School Reform

My two-cents on school scheduling:

Elementry school should be year round. The kids tend to forget what they've learned over long breaks. The teachers usually spend the first month or two reteaching what the kids learned before summer break. Elementry school should take place M-F 8 am to 5 pm. I'm not saying they should be in classrooms learning for 9 hours a day. They should have more recess, sports involvement, art, dance, music. It should be at the child's and parents' choice as to which of these activities they want to particapate in. One child might only want to do music, another will want to try it all, some may choose recesses filled with jump rope, jacks and kickball in leiu of structured activities. Can you imagine the children this will produce? It will also save parents on daycare or worse, leaving the kids home alone. These very young are also not exposed to older middle or high school kids.

Middle school will run a more traditional calendar. Summers off but shortened to two months. This will allow the time for summer enrichment camps and down time. Middle school should never get out before 5 pm. Most sexual/drug experimentation takes place between 3-6 pm. These kids should rarely be unsupervised and never unsupervised as a group. They also need more physical fitness. Schools need to quit making students tryout for sports and just let them participate. Right now, in middle schools across the country some student will not make a middle school team and will never tryout again. This is before they even have a chance to build any skills or develop a life-long love of physical activity.

High school students need more freedom to pursue what's important to them. They also need a good long stretch of Summer to work so they can pay for college and other necessities. High school summer break should be atleast 3 months, plus 2-3 weeks between semesters to attend camps, visit colleges, take mission trips. What they don't need are assignments during these breaks. My daughter always had assignments over Christmas, Spring and Summer breaks. Trust me she didn't put any effort into it and usually began the project 2 days prior to school starting again. I didn't used to agree but a later starting time did seem to benefit these students. The biggest plus is that they weren't on the road while I was trying to get to work. The 9 am start time actually had my daughter attending study groups and getting help from teachers prior to school.

While I know no one actually cares what I think, I just thought someone should think.