There's Education....and Then There's Learning

     This week, our school is finishing state-mandated testing in grades 3-8. For students, this amounts to approximately two hours of computer-based assessment for three or four days (depending upon the grade level). Despite the fact that proctoring this testing elicits a feeling akin to mowing my half-acre yard with a reel mower, I do get moderate satisfaction out of watching middle school students choose the correct spelling of diagnose and choose the author's purpose for a piece of writing.

     During my recess from testing, I returned to my classroom to open the latest package sent by the fine people at the ASCD office. The book inside was Suzy Pepper Rollins' Learning in the Fast Lane: 8 Ways to Put ALL  Students on the Road to Academic Success.  The everydayness of teaching always puts me up for a fresh perspective on education, and I got it right in chapter one.

     Pepper Rollins quotes a 2004 study which stated, "What students already know when they enter the classroom—before we [educators] have even met them—is the strongest predictor of how well they will learn the new curriculum." (Marzano, 2004). 

     As an ELA teacher, I struggle every year with the idea of assigning summer homework. There is a delicate balance to be found between keeping up with academic rigor and allowing students time to step away from the very grind that teachers experience. Many of my peers have concrete beliefs in assigning summer novels or other work, and research backs the idea up. Students are said to lose anywhere from 20-40% of their previous year's education over the course of the summer. (I would argue that in the balanced schedule system found in our area of the country, in which summer is now less than 8 weeks long, this percentage might be slightly lower).  Regardless, loss is loss, and only requires review again in the fall.

    In light of this loss and the research mentioned previously about life experience, I would like to offer this assignment to my students, for the summer:

Go out and add to your life.

Become better at something for the next 10 weeks.

Try to make it something that doesn't require internet access for more than 10 minutes at a time.

     I read an article today about a local brother and sister who have rejuvenated their grandmother's for-profit fishing lakes. I would rather my students use the summer to fish, kayak, play neighborhood kickball, learn to knit, take-up playing the guitar, woodwork, build a treehouse, or participate in a hundred other "old school" activities than simply reading a novel because I told them it was required. Learn a skill that was important when your parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents were young. Become good at it, good enough that you would be proud to demonstrate it for a grade next fall. Choose something that is interesting, nay cool, because of its novelty in antiquity and tradition. 

    Come back to school in the fall (or in our case, July), with something to write about (other than the thirty-nine different skills needed to play volleyball, how to bake a cake from a boxed mix, or how to succeed at "Clash of Clans"--these subjects alone made-up 80% of this year's procedural essays in my classes).  Be ready to share your findings, your failures, your successes. 

     Students will not appreciate Tom and Huck sneaking away to a swimming hole if they themselves don't know what a swimming hole is (hint: it doesn't generally involve chlorine, and there are probably frogs everywhere). How can I expect students to love and appreciate Karana's loneliness and strife for survival on a desolate island if the only islands they know lie between city streets? Can one cry for joy when Albert and Joey are reunited, if one has never actually known a horse, or the love of another wounded animal? 

So students, your summer work has been assigned thusly. I will await your stories with wonder and excitement.


Until the next bell,

~K.