Blogs on After-School Learning

As we head into summer vacation and schools are shuttering their doors for three months, we should be rethinking how summer can become the "third semester" for 21st Century learning. At a conference in Washington last week, a colleague was surprised to hear that the long summer break dates back to our agrarian society and the need for young folk to help their families bring in the crops. Today, the vast majority of students don't bring in crops but need to be harvesting knowledge year-round.

Here's how John Cooper of the Sundance Film Festival described a new documentary on public schools: "It's an analysis of how bad neighborhoods don't necessarily create bad schools, but bad schools create bad neighborhoods... ."

This strikes me as an oversimplification -- and possibly a harmful one at that.

On a crisp fall morning, I watched students at Lewis Elementary School, in Portland, Oregon, roll up their pant legs and wade barefoot into piles of sand, clay, straw, and water.

Society today seems more likely than ever to accept the idea of holistic solutions to educational and community problems. Each day, foundations are created to reach out to populations that are unable and unprepared to empower themselves.