Embracing the Summer Slide

The summer slide is so much more than just “not reading”. 

When students come back in a few weeks, I won’t be so worried about how much they “lost” over the summer in terms of numerical ranges.  I’ll be more concerned about what they have gained in laughter and angst, identities they have tried on and discarded like last year’s trendy shoes.

Chlorine-scented bathing suits bake on the clothesline. Warm air masses linger through trees. Time to ignore the morning alarm clock.  I’ve waded through a few books, mostly Young Adult fiction in anticipation of film versions to be released.  A few education-related books are in progress on my Kindle, but I find myself putting reading aside in favor of a few hours in my cucumber garden.  Or bicycle rides on the rural roads of my small town.

Reading has taken a backseat this summer.

Even the  “Back to School” issue of Reading Today magazine from the International Reading Association can’t nudge me from the hazy days of summer.  I’m not ready to get my head back in the game, although the cover stirs thoughts about what will be waiting for me in late August.  New experiences, new faces and the realities of the summer slide. Not the kind at the waterpark that beckons my bottom to slip furiously down the slope towards a pool of refreshing, bacteria-killing, chemical-laced water.

The “Summer Slide” that comes to mind is the one into which some students across the K-12 landscape descend as they avoid reading books for two months, only to return to school at a level lower than when they left us in June. As an elementary school teacher, this reading level was gauged as a letter. In middle school last year, we utilized a numeric system called a Lexile which was measured by a computer-adaptive assessment.

Schools and community organizations often work to prevent as much of the slide as possible.  Summer academies, reading incentives, bookmobiles and other programs seek to slow the reversal, generally accepted as a by-product of the recess also known as summer vacation. According to a report by America After 3PM, set to be released this fall, more parents are signing their children up for summer activities to negate many forms of the slide.  It’s encouraging that parents acknowledge the dip in progress and are seeking ways to combat it with us.  On paper (or spreadsheet), the data seems to back up the “learning loss”.

Data tends to be a driving force in my classroom and so many others in our uber-accountability environment. As an English-as-a-Second Language educator, I have data for English proficiency levels.  We assess English learners annually with a test called ACCESS and these levels help us determine what kind of support students need to gain enough English proficiency to be successful in content areas.  Students for whom English is not their first language often lose language skills, particularly academic English, in addition to any reading level regression.

When the year begins, we have last year’s benchmark data, common assessment data, end-of-the-year summative data. Then there is the aforementioned Lexile data. We’ll administer another assessment to see just how much they gained or lost over the summer and use that to inform our decisions.  Sometimes I feel buried under this invisible file cabinet of data, which is one reason I relish the summer break that frees me from the pressure that has mounted all year long.  The summer break offers a reprieve from data, and academia in general since this is the first summer I am free of graduate school and required reading of journal article after journal article.  Some students will complete their summer reading lists.  For the majority of my students that did not willingly open a book during the school year, summer reading is not even on the radar!