, you are still going to end up with large chunks of time where students and teachers are not in school and the very problem you seek to solve will not be addressed. Further, this really is a non-issue with the majority of children who with some very good instruction can be moving ahead without taking anywhere near the 1/3 of the school year you discuss. (It would, by the way, be helpful for you to link to that data when you are going to use it. I would have run right to it, since it is nowhere near been my experience over the last two decades.)
Oh, and by the way, the use of the word, “recovery” was a joke. Humor, dear boy. If I was implying anything, teaching children is an emotionally demanding job. There are heartbreaks every day that stats analysts are not going to ever deal with. (Ever had one of your reports walk out the door on Friday only to read that she died in an auto accident on Sunday? Ever had your statistical analysis tell you it is hungry and the only food they get is the school lunch?) That doesn’t mean the analyst’s job is less difficult or stressful, but it is a very different kind of difficult and stress. I’ll say it again. I never once made the comparison, I only talked about teachers and I only spoke from my perspective and shared my preferences. I thought that was the implicit invitation I had when asked to offer a comment. I neither meant to impune the very hard work other professionals do nor exalt the harder work my profession does. Although, how many statistical analysts get bashed routinely and publically for not doing their jobs when in fact they are sacrificing a great deal personally to do the job? It happens weekly to the teaching profession.
I am also not saying that year round school doesn’t work very well in some places. It does, I’ve heard. It has not been my experience and I would not like it if my school district were to consider it. Again, I was neither intending to offend and I did not compare. I simply shared my thoughts based on my experience. Where you took that is where you took that.
As for getting to stay home and home school my kids, it would be a luxury since it would mean that somehow my financial concerns were being taken care of by some other method than me having to work 12 hours a day outside my home to pay the bills and feed my children. That, would be quite luxurious a venture I think. It should in no way be offensive to you. My feelings and my opinions are mine and they have absolutely nothing to do with you. It wasn’t an insult.
.-= thewildmind´s last blog ..Sex or Making Love? Who Is Confused? =-.
I don’t have the patience to go point by point here. I’ll just say that I’m not trying to fix every problem for every child (that’s a doctoral thesis not a blog post). I’m trying to point out a major, and obvious, flaw in our educational system. Kids lose information over extended periods. That much we know. So the obvious solution is to shorten the down time, not eliminate it. Spreading the vacation time throughout the year would absolutely take care of the major issue of forgotten information. My kids lost a little bit over Christmas, but not nearly as much as they would have if we had taken an entire summer off. The loss of information is not cumulative. The longer a child is away from school the more compounded the loss becomes. So, clearly, if vacation time is spread out rather than clumped, then that compounded loss never happens, only small revocable losses occur.
“My Dear Boy.” Seriously? OK.
Staying at home with my kids is not all I do to make money. I make all the money in this family. I’m not going to go into detail of how I do it, but like you, I make the money in this household and teach and care for my kids. If you aren’t comparing then why are there so many comparisons in your argument?
I’ve never had a dead report on my hands, but I have had dead friends and acquaintance. That’s called living life. Everybody has loss, so I don’t really see anything special about that.
I think anybody who reads your previous statements will conclude as I did that you were comparing the life of a teacher with other professions and that you were indeed implying that you have more authority to say I’m inaccurate because of your life experience. I’m simply saying that your life experience does not make you more qualified to opine than mine. What I have stated is an opinion based on observation. It’s an opinion that a lot of people agree with (including the president). You may not agree, and I respect that. I don’t, however, respect opinions that attempt authority through sophistry.
I simply offered a dissenting view and I’ve been villified for it as well as being accused of saying things I did not say.
I suggested you have not addressed a major flaw in our educational system nor have you come up with a viable solution that works across the board for every student in every school district across the land. It’s my opinion based on my good experience working with at risk kids for the last almost 20 years in both traditional school schedules and year around schedules. By offering it, I do nothing to imply your opinion is not valid, I merely offer a different perspective. I wasn’t hostile, nor was I disrespectful. I was simply straightforward.
