Back. To. School. Never has three simple words had such power over human emotion. To a kid, “back to school” signals the end of summer fun and a return to strict rules and schedules--and worse, homework. (UGH!) To a parent, it can mean freedom; not having to drive a “bored” whiner from one activity to the next, or worry about where a teen is hanging out or what they might be up to. For the drained parent, those three words offer a Hallelujah! ray of light at the end of a ten-week-long tunnel. (Finally! A chance to breathe and regain some sanity!) For the child, it signals a time to reflect on what is about to be lost...and to grieve. (Okay, a tad dramatic, but we all remember how we felt that last week of summer break). By mid-August, most parents are knee deep into back-to-school preparations. Everyone with a school-aged kid knows how hectic it can be. Between appointments, paperwork, and shopping, it’s a wonder anyone survives. With everything that must be done in such a short period of time, parents often overlook how hard going back to school can be on their kid. …show more content…
Preparing children emotionally for a safe, productive and rewarding school year is just as important as completing all those tasks.
Having a heart-to-heart with your student could help them let go of anxiety, develop resiliency, and, as a result, make them feel better about going back to school. Here is a list of suggested topics to
tackle: Ask your child how they feel about returning to school. Discuss their concerns. Talk about respectful social interactions, peer pressure and bullying. Go over the school’s handbook. Cover the rules so they know what to expect. Discuss what your child is expected to learn in his/her grade. Make a general plan for success. Include a daily schedule. Discuss how to balance homework with after-school activity. Work together to create a dedicated work space. Go over how your child will get to school. Discuss safety concerns. Make sure your child knows where to go each day. If they are walking, get out for a practice run (or several). Discuss what it means to be a safe pedestrian. If you have a young child, make sure they know their address and phone number and what to do if they are approached by a stranger. Establish a firm bedtime schedule and make a plan for sticking to it. Tell them a funny story about you when you entered the same grade. It doesn’t matter how old you are, starting something new is often nerve-wracking. Having a good talk about it can make a world of difference. So, if you haven’t already, take some time out from that back-to-school madness to reconnect with your kid. Everyone involved will be better off for it.
Family vacations, pool memberships, and corn de-tasseling; these have been the experiences of traditional Midwestern summers. For centuries young American children have attended school during the winter months, during farming off seasons when their families could afford to be without them. Families have grown accustomed to a traditional school calendar that provides time for bonding throughout the year. Students have grown accustomed to an eight week break during the summer months where they are allowed to refresh their minds before returning for a new school year. Unfortunately, these traditional experiences and practices are now in jeopardy. In today’s race to improve student achievement, traditional school calendars have become a point of contention. Today more and more school districts and parents alike have begun to debate the pros and cons of an alternative school calendar.
Have you ever began a book only to find that after a few chapters into it a more important task comes up that must be given attention to and you don’t make it back to the book for some time. The ensuing matter has been taken care of and now it is time to finish that novel that thought was so great you just couldn’t put it down but, where did you exactly leave off and what character are doing what now? Often it is required to skim a few previous chapters to get a sense of what is going on to give the full focus to the new events taking place. As the summer ends, the leaves begin to change and our school children return to the classroom to begin this very similar task. Instead of rereading a few pages, teachers must review with every student were they are scholastically and every student is very different. Almost a month into the new school year last year’s material is covered and reviewed. Our traditional school calendar may be to blame for our failing schools systems. Can schools attending year round with smaller gaps of time off from learning benefit the student learners? Better retention of material, higher graduation with college enrollment increases and safer downtime alternatives are a few reasons why the traditional education plan should be done away with.
Saunders, M. (2004, September 7). Try year-round school: The lazy days of summer may hurt children who struggle in school the rest of the time. Atlanta Journal-Constitution, pp. 14A, Retrieved November 6, 2004, from Lexus-Nexus.
"It was really hard to get involved in the work because as soon as you geared up, you had to gear back down again.”("The Pros and Cons of Year-Round Schools") Here a example of how the school year will look. Also with the fact that some teacher have kids that won’t go to the same school has the parent so it one is on year round school and the other isn’t they won’t have the same vacation. So the teacher will have a lot more trouble to make such that the child is taken care
After a long summer, the time has finally come for Sam and his classmates to return to school. Sam dreads going back to school, because he knows that the first weeks of school mean long, boring reviews. Despite the fact that Sam and his friends do not like to study topics they have already learned, they need to review because most students forget what they learned over the three-month break period. Many students can relate to Sam, wasting two weeks or more at the beginning of the school year. Parents, teachers, and students across the United States believe a better option exists that will waste less time. Many suggest the idea of a year-round school schedule. Almost all schools should adopt a year-round schedule because of the many advantages including higher academic
So here you are you are on the last day of school, eager to be off for almost 12 weeks but then you remember the school changed and now you only have a 5 week break. I know it feels sort of a disappointment right? That is how many kids across the U.S feel as they are talking to their buddies about what they could do over a 12 week break. This is only one of the many things that are wrong with year round school, and why it should be stopped. Students should not attend year round school for educational, and vocational and stress relieving reasons.
