School’s Out For Summer. Really?
By Martha Sessums
It’s summer. Fourth of July summer with warm days and sweet strawberries, evenings spent sitting outside laughing with family and friends, showing off toes in cute sandals or cool water and watching your legs turn brown from the sun.
It is also a time of learning something new, following a passion or curiosity or tackling something imposing. School – or learning — is not out for summer.
What are some ACE Partner Schools doing? Students at Summit Public Schools are working with Bryant Wong, Director of Technology, in a summer camp to help build school technology infrastructure. Mostly working in the San Jose campus to support the remodeled Learning Lab, the students actually design and implement a network, even laying cable where needed. They will be blogging and taking pictures of their work, and ACE Spectrum will highlight their story in August.
Oakland International High School knows that parents must be involved for their students to succeed, so management is designing continuing education programs for adults, including language and technology classes, in the upcoming school term.
ACE will be adding Alpha Public Schools in San Jose to the ACE Partner list for the 2012-2013 school year. This new public charter secondary school will serve low-income communities, and will provide a blended educational model where students rotate between teachers providing core instruction and computers that offer personalized, adaptive lessons tailored to each learner.
What do I have planned for summer? Finish the first draft of the book I’m writing, and start editing. Read my book club books, and then more books. Be inspired by the Olympics and the effort to even be chosen for the London teams. Enjoy the sky with its sweep of blue on the peninsula and East Bay, along with San Francisco’s famous afternoon fog, and the changing moon phases. Savor those strawberries with friends and family. And get ready for a new school year supporting the ACE Partner Schools.
What are you doing this summer?