Summer Means Both Fun and Worry

As excited as I am for summer and the time I will have to learn new things at ISTE in Atlanta and at the Alice training I am attending at Duke University, I'm also worried about my students at school.  Summer for them can be a time of uncertainty.  Many of the kids I work with live in poverty and the meals they know will be there for them at breakfast and lunch at school are not necessarily easily received in the summer.  Yes, my school hosts a summer feeding program; but that's no guarantee that the parents of my students will be able to get the kids to the cafeteria each day for the meals that will be offered.  I also worry about the academic backslide these kids will encounter when they are not in the rich learning environment that school provides.  So many of their parents juggle multiple jobs and deal with the stresses of living in poverty and as a result lack the time or energy to just talk with and read with their kids.  At a workshop I attended last week, we heard the data about how so many of our kids in the high poverty schools come in and make large gains and then they go home for the summer and the data collected shows that over the summer these kids can lose 4-6 months of growth during their summer backslide.  So, as we go into the last weeks of school, I know that we have to use every minute we have to grow our students as much as possible because the more they grow the better.