Another brain dump.
It drives me mad when teachers say this to students:
How could you not know this?!?!? You were supposed to have covered it last year!
First off: it probably wasn’t all that important to begin with.
Does it worry me if students don’t retain important information and big concepts from year to year? Of course, but let’s consider another angle here.
In August/September, how many of us need to be reminded of specific protocol or intricacies that they have been using for several years? How many of us need to be retrained in online gradebooks, updating their web site, remembering their e-mail password, or signing up for certain supplies? I’m talking about day-to-day functions of your individual school building.
Seriously. Think about what goes on in the “back to school” activities in your building and how many people “forget” how to complete these functions.
You know that gap of time where school doesn’t exist called “Summer?” Well, it’s bad for retention. For the kids..and us.
Please feel free to share this with your colleagues who complain about kids not retaining information over the course of the summer. I’d love to hear their excuse.
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I’ve enjoyed reading your blog! As far as your post is concerned, I agree: summer is a bummer…for student retention. As we no longer are an agriculturally based society, the current format of our educational system is a bit anachronistic. To change the system would be, however, difficult. It’s not just changing a system, it’s changing a culture! How many memories do we associate with summertime? Coming from a state where summer tourism was a big part of the economy (Michigan), redesigning the education system’s time-line might face opposition from many sectors of a state’s economy. The ball has to start rolling somewhere, though.
I agree with the fact that too many teachers are not as sharp and prepared as they should be when they come back to school in September, and as the technology facilitator in my building, I grit my teeth at every forgotten password and routine technology question.
I take exception, however, to this:
Just because the students do not remember does not mean that it’s not important to the educational process, it’s more a matter of just not having the practice. As a physics/chemistry teacher, it is frustrating to have to reteach basic algebra skills, but I recognize that it is more indicative that they are not getting the reinforcement they need for retention over the summer.
In order to ensure that retention, we should be teaching in a way that the content is reinforced by virtue of the students living their lives and experiencing the connections between class and their everyday experience.
As a student I have heard the words: “How could you not know this? You should remember that from last year.” I agree that as an educator, teachers must remember that students will always forget things and surely will be out of practice after summer.
This is Stephen Akins and I am doing an assignment for my class. Every week I will be commenting on your blog and later on I will post on my blog what I have learned from the postings on this one. The link to my class blog is EDM 310
I think you over-simplify the matter. Comparing “specific procedures or intricacies” to content and skills is like comparing the proverbial apples to oranges. To me, it isn’t the same. I do, however, that we need to give the students, and ourselves, a bit of a break at the beginning of the school year. I also disagree with your premise that if students don’t remember, “it probably wasn’t all that important to begin with.” Where’s the accountability for students in that statement?
This is why we should move to year-round schooling with trimesters and more frequent, week-two week breaks in-between. No?