In just a few weeks, the school year will come to an end. Summer vacation can mean up to ten or more weeks away from the structure of a school environment. Children with special needs can lose many of the skills they learned over the school year during the unstructured days of summer vacation. Summer school can help a child retain those hard earned skills.
Summer vacation can be a time of relaxation. Often, children look forward to being free from the responsibility of passing tests, doing homework, and attending school. This is a time for families to travel to someplace interesting together. Summer is the perfect time to sleep in, stay up late, and go swimming.
Unfortunately, all this lack of structure tends to make it difficult for kids to get back into a regular schedule once the school year begins again. Ask any teacher, and they will tell you that the first part of a new school year is spent re-teaching things that the students actually did learn last year, but completely forgot about over summer vacation. This happens to all kids. However, the impact of summer vacation can be devastating to children with special needs. They can lose academic knowledge, as well as things like social skills, behavioral skills, and emotional learning.
Parents of children who have special needs might want to start asking questions about what their child’s school district can offer in terms of a summer school program that can help your child. The federal Individuals With Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA) calls it an Extended School Year (ESY). It goes along with your child’s Individualized Education Plan (IEP). If the team determines that your child needs to continue receiving services beyond the typical end of the school year (which is often somewhere around 180 days), then the school must provide those services.
Attending summer school can help your child stay in the mode of school. He or she will be getting up at the same time, spending time in a classroom environment, and perhaps doing homework assignments. You can keep their bedtime the same. Students that need help with social skills continue to be around their peers, and will have assistance from teachers who can model and encourage those skills. Children who have extreme anxiety about school will have an easier time returning to school after the summer is over if they attended a summer school program. Working on these skills over the summer can prevent your child from regressing.
Image by Falk Lademann on Flickr