At my school so many high achievers would use summer school to get ahead that they had to shut it down. Those nerds were causing the actually remediate kids to feel ashamed and othered, so they would all drop out after a week or two. Year after year. I'm salty about it.
Hot take, schools should be geared towards accommodating the smartest kids, not the dumbest. There should still be safety nets like summer school, but the smartest kids should be able to learn as much as they want to
My hot take: schools should be geared to everyone. Have advanced classes, normal classes, and below average classes. The teacher can teach according to each class. Everyone should get an education.
My kid now has to sit in classrooms where kids scream, threaten people, throw things, and break shit. The teacher has had to evacuate the classroom until these kids calm down. Barely any teaching or learning takes place because these poor teachers are far too busy trying to manage these students.
My kid went from top student in every single grade to an anxious wreck because he now has to deal with kids who threaten to hurt both other students and themselves.
I'm very much for "education for all", but this ain't the way to do it. It's a fuckin' mess out there. I don't envy the kids of today in the slightest.
Those smartest kids can go test out of everything with AP, take SAT courses privately or for free. Those kids who need more helo have no fucking other chance. Experiences like these tilt them away from education entirely.
My school had two separate classes for that exact reason. Remedial summer school was Tuesday Thursday for a little bit longer, and get ahead summer school was Monday Wednesday Friday
That's interesting. At my school, summer school was only for the remedial students and there was a stigma involved with it. Basically nobody wanted to do summer school and most kids would do anything to avoid it.
Um, yeah? Teaching is not about awarding those who game the system the best. It's all about making sure that the "lowest common denominator" gets every chance to succeed.
It's not a fucking leaderboard.
Signed,
a salty fucking teacher who will defend those students to the end.
Edit: I'm gonna keep going on this because it's a subject that pisses me off to no end.
I live in a place where the rich kids can afford to tutor during the summer, and some take extra classes to "get ahead" of the school year. And you know what those kids do?
They sit in the classes, bored, because someone paid for them to do all this stuff early.
And I'm not saying that learning extracurriculars is bad, in fact, it's wonderful! But if you paid somewhere to just take the same math class that you would have done anyway, well congrats. You got nothing. You beat Mario before everyone else.
And even that would be fine, except the attitude that comes from them -- some as early as 6 years old! -- is that these fucking "remedials" are slowing them down, and they are "smart" all while a mountain of money and privilege supports them.
And do those kids feel like they should help their fellow students learn? No! They just punch down harder, because no one in their families teaches them that learning is cooperative effort. Just get to the top of that fucking leaderboard and stay there at all costs. From fucking kindergarten onwards!
I'm a teacher in training. We had reading "homework" over the summer for our incoming students. Their families were instructed that if their child read every day (15-30 minutes or so), and they kept track of it on a chart we sent them, they would win prizes when they came to school. I think it was something like a pizza party if they read a certain number of days. It wasn't mandatory and there was no punishment for not doing it. I thought it was a great idea.