Friday, August 10, 2012

Lazy Hazy Days of Summer

It is a pleasure to welcome our families back to campus after the summer break.   The rhythm of the summer’s end and the return to school are always bittersweet for our families and students (and even a few faculty and staff).  Many of you may have followed recent discussions in Davidson County about the move to the balanced calendar and the impact on the usual summer holiday (as well as the reverse in Williamson County).  As is well documented, the movement to and from balanced calendars (with many schools in California and Texas having abandoned the experiment) has been fraught with politics and injected with strong emotion.  Data supporting the so-called summer learning loss has been called into question for a variety of reasons, and the issue is far from settled in academic research.  In reading about the calendar change, I was reminded of a book that I read this summer (the summer is certainly a time for me to catch up on some of the books piled on my nightstand).  The book, Homesick and Happy: How Time Away from Parents Can Help a Child Grow is by Michael Thompson, a renowned psychologist and consultant to a Boston boys’ school, Belmont Hill.   Thompson’s other books include Raising Cain, Speaking of Boys, and Best Friends, Worst Enemies.

Homesick and Happy resonated during this balanced calendar discussion because it captured some of the intangibles lost in these debates.  A paean to summer camps, which Thompson argues can have a powerful impact on children and adolescents, the book reminds us that some of the most significant learning experiences—what we often call experiential learning in schools—take place outside of the boundaries of traditional classrooms and away from the watchful eyes of adults—both parents and teachers.  The product of the kind of “concerted cultivation” that Malcolm Gladwell depicts in his book Outliers, Thompson acknowledges at the opening of the book that his parents prodded and directed him towards organized lessons and activities throughout his childhood in New York.  During the summer some of these pressures abated:

In June, July, and August there was no summer school, no music lessons, no sports camps, no grades, no striving.  We went to live with my grandparents in their rural home by a lake in Massachusetts [. . .] The kids hung out together all day; we saw the grownups only at night.  We spent our time in the woods, inventing games, talking, sharing secrets, competing.

Beyond just waxing nostalgic about the kinds of summers that many of us enjoyed as kids, Thompson found that these memories of summer camps and similar experiences influenced his work with young people.  As he remarks, “Finally, it was clear to me that many students who exhibited tremendous gains in character and confidence were finding that growth outside of school and away from their families.”
           
As we contemplate the return to school and its own pace and patterns, it is worth remembering these comments about the richness of learning that extends beyond the classrooms.  Dana and I think often of how her summer experiences will shape our own daughter Claire.   Certainly, debates on these topics will always be highly charged.  I hope that your children return to BGA with some experiences that have reinforced their competence, tested out their independence, and cultivated their sense of adventure—even if, as with our three-year old, it is only in catching fireflies and rolling down sand dunes in a season that has its own rewards.