According to Screenflex, “For a kid, there is nothing better than summer break. No pencils, no books, no more teachers with dirty looks; for a kid, an endless summer would be the best thing in the world.”(Screenflex1) The ongoing debate amongst our educational system revolves around the question of whether or not schools should be year-round. Educators are focusing on this question after looking at research that shows the United States is one of a few countries that has more than seven weeks of vacation in a row. These educators believe that this is the reason for lower math and reading scores in the United States compared to other countries. Will your kids be the next to kiss that long summer vacation good-bye? I believe children …show more content…
Whether it’s a summer camp that is away from home or one that is a day camp, both offer children learning opportunities. Summer camps keep the children physically active. Hiking, running, swimming, climbing are just a few activities that will keep them busy. Too many children spend most of their time these days inside sitting down in front of a TV either watching movies or playing video games. One big advantage for summer camps is that it lets kids be kids. According to Rock Brook Camp, it is important for kids to “have free time for unstructured play – Free from the overly-structured, overly-scheduled routines of home and school, life at camp gives children much needed free time to just play. Camp is a slice of carefree living where kids can relax, laugh, and be silly all day long.”(Rock Brook2) Summer camps help build life-long skills and make a child more confident in themselves. Camps can provide the right equipment and facilities for children to enhance their sports abilities and their musical talents. Summer camps also offer a variety of activities that makes it easy for kids to discover what they may like to do. Without parents and teachers guiding their every move, children can learn to make decision for themselves; build self-confidence and self-esteem. Finally, summer camps help children learn social skills, make new friends and reconnect with the …show more content…
It can be hard for teens to find a job for the summer. It can be even harder to find a job that one can only work a few weeks here and there throughout the year. According to Tracy Morgan, an additional benefit of working during the summer is “it offers a much wider perspective on life, and mixing with people they might not normally have the opportunity to meet is a great eye-opener to the world around them.”(Morgan 4) Summer jobs help teach important life skills, such as having to deal with issues or problems that take place. These summer jobs can give teens valuable work experience, which looks great on a resume. They can also help teens network, and could provide useful contacts to possible work in the future. Furthermore, going to work regularly offers teens the chance to develop their time-management skills, and with that, comes a sense of responsibility. A summer job is great for the teen’s self-esteem. They can feel empowered and experience a sense of achievement. Working in the summer months also provides greater independence, allowing teens to quietly pull away from the parental-guarded environment, which will help pave the way to adulthood. A summer job could also help the teen learn to manage their money and could help explore potential career pathways for the
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.
Another significant reason is summer vacation needs to be longer. The primary reason for this is children need time to wind down and relax before they have to go back to school. For instance, during the summer children relax and prepare for school, if they...
The change of the system to include summer breaks was due to issues not quite under their
One of the most talked about issues of schooling today, would be year round schooling. The program started as a new way to learn. The old way and still the way most schools calendar is set up was designed the way it is due to harvest times, when the United States was a farming country. There have been many studies done, and some schools have already implemented this program. The studies and the schools that have gone ahead and implemented the program have seen both good things and bad things in their findings. There will be both pros and cons for every issue, and some may see pros and cons differently. Year round schooling is the idea of attending school for an entire year, not all 365 days, but continuously throughout the year. Year round schooling operates on a different schedule to incorporate the same amount of classroom time as a typical school schedule has. The only difference is that the breaks are shorter, but there are more of them in year round schooling. This is the basis of most of the arguments for and against year round schooling.
The United States has a long and proud history of providing public education to its citizen’s children. The fundamental idea behind the creation of this educational system was that it be available to all, regardless of geographical location or family status. In the era that this initiative was generated many of America’s families lived and worked on farms, and children were a vital part of this lifestyle. The founders of the United States’ public schools had to create a plan that included all children, even those who were expected to perform agricultural work in the harvest season. Thus, the nine-month school calendar was brought into use, allowing farming children a three month break from school in the summer to aid their families in the crop yield. In time, youth participation in farming became outdated and obsolete, and this arrangement slipped from necessity to simply being a tradition held on to through the years. In our modern era, a year-round school calendar would benefit the teachers, students, and finances of America’s public schools.
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.
There are various models of YRS that can be implemented, all of which are reconfigurations of the traditional, nine-month calendar. In some areas these models are known as alternative or modified calendars (Shields & Oberg, 2000) and they all have unique characteristics. Because of theses differences, school systems should spend some time analyzing which model will be best for their particular school; educators may find that some models work better than others depending on the school. Estimates on the exact number of year round schedules vary, although it has been estimated that at least 50 different scheduling patterns exist (Palmer & Bemis, 1999). The most common alternatives include the single track calendar and the multi-track calendar.
