change the school year?

Question

ok so on the last day of school my english teacher askes the class a question and the question is

would you prefer if the school year were

A) kept the same

or

B) have school all year round and having time off once a month in like December, one in February and one in April

so now I'm asking you, so give me your answer and why you chose that answer

Answer 1

There are both advantages and disadvantages to both sides:

Overall, I love year-round school. I like the shorter, more frequent breaks, and I don't miss the long, three-month summer vacation. Especially where I live in the Mississippi Delta, where it gets way too hot for the kids to play outside, so a long summer vacation leads to some very bored and restless kids~with nothing to do but get into trouble. I also believe that the children benefit academically with shorter breaks, as they have less "re-learning" of old material after a long, summer vacation. There is so much more that we have to teach, more testing, and greater expectations from families and communities for children to learn.

Yet, some of the disadvantages are that the travel/tourism industry would suffer greatly if families did not have the long summer months to go on vacations in our Gulf areas.
It would be more costly for the school districts to pay teacher and staff salaries~there is no room for cutting those salaries.

Also points to ponder, would this force more children into home schooling? Would the drop out rate spike until the new longer school years became the norm?
The school calendar was designed around an agrarian economy that no longer exists (i.e very few children need to be home to harvest crops) so maybe some changes could be made?

Thus, I will have to answer B) have school all year round and having time off once a month in December, February and April at this time.

Answer 2

I just finished the first year of a "modified year-round" school year. We began the first full week of August, were off for 2 weeks in October, 2 weeks at Christmas, 2 weeks at Easter. I think the burnout problem was less. The heat in August was unbearable- we don't have air conditioning. If you have ever been in southwestern Ohio in the summer, the humidity is awful. I had heat exhaustion and had to be driven home the first week. The kids seem to think each break is the end of the year so you have a week or two of kids thinking schools almost out and then another week or two getting them settled down after the break. I think in that respect, we actually lost teaching time. We return this August (teachers on the 3rd and students on the 8th) and I feel like we are hardly getting a summer break. I really feel for the students who are going to "summer school" for a month.

Answer 3

pros:

you get more frequent breaks so you will not burn out as much toward the end of the year.

you wil appreciate your breaks more - when you have 10 - 11 weeks off in the summer, you tend to waste the time and get bored, but with a few weeks at a time, you use it more wisely.


cons:

teaching gets more "chopped up" and teachers have to wrap up teaching units to allign with teaching periods.

some students find that they forget more with the breaks in between (while others say the opposite is true)

if your school has multiple tracks, you may be on a different schedule than your friends.

some teachers have to be broving teachers, and move all of their classroom materials around the school constantly! not fun

Answer 4

I'm not gonna answer your essay question for you, but as a teacher of math, I see that summer break destroys everything we do all year long...and it takes several weeks to get kids back to where they should be...a waste of time. So, I like summer break, but I think we should have shorter breaks, more often.

Answer 5

i am a teacher.

I enjoy having 10 weeks off to spend time with my husband in the Philippines.

But then, off season airline tickets are nice in the Spring.

Maybe if we could get 3 weeks off about 4 times a year...

I will not work another day beyond my contract requirements without a serious increase in salary.