“Are you a new teacher? If you can, teach summer school,” writes Kati Begen, a high school biology teacher, doctoral candidate and author of “Thriving During Your First Year of Teaching,” in EdSource.
“Summer school gets a bad rap. In my experience, these are students who just need to fix the mistakes they made in the school year. Summer school should be seen as an opportunity for students and teachers. Teaching summer school can be an extremely beneficial choice, especially for new teachers.
“When I was a new teacher, I found volunteering to teach summer school provided me unique opportunities to experiment. In summer school, you can:
“Play around with instructional strategies: In the world of teaching, there is a visceral fear of your lesson “bombing.” During summer school, you have a little more grace. Have you wanted to try an A-B text edit (where students have two different copies of the same article and must decide which words are correctly used)? Socratic seminar? Maybe a specific lab? Doodle notes?
“Try it now! Get feedback from the students and see if there is something you need to change. Then, write down notes on how the new strategies fared in the summer school setting. Once the new school year comes around, you have a list of strategies you have vetted and that work.
“Try new classroom management strategies: I have taught primarily in middle and high school. Even though middle and high school students are close in age, they require different management strategies.
“Surprisingly, my high school students love ClassDojo, a classroom management tool/app, despite its typical audience being elementary school students. I wouldn’t have known this if I hadn’t tried it with my summer school students. Do you want to try flexible seating? Fun claps for an attention signal? Student shout-out wall? Try it during summer school.
“Try out a new grade level: When I began teaching, I was fully invested in staying in the middle school world. When the opportunity arose for me to teach a high school class over the summer, I was scared. Ultimately, I ended up loving teaching high school, and a few years later, I moved up to teaching high school freshmen. This shift wouldn’t have come if I hadn’t tried it out during the summer session.
“I can’t speak for all school districts, but in my experience, summer school made me a better teacher. The opportunities are as endless as is the potential growth you can acquire.
EdSource
