Why do we have summer vacation?

Oh boy.....

I'm venturing into very dangerous, very sensitive territory here, so please allow me to qualify a few things at the outset.

First, as anyone who follows this blog knows, my mother was a school teacher for over 20 years. So I truly appreciate how hard teachers work and the mental and physical demands of the job. I get that. I really do. Teachers, I'm on your side.

Second, as a parent, I also understand the importance of family time; of the need for a contiguous, uninterrupted block of time to play together, vacation together or just be together.

That said, I'll throw this out there.

Why do we have summer vacation?

This question occurred to me as I read the increasing number of plurks and tweets from educators eagerly awaiting the end of the school year. I understand that. I felt the same way when I was a student (14 more days to go, 13 more days to go...), and would undoubtedly feel the same way if I were a teacher. But as the parent of a school age child, and as someone who has only worked in the private sector, I find myself increasingly confused by the uniquely American phenomenon of taking nearly 2 months off from school. I addition to being out of sync with virtually every other facet of our society, I'm beginning to think that this practice has disastrous implications for the cognitive development of our children.

I'll elaborate.

Being a lawyer just sucks. Really. You work all of the time. Even if you're one of those large law firm lawyers billing $500 an hour and making a kings ransom in salary (which is the benefit), the attendant cost is that you work constantly and you have to be reminded about your children's birthdays. I know there have been entire years where I did not take a week off. There was a three year stretch where I did not take a vacation at all. I have never taken two consecutive weeks off. If I took a month off, I may as well stay wherever I landed because I'd become irrelevant or get fired.

Here's a bit of insight from behind the veil. I don't care what employers say, they don't like it when employees take vacations. They really don't. I've huddled up with enough business owners when vacation requests come in to know that they might give you the Cheshire cat grin and say: "Have a really nice vacation (toothy grin on cue)." But what they're thinking is: "I ought to fire you, you thankless sack of [expletive deleted] because while you're busy hanging out at Disneyland with the wife and kids, I'll be here running the business that allows you to pay your damn mortgage. Yeah, have fun and pray to God that I don't come across someone while you're busy getting a tan that I think is better suited to do your job."

Two months off just doesn't work in real life. Not for anything. Until Congress made it illegal, women were getting fired for getting pregnant and having babies! (An extreme and awful practice by the way). My point is this, business is not seasonal. Life is not seasonal. The "real world" for which we are preparing our kids is not seasonal.

Three words for everyone. "Employee at will." Look it up.

Point #2.

If our kids aren't in school, especially Pre-K through 8th grade children, what the hell else do they have to do? Work for the board of trade? Really, what are they going to do? Watch video games? That's healthy. Play sports? They could do that and still be in school. Go on vacation with the family? Great. Take two weeks. Now what?

Right now, parents from sea to shinning sea are scrambling to figure out what they're going to do with their little bundles of joy when that final school bell rings. I know I am. And that's all fine and good for parents with means and options; they can send their kids to camps or summer programs. But what about the millions of parents who are struggling just to keep the lights and gas on? Who can't pay their mortgage or their rent? Free summer school is an answer for some; especially in Title I schools, but this is not a systemic solution available to everyone.

All that takes a back seat to the biggest problem.

The BIGGEST problem, in my humble opinion, is that kids get REAL dumb REAL fast during the summer. It's amazing how much of the stuff we just spent the last 10 months cramming into their still developing brains gets lost. After Christmas break, my son seemed to forget how to write his name. (So now time away from school does not mean time off from school--much to my son's disdain and vocal displeasure). We take this time off, kids get a great tan and then spend the first month or so of the next school year playing "let's catch up" instead of "let's push forward." The more I think about it, the more I think this whole summer vacation thing just doesn't make sense.

Yes, there should be some time off. Some sort of summer sabbatical. According to my friend and colleague Kelly Tenkely, the schools in her county take a three week summer break and three additional three week breaks throughout the school year. This seems to make more sense to me. Kids, take your three week break and then, to use my mama's words, "get your rusty butt back in school." Now we could (and probably should) change things up a bit in the summer. We could have a shorter school day. We could change the hours so we're not getting our kids up before the crack of dawn. (Who's BRILLIANT idea was THAT anyway?) We could allow the children more free time or the ability to craft individualized lesson plans. Perhaps we could also use this time to focus on subjects that get the short shrift during the standardized test driven school year such as art, music, and yes, sports and physical exercise. We could have school camps where the kids are learning, having fun and developing a stronger sense of community. This time could be used for meaningful, more deliberate professional development rather than those awful (and generally ineffective) in service days during the school year that many teachers seem to hate.