Apparently, a dissenting view, however it is expressed is not accepted here. I’m sorry I was under the impression you’d actually appreciate hearing another perspective from someone who is actually in the trenches. My mistake. No need to respond. I won’t be back anytime soon.
.-= thewildmind´s last blog ..Sex or Making Love? Who Is Confused? =-.
Obviously I am not offended by dissenting opinions. I appreciate them. Perhaps it is the medium we’re using to communicate. Sometime the written word is fickle; it can appear to be something that was not intended. I accept that you did not intend to offend. However, if you re-read how you presented your opinion you could see it how I saw it. I’m not an overly sensitive person who can’t listen to differing opinions. I’m trying to look at this objectively. Your last sentence here is purely rhetorical. If I say you’re wrong about dissent being accepted then I’m a Nazi. If I say you’re right, that dissent is accepted, then I’m somehow admitting that I haven’t accepted it in my previous comments — which is untrue.
You’ll notice that my thesis here is that year round school is beneficial for the fact that kids lose information over the summer. I am not talking about special needs kids (even though I still don’t see a difference) or unusual cases that require additional solutions. I’m thinking in very broad terms. Just because it won’t work for everybody doesn’t mean it wouldn’t work for most people. This is a macro argument not a case by case thing. For instance, I can say truthfully that in order to lose weight people must exercise and eat right. Well, some people can’t exercise because of physical limitations. Other people don’t have access to proper nutrition through no fault of their own. That doesn’t make the blanket statement about losing weight any less true.
It helps to have a teacher like Keith that is ultra well-educated, really cares for his kids, and schools them 6 days a week. How else is a kind going to get that level of attention? It’s just not fair.
.-= Dennis Yu´s last blog ..I play video games for a living now– sorta =-.
Over here, some schools have changed the way the year works to five six-week terms with a one or two week break between each. The problem is that some schools have done it and some haven’t, which makes it a bit of a nightmare for working parents.
I help out at school as well as having kids of my own and I really enjoy the long summer break, just to have a rest from the crushing pressures of ‘the routine’…homework, lunchboxes, after school clubs. I think it does them good to have a rest from the drudgery of it all, although I think six weeks really is a little too long because they do start to get bored.
As parents, it is up to us to continue teaching and reinforcing our kids’ education during that time. Not necessarily sitting down with schoolbooks every day, but for them to see is reading and writing. As you said, learning to count money, playing games involving money. These all help with maths. Games and quizes. Maybe watch a foreign film with subtitles. Going out for a walk in the woods or fields and trying to spot wildlife. It doesnt have to be a rigid structure, just little things here and there to revise and revisit.
To me, that’s all part of being a parent and not using the tv or video game console as a permanent babysitter. And, yes, I know how hard it is dragging them away from those two things but if you make the effort even a couple of times a week, you’re achieving something… even if it’s only spending time with them where you’re solely focussed upon them and not thinking about something else.
.-= Joanna Cake´s last blog ..HNT: 2009 Favourite =-.
Joanna, Good point. I agree with your educational philosophy. Kids learn when they are engaged in any activity requiring brain power irrespective of their environment. I think the biggest problem we, in the United States, face is parents who do not engage their kids at home. They leave it up to teachers to do all the educating. Thus, when they have two months of vacation during the summer, they lose too much forward momentum. It’s more of a parenting issue than it is a public school issue. Of course, since so many parents are unwilling to take basic steps to ensure their kids quality education, the next best thing is to prevent the motivated parents and kids from suffering at the hands of the lazy. Year round school forces kids to keep learning when they would otherwise falter. And, I would be someone in favor of a shortened school day too. Being in school for 7 or 8 hours is totally unnecessary. I think a slow burn through the year is much better than going whole hog for 10 months and coming to a complete stop for another 2. Thanks for the comment!