Summer School

: Why is your district seeking funding for a summer school program? Because the funding is available and people need summer jobs? Or because the children and families of your school community have a need that you’d like to help them fill?All families need care for their children in the summer now. Many families have both parents working outside the home but such a program need not be academic in nature.All schools have kids who struggle due to weak skills. Those kids might benefit from work through the summer but the work would need to be different or you’ll end up tortueing those kids with more feelings of failure.My school has two summer programs. One is more camp in nature and offers somewhat inexpensive but enriched day care through the summer. The other is supposedly preparation for the year to come but as we take a wide range of abilities into that program it becomes impossible to direct the work to any students’ real needs and ends up being a holding tank of sorts.True summer schools, I think, are the worlds’ worst places. True summer schools give kids more of the same. True summer schools take children who don’t do well at school and give them more school so when they return in September their sense of failure has been magnified over the summer.If you went to a doctor and they gave you an antibiotic that didn’t work, you’d ask the doctor to switch medicines. Kids sent to true summer schools are being given the same medicine that didn’t work the first time around.Why not ask your community? Your PTA? What do they see the community as needing?I am a 16 year L.D. Resource Teacher. Our District is looking into
: possibly seeking funding for a summer school program. I would love
: to hear from anyone who has any thoughts about this, either good
: or bad. Right now we don’t even know if the summer school would be
: primarily remedial or not. I would enjoy hearing about any summer
: school programs small school districts have implemented. Thanks so
: much!