And the Livin' is Easy...

It's time for the annual round of teachers-in-summer blogs. These come in several flavors: Ambitious (with a side helping of enrichment). Justification (a.k.a. "I work harder than you know"). The traditional, obligatory Reading List for Teachers. (This one blew me away--three books involving Nazis, Charles Murray of Bell Curve fame, and...Daniel Pink? ) A Snarky Saga of the Last Days of '08-'09 (where someone almost gets punched out, speaking of tense and irritable...). Plus two new cable TV shows for your summer viewing pleasure, featuring garden-variety, nice-guy teachers. One manufactures and sells high-test meth to build a nest egg for his family (since he's dying of cancer), and the other sells his own substantially endowed body since he doesn't make enough money teaching to keep his children happy and a roof over his head.

Moral of all the stories: Teaching is an undesirable low-prestige, low-salary, high-stress job--and teachers can no longer publicly say the three best things about teaching are June, July and August.

The answer to all these trials seems clear to me. The traditional school calendar is way past its expiration date, and should be abandoned. Its flaws are well-known:  too much time off in the summer, too much review needed in the fall--not enough well-used time, crammed into too few days. The agrarian calendar represents a wildly inefficient use of resources, and the folks who support it do so for reasons that have nothing to do with education. All of the barriers to changing the calendar--busing, sports, vacations, staffing, summer camps, cheap labor for summer businesses-- can be effectively addressed. 

My personal preference would be a modular calendar, with four- to six-week curricular units, offered flexibly, year-round--through both in-building residencies and on-line. Students would be required to be "in school" a minimal number of days (say, 180) but could select additional modules to attend school 200 or 220 days a year. Short vacations would be scheduled between modules. Students could enter the system at multiple points in the year (September, January, June) and finish when all the modules were successfully completed. Nobody would "fail a grade," because a module could be re-taken if material wasn't mastered. There are dozens of ways to improve the school calendar.

I find it amazing--and get huffy and defensive--when I am reminded that a significant chunk of the general public still thinks that teachers are working only when there are students in front of them. The first step in changing that perception is not going to be strongly worded blogs, however. It will be banishing the lazy, crazy 10-week summer vacation.

A few years ago, a local reporter interviewed me for a story on what teachers do in summer. I ran through the usual agenda: planning, reading, looking at new music, cleaning the percussion cabinet, taking a class, directing the community band. They sent out a photographer for a photo. We had coffee on my deck--and he persuaded me to stretch out in our backyard hammock with my own summer professional reading. The photo (below) made the front page of the paper. 

And---I got a call from a School Board member, that evening. He was dismayed that I would agree to a photo suggesting that I was "laying around" [sic] all summer, doing nothing. The Board wished another shot had been chosen. Perhaps a glamorous pose of me cleaning out the spit-valves on the school-owned euphoniums?  I declined to give him the brief lecture on Urgent vs. Important that came to mind. But we have a long way to go before teaching is a real profession in the public's mind.

Images: Livingston County Press-Argus; k.l.macke

Comments

[Ariel Sacks]

Nice picture, Nancy! ha, ha. Yes, of all the shots they could have chosen, they just had to have you lying around. Anyway, enjoyed reading your ideas about a new school calendar. You combined a number of ideas I keep hearing about into something I could sort of picture, and might make life a little less crazy as a teacher. As of now, I feel like I must surrender everything but my soul during Sept. thru June, then become a totally different person in the summer--yes I still work, but I feel completely different. It is imbalanced. I would be in favor of some changes.

[Nancy Flanagan]

Balance, for teachers, students and families, should be the goal. I wish I had a dollar for every mother who told me, four weeks into summer break, that her kids were ready to go back to school.

I'm in favor of a month off in summer--and regular 4-day weekends and weeks off interspersed with periods of intensive learning. Change is good for people and society. And the calendar is something everyone talks about--but there is no systemic will to change.

Thanks for stopping by.

[Mr. Teacher Person]

Great segue from humor to message. I love the modular calendar - having time to digest and plan from more frequent, discrete chunks of assessment would be great, as would more frequently bringing closure, recognition, and celebration to student achievement. Certainly, the February doldrums would improve.

It would also be great to re-group students more frequently by strengths and needs - with a willing PLC in a modular schedule you could shuffle kids to their advantage much more meaningfully than just by grade and "level," and play to PLC members' strengths as teachers and differentiators.

[Nancy Flanagan]

Mr. Teacher Person,

Exactly! Gutting and changing our mental model of the school calendar is also very 21st century thinking. Schools are often accused of being stuck in the past. This would be a great step forward.

[Mark Gardner]

I agree... lets go modular. Now the question is: how?

This is where I think education reform and real improvement in the system tends to sputter. It will take real change, and serious growing pains to make this change. Even though it clearly would be better for students, society is to intolerant of these kinds of growing pains...so how can we accomplish this? My feeling is that until the calendar changes, nothing else about education is going to really change.

[David Cohen]

I was recently in Australia and New Zealand, and the students and parents I talked to there all liked their system: 10 weeks on, 2 weeks off, and 6 weeks off around Christmas and New Year's.

[Nancy Flanagan]

Mark is right-- making the switch would take a concentrated, systemic effort. And lots of people would be invested in the old system, and eager to highlight start-up glitches in a new system.

Kind of like health care, no? Some people (people who are doing OK under the present system) are fearful, and loathe to change. Many schools have run pilots with radically changed calendars. Most go back to the default, because they like being in sync with the rest of the world, even thought there are much better, fairer ways to organize schooling.

I think that technology will be the driving/disrupting force that eventually shatters the 10-week summer entitlement. Schools will not intentionally choose and plan (like they seemingly did in NZ)--they will be pushed by outside forces to change.

[Steve Zemelman]

Nancy--My co-author, Harry Ross, and I have written a new book on teacher leadership coming in a few weeks from Heinemann: "13 Steps to Teacher Empowerment: Taking a More Active Role in Your School Community." The intro & one sample chapter can be read on the Heinemann website. I hope you'll take a look & tell us what you think. It's meant as a very practical set of actions that regular teachers can take, from small & simple to more expansive & complex. Your reflections show that we're on the same wavelength. --Steve Zemelman

[Melissa B.]

We have 3 high schools and several elementary schools on the modified calendar in our district. Apparently, it works, too! I think it would be hard getting used to not having the whole summer off, but I think both I-and the students-would find the new calendar to be time well-spent!

[Deanna]

Love the pic, Nancy! :) And I'm enjoying my summer -- we're two weeks into the new school year at our year-round middle school and I've already seen every student that's tracked in for media and technology orientation in the media center; met with my mentee a couple of times to plan; collaborated and planned with Team6 on the big research project for the year; reviewed scores and effectiveness index of our math folks in the math dept PLC; met and planned with my Battle of the Books group; and prepped 40 equipment carts with LCD projectors, document cameras and laptops for entire staff. Love the year-round! :)