A fresh start
Sunday, August 30, 2009 at 07:44PM ...let there be spaces in your togetherness
- Kahlil Gibran
For many teachers and students, today is the first day back to school after a long summer break. It's a week of clean rooms and polished floors, new instructional materials and techniques, unspoiled notebooks and sharp pencils, and, well, new starts on relationshops with our students and our colleagues. One can almost smell the optimism - a feeling that this will, indeed, be a better year than last.
Our country's long summer break, I was taught, has its roots in our historically agricultural economy. The majority of kids attending school in the U.S. until about 100 years ago were farm kids. And farm kids were expected to help during the summer months on the farm.
And as a farm kid growing up in the 50s and 60s, this was still sort of true. I did "walk beans" and help put up hay in the summer, along with my regular year-round chores that mostly involved some sort of animal waste removal (which served as good experience for so many future tasks.)
There are, as far as I can tell, no agriculture-related reasons to keep the kids home in the summer anymore. Technology has largely replaced manual labor. Genetically modified soy beans don't need to be walked and hay is now stored in huge round bales, not small square ones, and not loaded on racks and stored in mows.
We've all read and experienced the loss of skills some kids experience as a result of not being in school for a couple months. I have argued for year-round schools before.
But I am beginning to think that the long summers are on balance good things. That an extened break is needed for everyone, students and staff alike, to gain some perspective, get a little bored, do a different kind of work, play a little more seriously, and begin to miss each other.
What would happen if each year everyone was required to take a 12 week hiatus from their jobs, their marriages, their parents/children, their churches, their social networks, and their hobbies? Wouldn't we all come back to these relationships with blank notebooks and sharp pencils and optimism and even renewed appreciation?
Welcome back, everyone. May this be your best school year EVER!
Photo of round hay bales Lake Jefferson, MN, 2003.
Reader Comments (5)
12 weeks? Wow, you guys are lucky. We get 8. Of course a few extra unpaid "furlough" days this year have dampened the motivation, but I'm still excited to see what my students have been up to all summer.
As one of those farm kids who stayed very busy over the summer, the 'holiday' was full of activities, both work and play. Unfortunately I fear that too many children do not receive the kind of diverse stimulation which could enrich young minds and prepare them for the start of school. Then it's up to the skilled and dedicated teacher to ignite the learning candles and defuse the somnambulism of unsupervised media exposure.
I agree with you. Summer is the time for everyone to rejuvenate (students and teachers alike). It also helps us reconnect with family and friends when during the school year we have zero time to just enjoy being around our loved ones.
I worked in a year-round school and I loved the breaks we had. Summer in North Carolina is pretty hot but 3 weeks in September was glorious. Having a 2 1/2-3 week break every nine weeks kept the kids and teachers refreshed but there was no loss of momentum. The hard part for parents in this district is that there is no year-round high school so they could end up with students in both traditional and year-round. That can be inconvenient.
Hi Ninja,
You have to remember that those 12 weeks are the only time we in Minnesota can be outdoors without the risk of frostbite taking a body part.
Doug
Hi Paul,
Thanks for reminding me that I come to many of my observations from a very middle class POV. I know that for many kids it's not just a lack of activities, but a lack of food that makes their summers long.
Doug
Hi Dottie,
Were I in charge, I'd probably go with the 3 month long breaks instead of the one longer one as well. Sanity keepers!
Doug