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.
