It’s mid-May and everyone at school is counting down the days. Zero is the last day of school or the first day of summer vacation; it depends upon your goals. Summer officially starts for children and their families, and teachers and everyone who works at school when the last day of the school year is history.
School’s out, school’s out; teachers let the monkeys out. Can you hear the voices of elementary children singing?
Two contrasting memories about school and summer vacation come to mind the closer we get to summer.
Memory one. For years, teachers were responsible for securing their classrooms for the summer vacation. I recall large rolls of butcher paper on a four-wheeled cart being pushed from one end of the school to the other. At each classroom door teachers tore off enough paper from the rolls to cover their bookshelves. Every book in the room was hidden behind butcher paper and masking tape not to be exposed until the next September. When children walked out of school on the last day, after they cleaned out their lockers, they carried home papers and art projects and gym clothes and music instruments. Children of all grades said good-bye to their public school. But, they carried no books. Books and the reading of books stayed at school.
Memory two. Several summers ago a high school junior-to-be was my caddy at a golf tournament. Jake attended a private school. I couldn’t help but ask what else he was doing during the summer besides caddying. Up and down the fairways, he told me of his summer reading list. Most were pre-reads of books that would be studied during his junior year. The others were re-reads of books he wanted know even better. All were college-preparatory reads. I asked him why he was committed to such a rigorous reading list and he said, “What I read this this summer assures me that I am ready for next fall. If I don’t read and learn over the summer, I will fall behind. I’ve been doing this for years.”
These are two very different memories about summer and they present two completely different expectations of how children can or should use their summer time.
We public educators are trapped in the pattern of nine months in school and three months out of school that perpetuates itself and nothing else. There are state statutes that limit the school year and local teaching contracts that limit the time when teachers can teach. We have rules that act to prevent children from engaging in summer learning. (I am not including children who are required to attend compulsory summer school as a condition for grade level promotion. In most instances, this is compulsory time and not compulsory learning.)
We also have acculturated ourselves into thinking that children need time away from learning. Parents are excited to have their children home in June, but by July 1st they want them back in school. Kids who are used to seeing their friends at school every day become lost and lonely in their own backyards. Summer is effectively over after 30 days of vacation but our culture says that it must be prolonged for another two months like it or not.
So, how do we break the cycle of lost summers? We do this by proclaiming loudly that if children don’t read and learn over the summer, they fall behind in their potential for learning growth. It’s as simple as that. Three months of little or no learning for a second grader means that this child will return to school not as a new third grader but as a kid whose stagnation places his learning growth back in the spring of the second grade year. Instead of a full year’s learning connecting to the next academic year, children accumulate seven or eight months of learning due to summer regression. As a result, very few students begin high school with a high school reading ability and very, very few graduate with a pre-college reading ability.
Even though we know this is not what children need, we continue doing less for them than we could. Instead —
We need to tuck a summer reading list into each child’s backpack at the end of each school day in April. Children and parents need to be prepared for a new kind of summer and two months of run-up information is a good beginning. The second grade teacher will prepare the first grade student’s list and each successive grade level teacher will continue the pattern.
We need to add a second list to each child’s backpack in May. This is a list of places in the community, including the public library, where parents can obtain each book on the April list. Everyone needs help and then they need more help if we want them to change habitual behavior. The reading list tells them what children need to read. The second list tells them where to find what children need to read.
We need to connect children to their summer reading. On June 1st we need to install several books on each child’s tablet or laptop. Children will use their devices to play games and communicate with each other. If we also make their devices reading machines, it is more likely that they will read.
On July 1st and August 1st we need to e-mail happy notes to each child to remind them that summer reading is important. The e-mail will contain lists of new vocabulary a child will need to know in September.
And, most importantly, in September and October we need to weave summer reading into our children’s daily instruction. The weaving will include vocabulary, concepts, and background information gleaned from the summer reading. If there is no weaving, children will think that all we were interested in was busy work and they get enough of that. The more we weave summer reading into fall instruction, the more likely children will read the next summer.
There is every reason for us to do all five of these things. Children beginning second grade will reduce their summer regression. Every summer children will expand their vocabulary and background knowledge. Instead of falling behind as a result of a lazy summer, children will be ahead and continually getting ahead.
There really is no reason that prevents us from doing these five things, except we never have. Will never have mean that we never will?
I also remember a talk show host who always signed off with “when you know what the right thing to do is, try to do it.”