And finally, but most importantly, perhaps this could be a time where teachers are encouraged to experiment with innovative instructional practices, such as the use and integration of technology, because they’re not consumed and driven by standardized test prep. There's a whole lot we could do during the summer that’s different if we're creative and willing to think outside of the box. It doesn’t have to be more of the same.

So what do you think? Is a summer vacation a needed and necessary respite? Or does putting the brakes on learning and saying, "we'll see you in two months" do more harm than good? Is this really right for our times; especially in high-poverty communities with a large number of at-risk students where the school might be the only stabilizing factor in their lives? Sure, this time off made sense when most of our students spent the summer harvesting crops or helping out on the farm. But if I may, this is 2009, not 1909. If you were to poll most kids in inner-city public schools today, I suspect very few of them spent their summer shucking corn.

So is “summer vacation,” like so many other traditions in our schools, something that we should take a long look at and ask ourselves, “Is this really in our student’s best interests?"

I'm open here. I'm not dogmatic about this and I'm not necessarily trying to make a case. So by all means, let me know what you think. Am I off? Are there alternatives? I'd like to know. Because I don’t need to be right. But I would like to arrive, logically and dispassionately, at the right answer. Because a lot of what we’re doing right now just isn't working.

Kids first, remember? It's a motto I see prominently displayed in most schools.

So what do we do?

13, 12, 11….the final school bell is about to ring.

What should we be doing when that final bell rings to truly put our kids first?

Yes I can......(Happy Mothers Day)

A flower is a beautiful thing.

It is fragile; easily damaged. It must be watered and nurtured. It needs good soil. It requires the warmth of he sun.

But when all of these things work together, water, earth, sun and a kind and gentle hand, a simple seed can grow and bloom into something more; something extraordinary, something.......beautiful.

And so it goes with a life.

All life.

*******************

I was a geeky, skinny little kid. My teeth were too big for my face, I wore coke bottle glasses, my hair was like steel wool, utterly impervious to combs, and unlike my brother, who was born cute, I was, well, pretty darn funny looking. I cannot count the number of times that girls in my grammar school class would say to me, "Your brother is fine. What happened to you?" Kids can be cruel in that way. It did not help that I was one of those really "smart" kids that could NOT be cool even when I tried (and I did try), I could not dance (that stereotype about all black folks having rhythm....nope, not true), and unlike my brother, who could bring it, I lacked a whit of athletic ability.

I wanted to be Michael Jackson.

Instead, I was Tito.

No worse.

I was Marlon.

But I loved to write. Writing was my escape, my refuge. Writing is what I did well.

And virtually everything I wrote, I shared with my mother. No matter how busy she was, no matter how exhausted from the physical and emotional demands of waking before the crack of dawn to teach school all day and then raise two rambunctious boys at night, she received everything I wrote with genuine enthusiasm. She carefully and conscientiously read whatever I presented, whether it was a comic book, a short story, a poem or a play, and after wading through the misspelled words and my barely legible cursive handwriting, she would look up, smile, and often say, "This is really good honey."

I knew some things were better than others. Everything I wrote couldn't be the next great American novel. But that's not how my mother made me feel. Everything was special. She made me feel special. Powerful. She made sure that I understood that what you do, what you think, what you take the time to create, means something. It's a gift. It matters.

You matter.

*******************

I will never forget one particular incident. I wrote a poem for a homework assignment. I think I was in 4th or 5th grade. My mother loved the poem. I turned it in, got a B. I was a bit disappointed, I thought the poem was better than that, but what can you do? But my mother was having none of that. She was enraged. And you have to understand something about my mother. She doesn't do enraged. Annoyed? Yes. But not enraged. My mother is the ultimate moderate; even tempered, solid, steady.

But not this day. This day, she was not pleased. She thought I got jobbed.

So without telling me, she took my poem, sent it into a magazine and they published it along with my picture. At the next parent teacher meeting, my mother hard charged in, magazine with published poem in tow, and presented it to the teacher.

How's THAT for your B?

To this day, we laugh about that.

God bless mothers.

Mother, may God bless you.

*******************

Everything I am, I do or become; all I create, all I impact, however small, I lay at your feet. There would be no blog, no JD, no me, without you. The words would not flow so freely if not for you.

If not for you, I would not have the courage to gaze into the great unknown, into the future, and think silently, but confidently...

Yes I can.

So thanks Mom.

Your lima beans, which you would make by the vat, were simply horrendous; beyond description. To this day, I will not eat a lima bean. Ever. I will not make my children eat lima beans. Ever.

But lima beans notwithstanding, you were my wind, my blessing.

You rock.

Happy Mothers Day to you and to mothers everywhere.