Year-Round School

A Sunday WA Post article suggests, for best results, modify the traditional school calendar and do away with summer vacations. The author argues kids love it.

Far from grousing about missing out on the months-long summer break that will start in a few weeks, my kids love year-round school. My daughter had no idea that she was learning chemistry when her Harry Potter class made butter beer and chocolate frogs. My son developed a much better grasp of plot and character when he had to create both on film. I love their so-called modified calendar, too.

These observations are familiar to homeschoolers. What is being referred to here are intersessions.

The atmosphere at school during intersessions even feels different. Teachers can experiment and get to know the students better in a more relaxed setting. “Problem” students, they find, are not problems when they’re deeply absorbed in a task they like. Luisa Tio, an artist who regularly teaches intersession classes, was warned about one child. Instead, he was a model student. “He was able to create these incredibly detailed portraits,” she told me. “Sometimes children need to learn in different ways.”

Done well, a modified calendar offers the possibility of transforming schools and the way children learn. One night in early January a few years ago, my son, who struggles in a regimented setting, lamented that school would be starting the next day.

“But you’ve been at school all week,” I said. He’d been solving riddles in Code Breakers to hone his problem-solving skills and making volcanos explode with baking soda and vinegar in a science lab.

“That wasn’t school,” he said. “That was intersession.”

With the feds saying “the traditional school day and school year [are] outdated and inadequate for the demands of 21st-century life”, we should start to imagine if this is a net plus or minus for homeschooling.

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The Washingotn Post
Year-Round School? My Kids Love It. Yours Will, Too. by Brigid Schulte

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/05/AR2009060501971_pf.html

Tags: intersession, modified calendar, public school, traditional school calendar

This entry was posted on June 8, 2009 at 5:22 pm and is filed under News-Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.