It’s a little early to write one of those “How I spent my summer” essays but there’s nothing wrong with getting a head start on a writing assignment. Besides, the choices and experiences for the short months between school years — for youth, teachers and all others — have multiplied and morphed since the lazier days of summer lifeguards, pumping gas or washing cars.
Summers now can include student foreign travel exchanges, rigorous pre-college classes for next year’s high school seniors, 21st Century curriculum workshops for teachers and more computer training for everyone. Even the old model of remedial summer school has changed.
All to say, the 183 school campuses in Sonoma County are not as empty as they used to be during July and August. Many are now sites of repair and renovation construction projects. Teachers are sneaking in and out of their classrooms, mindful that the new school year is just a few short weeks away. With a little extra preparation, maybe everyone can actually fit in a week of vacation camping or a short trip.
Education for our local students and schools continues to change from the impacts of technology, the ever-faster pace of life and the demands we keep putting on student achievement and ourselves.
One of the summer school activities sponsored by the Sonoma County Office of Education (SCOE) was a 21st Century Teaching & Learning Institute. Part of its aim was to challenge many old precepts about school. “The structures and practices employed in most schools today are largely based on assumptions and demands from a much earlier time,” the Institutes invitation stated. “There’s no reason to assume that these schools still meet the needs of today’s learners.”
A one-day workshop, partnered with ieSonoma (innovate, educate) featured keynote speaker Sir Ken Robinson, an internationally recognized educator. He told the group of teachers and students that the American education system that was designed at the height of the Industrial Revolution to produce people with a factory-based mentality and an assembly line production ethic is failing the higher need for creativity, innovation and imagination.
He said schools are bogged down in “a culture of testing, testing, testing.” At the same time others lament the loss of summer teenage jobs where lots of hands-on learning can happen and a universal set of work ethics can be instilled.
Thirty years ago, over half of American teenagers worked in summer jobs. Now that total is one-third, with more jobs filled by longer-working elderly and many college-bound students shunning minimum wage jobs.
But elsewhere this summer, some 100 income-eligible county students are again employed in the Summer Ecology Corps, completing habitat restoration projects and park maintenance. And, at some distance from any school, hundreds of local youth livestock exhibitors will compete at the Sonoma County Fair for prized ribbons and auction receipts. Talk about some hands-on learning, not to mention a handsome payday for future college funds.
When our county schools reopen in just a few weeks, there will be more than 70,000 students and almost 4,000 teachers ready to share their “How I spent my summer” memories.
If those stories offer a good mix of practical physical work and skill training and some flourishes of imagination, improvisation and innovation, then the new school year will start off in a good direction.
Our summer days away from school don’t look much like they used to. If our classrooms and lesson plans keep looking different too, we might finally leave behind the old Industrial Age assembly line.
School calendars and the rest of our lives aren’t as linear as they once were. All our technology, our 21st century with new global challenges and our flighty human desires have made our lives more spontaneous, surprising and open-circuited.
Try putting all that in an end-of-summer essay.
