DR. DAVID HOPSON
As our students look forward to the end of school on Friday, June 27 and the lazy, crazy days of summer are upon us, let me remind everyone of the need to remain focused on maintaining your children’s skill set over the summer. One of the major advantages cited for expanding the school year is minimizing the loss of skills and knowledge by students over the long summer break. Given the economic times we’re presently in, I don’t see local, state, or the federal governments providing the significant additional money it would take to substantially increase the length of the school year as a mandatory means of improving student performance.
This doesn’t mean that students have to lose the advantage of doing some academic work throughout the year. Rather, it shows the need for families to ensure that students maintain their academic skills throughout the summer. While many may groan at this thought, these summer activities don’t have to mimic what happens in school. Most educators would point to the need to ensure that students read throughout the year and especially during the summer break when there are only a few required reading assignments for advanced placement courses. Reading, whether it be the classics, more modern novels, magazines, newspapers, comics, or online articles and information all provide the continuing practice of reading and literacy skills needed to start the school year with an edge over students who do not read consistently over the summer.
Families can also do much with inquiry-based learning over the summer, including applied mathematics to determine time and distance in daily trips or on a summer vacation; estimating the total bill during a shopping trip; or planning the cost of a desired activity. If you’re lucky enough to get children outside for a substantial portion of the day, consider the science lessons to be found in nature or the physics involved in various athletic activities. In short the opportunities are endless, it’s just up to families to provide an appropriate direction and encouragement for ensuring that activities contain an education component, and your children don’t even need to know!
These types of activities do make a difference in student performance and success in school. It’s easy enough these days to find research demonstrating the long-term economic and life benefits of education and that these benefits increase substantially with the amount of education one obtains. Together, families and the schools can provide for an excellent education that encourages lifetime learning and provides for opportunities beyond high school. The Class of 2014 from Gateway has 80 percent of its members attending post-secondary education with 20 percent reporting as first-generation college attendees. As we’ve seen over the past few years, many graduates are choosing to get the basic college courses completed at a lower expense by attending community colleges. For the Class of 2014 we have 19 students attending a two-year college, 23 attending a public 4-year college and 14 opting to attend a private 4-year college. As in the past, we have students attending a wide range of schools including Community Colleges (Asnuntuck, Holyoke, and Springfield), 4-year colleges (AIC, Belfast Metropolitan, Elms, Emerson, Johnson State, Lasell, Lynchburg, Mass College of Art & Design, Mass College of Liberal Arts, Middlebury, and Smith), Universities (Colgate, Lesley, Plymouth State, Salem State, University of Massachusetts Amherst, University of New Hampshire, Westfield State, and Worcester State) and others (Massachusetts Maritime Academy, Worcester Polytechnic, and the Culinary Institute of America) . In addition we have 11 graduates joining the work force immediately, 2 graduates choosing to enter military service, and 1 selecting a postgraduate year before entering post-secondary education.
While it may seem like a long time to the beginning of school, the summer will pass quickly (yet another example of how the days may often drag by but the months fly by). As a reminder, students return to school on Thursday, August 28th. May everyone enjoy their summer and find ways to make education part of the everyday life of our students as a prelude to the reality of lifelong learning.
