From: elg@elgamy.sccsi.com (Eric Lee Green)
Date: 27 Sep 92 11:08:32 CDT
Newsgroups: sci.edu,misc.education,misc.kids
Subject: Re: Year-round schooling
Distribution: world
Organization: Eric's Amiga 2000 @ Home

From article <1992Sep23.133254.29555@erenj.com>, by maduran@erenj.com (Marco A. Duran):
>
> The Board of the School Disctrict where my children go to school is
> recommending to change to year-round schooling.   I would appreciate receiving
> your comments on : advantages-disadvantages, bad-good experiences, references

A local school district went to year-round schooling one year, and promptly
switched back the next year.

In practice, year-round schooling seems to work well in urban inner-city
school districts, but not so well in suburban school districts. In
inner-city school districts, if the kids aren't in school they're on the
streets or they're watching television. The parents don't know about
community recreational services or summer education programs, and couldn't
afford the $40 signup fee and $30 for uniforms anyhow if they did.

There are numerous problems that arise when you do year-round schooling in
a suburban district, though. For one thing, most middle-class parents have
already planned their child's summer. There's enrichment courses at the
university, there's Little League baseball, swimming lessons, etc. etc.
etc., all of which are valued highly by middle-class parents. Not to
mention the experience of "summer camp", which may be the traditional one
or which may be dedicated to a specific sport or activity (e.g., "computer
camp"). All of this provides a common cultural background for middle-class
America. Education is not just reading 'riting and 'rithmetic. None of this
cultural background is currently available via school systems, which are
very conservatively organized and don't have a place for intensive learning
situations such as a "soccer camp" or "computer camp".

From a teacher's point of view there are problems with year-round
schooling, too. The primary one is the loss of ability to study at a
university full-time during a summer session. Most teachers with advanced
degrees were teaching at the time that they got those degrees -- they went
part-time to night courses during the school year and full-time during the
summer. Personally, I don't feel that I'm knowledgable enough about certain
topics in order to be a truly effective teacher -- I want that time to
enhance my education.

The second problem that teachers have with year-round schooling is simply
the loss of two months' "off time" :-). Last week I got up at 5am, left the
house before 7am, and got home at around 8pm from Monday through Thursday
(Friday I left the school at 3:30pm). People rap teachers for their
"lenient" work-hours, but don't understand the amount of preparation
required to be able to go into that classroom on Monday morning and present
a series of coherent planned lessons with all necessary materials needed to
reinforce learning and motivate achievement. Gathering the materials is
itself a major chore. For example, the school system provides no phonics
materials past the first grade. My kids have forgotten most of what little
phonics they ever knew, and I'm tired of being a "word-provider". The kids
need to be independent readers. So I ended up having to track down phonics
materials via talking to other teachers, duplicating some materials from
the resource room (stuff intended for dyslexic kids), and wonder of wonders
spending my own money at a teacher supply store. The next problem is how to
work that into the curriculum in a coherent manner. So it goes. But you can
understand how, after ten months of this sort of thing, I'm looking forward
to two months to "recharge my batteries" -- though I'll be taking 9 hours
of college coursework next summer so it'll hardly be a true "recharge".

---
 Eric Lee Green  elg@elgamy.sccsi.com         Dodson Elementary
 (713) 437-6908  uunet!nuchat!elgamy!elg      Houston, TX
                "Kids are kids, no matter what"
Newsgroups: sci.edu,misc.education,misc.kids