As a child, I remember that summer was not much different from the regular school year for my family and I.  My parents would still wake me up at 6:30 in the morning and take me and my brother to summer school so that they could go to work.  I was raised in a middle, working class environment, so this is what I was used to doing.  I didn't know any different anyways.  Many of my friend's families were the same way, so, for many years, summer just felt like a season where it was hot and we didn't have to do as much homework as the regular school year.  Looking back on it now though, I realize that those summers that I spent in summer school benefited me in a way that not even my parents could understand it.

I remember that many kids in my class would return to the classroom in late August and joke around about how they had forgotten how to write because it had been so long since they had actually done any schoolwork.  On the other hand, I had spent the majority of my summer practicing my penmanship, working on my times tables, doing cool science experiments, reading books and presenting book reports about them, and even going on educational field trips.  We never necessarily learned anything new during summer school, but it did help me reinforce what we had learned the previous school year.  I remember coming into the new school year prepared to tackle whatever was going to be thrown at me in the coming nine months.

Now, I understand that nowadays, many families and parents have the privilege to stay home with their kids whenever they have breaks from school and I think that is fantastic!  I am not trying to convince you to send them off to summer school for the entire break because it will make them smarter.  No.  I am just trying to get across that when students take long breaks from education, sometimes they can stray off the tracks and start to fall behind.  I encourage you to take just a few hours a week with your students over the summer and give them a refresher on what they have already learned.  You can do things like take them to museums, art galleries, and even the local library to have them pick out a book or two to ready over the summer.  The internet is also a wonderful source where you can print out times tables for them to practice or educational programs you can download to keep them up to speed.  If you are a high school or college student, I encourage you to do the same thing and keep up to date on everything that you have studied.  

-Michael Minkoff