Even though the school year is over, this summer it is crucial that parents continue instruction to lessen the COVID-slide.
As families around the country rejoice that school and distance learning are finally over and summer is here, it is important to understand that this summer is not like your typical summer. No, I am not talking about the fact that you can’t go anywhere or do anything, I am talking about the fact the school year that preceded this summer might have been the least effective instructional school year in recent history. What does that mean for parents? Well unfortunately it means that your time as a teacher is not over yet.
The COVID-slide (explained here, here, and here) is shaping up to be significant and it makes sense considering that distance learning has been anything but consistent. In my own research I have found schools that had full schedules, schools that had one hour of instruction a day, and schools that had nothing but worksheets assigned to students. With that level of inconsistency, we already know that students are not ending the year where we anticipated they would be, and now adding in the typical summer-slide you can understand why there is concern. Bluntly, students will begin next year much further behind than in typical years.
So what, that is what summer school is for, right? Well there are some problems with that, first summer school is largely more distance learning, which means more inconsistent instruction. More instruction of any kind is better than no instruction at all, but it certainly will not fix the problem. A second problem is one of schools pulling back for fear of burning out students. Distance learning was a very stressful experience for everyone involved, and some schools are backing off from assigning summer work so as not to make a bad problem worse. I don’t necessarily disagree with the sentiment, but it trades one problem for another, how are we going to get our students catch up?
This is where parents come in. During a typical summer a student may have a workbook, or a reading list, or some other form of assignment, but as we said this is not a typical summer. I would suggest that parents take summer learning into their own hands and give their children some assignments on top of whatever it is that they already have. I understand that parents rely on schools to do this but as established, schools may have made decisions that they normally do not make. Now, I am not suggesting that you enroll your student in online classes (although you could, there are many services and we provided some in a previous article) but rather take more of an active role in the learning. Have a book reading club with your child, have a contest to see how many books your child can read, read a book and watch the movie to discuss the differences, etc. Make it fun and organic, but become part of the process.
Summer time usually means lazy days and less structure. This summer may have to be different, parents might have to take a larger role in their child’s summer learning and even assign their own work. Usually this falls on schools, but in this case, I feel that parents need to supplement whatever schools have assigned in order to ensure that their child returns to school ready to succeed. The coronavirus has forced all of us to make many sacrifices and take on many new roles, and it seems that it is not over yet, but this shift could be a fun one for the whole family and who knows, it may become a new tradition.