Year round schooling is becoming increasingly popular in the United States, and has shown positive academic benefits for students enrolled in year round schools. Many countries implement year round schooling, and academic ability of their students greatly surpasses those of the United States. Year round schooling, as well as increase in school days should be implemented in schools nationwide in the United States. The need for long summer vacations is non-existent, as society has become industrialized. Implementing year-round schooling, and increasing the number of school days will allow the United States to invest more time into education in order to grow and build academic success.
Year round school or the modified school year is a rearrangement of the traditional school year to provide the students with continuous learning throughout the school year. Students receive the same amount of instructional time as a traditional school. In year round schools, the instructional time is balanced without of school time more evenly. (Winter, 2005) The National Association for Year Round Schooling defines it as “a schedule which contains no break lasting longer than eight weeks-schools are able to keep their students in constant learning mode, and are able to use the intersessions between periods of schooling to address the problems of students who are falling behind.” (St. Gerard, 2007, pg. 57) There are three common tracks of year round schooling. They are the single track, multitrack, and extended year. The single track is scheduled throughput the year into intersessions which allow time for enrichment or red-mediation. The multitrack is used to help schools reduce overcrowding. The school divides the teachers and students into groups of an equal size. Each group has its own schedule. One group is on intercession while the other is in school. The extended year increases the amount of time spent in schools from 180 days to as many as 240 days a year. (McGlynn, 2002)
For years, parents and educators have debated the advantages and disadvantages of the traditional school calendar, which has long summer vacations for all students.The longer you are away from school, the more you lose what you learned in the previous year. Studies have shown that children who know English as a second language benefit the most from year-round education because during the long summer break, they may not hear English for several months. Long summer breaks is a problem for traditional schools and the solution is to substitute traditional schools for year-round schools.
On the another hand some people might say that kids forget a lot of what they learned during the school year during the ‘summer break’. According to Rebecca Klein, summer comes to an end and kids go back to school but some kids may have forgot what they learned the pervious school year. Kids family’s that don’t make a lot of money may be more that risk of summer learning loss. According to Klein, the Survey found that 66 percent teachers have to spend three to four weeks re-teaching students course material at the beginning of the year.” Teachers agree that learning comes from summer vacation.
Would you consider going to a school where you learn year-round? Maybe this would be your ideal school, but, when would you get to have some time to go to summer camp, or get a summer job, or play a sport with games during the day? Schools with the traditional schedule may actually be a better choice, and not just because kids love summer break. Schools should have a traditional school year schedule instead of a year round schedule because there isn’t a significant difference between the students’ performance, and year round schedules make planning family vacations hard, make the teachers’ job more difficult, and are more expensive. Also, having a summer break allows kids to participate in activities that they would not be able to do on a year round schedule due to the shorter breaks.
Should school be year round? Well, I say yes because our young people will get done with High School faster. And if school was year round, students will not have a chance to get in a lot of trouble and they will not be able to join a gang or have time to hang on a block because they will not have a long summer break. Somebody needs to bring this problem to the school board to see if they will make the change to save many students’ lives by keeping them off the streets and keeping them in school all year long. If the children were in school longer, they will most likely turn out better, but it’s up to the people of communities to push kids through school. I believe parents need to stand up for their kids’ rights to help them have a better future by helping to make school last all year.
The camp is meant for the scouts to grow their skills while still having fun. A lot of people just think that scouting is outdoors and camping as American is apple pie and baseball. The summer camp experience can really change a scout’s perspective due to the amount of scouts that want to possibly accomplish the same goals as you. Through out summer camp you can participate in many activities like staff vs. camper dodgeball, frog calls, archery, and many more. The merit badge sessions, or classes as some say, can teach the scouts skills that will live with them for the rest of their lives like cooking, orienteering, fishing, camping, swimming, and much more. Although those are skills that they can also learn outside of scouts, the way that the program has it set up, you learn a lot more than you would of if you just teach your child the
Summer vacation is legendary. An integral part of American culture, it is loved by students and loathed by parents. Its influence stretches as far as the economy and media of the country. Nevertheless, such a famed part of American educational customs is unnecessary and even detrimental to students. Its institution hinders learning and it can have a damaging effect on the families and students involved.