Summer School Can Be a Great Place for Your Child

During our school years, I and later our son, attended summer school.

I grew up on a farm until we moved into town after my parents divorced and sold the farm. While we lived on the farm, we had a long, hot and boring summer to get through until school started back up in the fall when we didn't
spend that summer with our grandparents.

After we moved to town, my mother went back to school to become a nurse. While she was in school, she put us in the community summer recreation programs for those two years. It was not a good situation with little supervision and not enough structure. My brothers constantly got into fights and other trouble. I spent those summers hiding from what became years of bullying in school and at church.

After my mother graduated she got a job in private practice and she put us in summer school. It was the best thing she could have ever done. I absolutely loved summer school. Since many of us students really didn't need to be there for academic reasons, the teachers made the subjects a lot of fun and with a lot less pressure.

We were introduced to subject matter that was never presented during the regular school year. It was like going away to camp but inside the building.

I went through summer school all the way from sixth grade to the end of high school. I remember one summer I decided to take drama because it was offered. There was no pressure to be the best because this was summer school with no awards attached. So I became one of the best in the class because it was fun.

Our son started talking early. But somewhere along the way, he stopped speaking English and retreated into his own language. When it was time to put him in school he was beginning to become intelligible. It didn't take long for his need for extra help to show up in the classroom.

Since my husband and I were the head teacher's special volunteers we were able, along with our son's kindergarten teacher, request early disability testing for our son. He was assigned to the SLD, single learning disabilities, program and was required to attend summer school.

Summer school was the best thing that our son could have ever gone into because he was assigned the most sympathetic and creative teachers who made him one of their heroes. This helped his self-esteem and encouraged him that he could succeed.

The results of his summer school participation versus his regular school years were starkly different.

As wonderful as summer school was it didn't make up for the teachers which he got in his regular school year. Except for his second grade teacher, none of his teachers made the extra effort that the summer school teachers had made.

The teachers just passed him along from grade to grade without making sure that he had actually learned anything. They never told us anything about his lack of performance in the classroom and just spoke unintelligible, disjointed words to me when I confronted them about it.

His first SLD teacher tried to manipulate us into putting him into an enclosed SLD only, school. That would have helped her. But it would not have helped our son to learn how to navigate the real world. We found out later that she was also mistreating him.

By the time we removed him from school at the end of third grade, he was barely reading first grade material even though the rest of his subjects were up to his grade level.

I home-schooled our son until he graduated from high school. When we first took him out of school I set his education track on two parallels in first grade reading along with fourth grade in all other subjects. In two years
his subjects were all in the same sixth grade level.

Some of the things that really helped were what I learned from my own experiences from summer school and what I had witnessed with his summer schooling.

I took the pressure off where I could and tried to do special subjects when it was possible. One year, our science project was on which spiders would make good pets since I found him collecting black and brown widow spiders.

Since he was the only student there was no pressure for him to be better than anyone else. He just needed to improve his own performance. I used his end of chapter tests as learning experiences instead of a time of measuring what he had learned.

However, he took the yearly achievement test which showed each year that he was improving subject by subject. By the time of his high school graduation his achievement test placed him at the end of the first year of college in all subjects.

The other thing I learned from summer school was that by keeping the educational flow going throughout most of the summer there was no lapse in his mental function.

I decided to become one of those year round homeschoolers. That helped in his ability to meld his reading and other subjects to one grade level in two years, it enabled me to take him on our mission trips without any disruption in his learning and it also helped during those really difficult high school years when we both thought negative thoughts about each other.

If your child is in the public school system, or even in a private school I would suggest checking out your local public school for their summer requirements and which sessions are being offered. It could be the opportunity of a lifetime for your child.

Sources:

http://cjhs.chicousd.org/

http://chs.chicousd.org/

http://www.familiesoffaithchristianacademy.com/