Blogs on Parental Involvement

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.

It is Thursday March 4th, "Day of Action to Defend Public Education" here in California and in states across the country. I'm making my way through the crowd of thousands in the massive square in front of City Hall in San Francisco.

This is the second part of a guest posting from my colleague, Kyle Hartung, who has worked in small schools for ten years as a classroom teacher and instructional leader in New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area. As part of the Leadership and Instructional Team at Envision Schools, he coaches and facilitates professional development among school leaders and teachers.

At a recent professional-development day, I challenged my colleagues to think about how we could reduce the number of students in our lower division (grades nine and ten) -- especially the ninth graders -- who fail high school courses. "What if we decided that failure is not an option, and that success is the only choice available to us?" I asked them.