CLEVELAND — The summer slide refers to the time during the summer when students aren’t learning and doing less reading. It’s something that particularly impacts disadvantaged kids and leaves them behind their peers.
But additional help in and out of the classroom can help them get caught up.
“The child is able to ask questions that maybe they may not ask openly in front of their peers,” said Monica Grays.
Grays has been teaching for 24 years.
She teaches fourth and fifth grade this year and knows all too well about the summer slide.
Nine out of 10 teachers spend at least three weeks re-teaching lessons to students at the beginning of the year just to get them on track, according to the National Summer Learning Association.
“Because every teacher and every grade level is experiencing the same thing, we’ve kind of gotten accustomed to knowing that we’re going to need to start back a little bit before we move forward. On top of teaching procedures, those first couple of weeks it’s a lot of review. So we always say that first semester is really a review semester,” said Grays.
Grays’ business, a consignment store for teachers, is called 2nd Semester Consignment Shop. The store also offers tutoring services for students with eight educators on staff.
”We do a pre-assessment. We find out what are the needs of that child. And then we assess and then service just the needs of that child. So every child’s program looks different,” said Grays.
Research on a tutoring program for first graders called “Reading Recovery” showed tutoring led to a reading growth rate 31% greater than the average nationally for beginning first graders.
“I have seen how much a child has grown. So just recently I had a child who came to me probably on a kindergarten level. He was at alternative school and he really just didn’t want to read. He really didn’t want to do school at all,” said Grays.
“His mother brought him twice a week consistently, did not miss a session, and now he is probably at a third maybe fourth-grade reading level. So that one-on-one is just so important to the growth of a child.”
For more information, click here to visit the store’s website.