Taking a closer look at dropout rates; discipline worries; low test scores; excessive grades of C, D and F; and a lack of interest among the majority of exceptional students confirms that the status quo of nine month school systems are not the answer. Experience teachers seemed to reach consensus that these negative trends were reduced when schools had more frequent breaks. Social fact deals with traditional family vacation time. The majority of working parents were permitted approximately two weeks of vacation time per year. Researchers varied their definition of year-round education school systems. The majority of the school plans maintained the usual 180 school days (Bradford) with short one or two week breaks throughout the year. Employment of a multitrack or single-track program was based on school needs. If excessive population or reducing the budget was the primary concern, multitrack was chosen for increased school size by assigning students and teaches to targeted groups. Each time these tracks or groups went on break, the classrooms were just simply used by other groups and teachers. Highlighting a few of the plans, the most popular one according to (Weaver), was the 45-15 method. Fourth-five days of formal instruction followed with 15 days of vacation, repeated four times during the school year. (Glines) defined school calendars consisted of the same principle but
Niche claims, “For many K-12 students across the country, springtime marks the end of the school year. But the semester’s just heating up for students in more than 3,000 schools in the United States that operate under a year-round school system”. (Warrant B) To give an illistration, “The most obvious downside of year-round school is the effect it can have on families. Quality family time decreases by 30 percent and is very important to the emotional and developmental well being of a child. Not having a summer break can make it difficult to schedule meaningful family time” On the contrast, school maintenance costs, including day-to-day upkeep and utilities, can increase up to 10 percent if schools are open for year-round. In addition, students who have difficulty with attention, due to a disability or because children are not developmentally ready to attend for longer periods of time, are unlikely to get more out of a longer school day (Morin). In spite of having 10 months of school and 2 months off this can be ineffective for multiple
3..2..1.. summer the yearlong torturer of another school year is over and summer has begun but what do we forget during our break, students traditionally return to school to repeat the process of acclimating to new teachers, new classmates, and a new classroom. Students struggle to remember lessons and assignments they have not been taught for months. The summer learning loss, many schools have implemented year-round schooling. The Association for Year-Round Education reported that in 2007 that 3,000 year-round schools enrolled more than 2 million students in the United States. But does the research show that year-round schooling really pays off? Students in year-round schools do as well or slightly better in terms of achievements than students in traditional schools.
Full year schools are numbered at three thousand eighty-one nationwide (in 2002-2003), compared to the roughly ninety-five thousand schools that are not year-round. This shows how little faith and trust is had towards this new, yet stale, initiative of inadequacy already, as schools continue to switch back from year round to traditional. One of the three most common ways in which students experience this deficiency is the forty-five-fifteen plan, in which seven weeks (forty in-school days) of school occurs, followed by three weeks (fifteen days) of vacation. The second is the sixty-twenty plan; twelve weeks of school followed by four weeks of vacation. The third organization of days is the ninety-thirty plan, effectively splitting summer in twain. Some elaboration, however, is required: each of these schemes has only one hundred eighty days, equivalent to the number days in a normal school year.
For the past three or so years now, there have been many controversies on whether schools should start at a later time. There are definitely many pros and cons if school were to start at a later time, but many teenagers would greatly appreciate it. Nowadays lately, especially in our generation that is full of technology and socializing, students tend to stay up much later than they should be. This not only causes many problems for a student’s health itself, but also pushes many problems into a teacher’s hand. This leads to the conclusion that schools should start a much later time.
My Mom was very “Autocratic” (Popkin) about this issue. She is the youngest child of seven and every one of her siblings received awards for never missing a day of school in all twelve years. They were recognized in the town newspaper for this achievement combined with never missing a day of Sunday School. My older brother never missed a day of school from K-12. I missed one day in 4th grade when instead I went to the doctor because I insisted on staying home. My younger sisters both missed a day or two. One broke her leg but only missed about one day, the youngest was granted permission to miss school in High School for my Grandmother’s funeral. My brother left for his mission in August before school started so we got to go to the MTC to see him off; however when he left for Mexico, only my parents went to the airport to see him off (back in the days prior to the TSA when you could wait at the gate to say good-bye). My sisters and I were in school that day because my mom didn’t feel that was a valid reason to miss school. I went to school in 8th grade after throwing up in the morning. I remember feeling absolutely horrible all day and running into the bathroom at lunch to throw-up again. Clearly, missing school was not-negotiable for any reason. This issue handled in an autocratic style has had interesting effects on me. On the one hand I feel guilty when my children stay home from
They should be able to have enough time in the afternoon to distract themselves with other healthy activities which ensure the development of new skills and is also relaxing. Many students’ everyday activities may also be affected. Students who like to read or do their homework in the library or just spend time in any other public place will be affected since they will have less time in them because of later release times. According to Rachel Pancare, who holds a Master of Science in childhood education, "An earlier release offers many children a chance to relax or take a break before beginning their homework assignments." With the new schedule, students will be too centralized on school which can lead to stress. It is important to combat or relieve stress since it can lead to a huge variety of other problems or disorders like unhealthy eating habits, sleep deprivation, and depression, which end up affecting academics. However, these health concerns are just as likely to be present if the school schedule starts early in the
Are kids not spending enough time at school? Kids now-a-days spend about seven and a half hours at school five times a week, and sometimes less due to holidays or other occasions. According to Meg Stewart in “More Time in School” she says that the kids school schedule is “outdated” as well as created to help a generation where kids had to go back home to help their parents with farm duties. Times have changed and the only person kids usually come home to is one parent or guardian. She also mentions how kids schedules interfere with their parents’ work schedule so they should accommodate the parents work hours. Due to lack of time spent at school extra curriculum activities have been removed, so those should be re-integrated. Overall, she says
One extra day of school cuts into precious relaxation time of students and teachers alike.