What time is it? Summertime!

Our summer program is in full swing! It has been great to see all of the returning amigos as well as quite a few new faces join us for the summer. When I was a child, I know one of my family’s biggest problems in the summer was trying to keep all three of us children occupied and productive, rather than sitting in front of the tv all summer and “letting our brains rot”. So we would sign up for a few camps here and there, but we would still have weeks that we decided to keep free. These weeks, especially when the summer heat made it unbearable to go outside, would often be rather unproductive and long.

And while a two month summer break was necessary when it originated at a time when schools didn’t have air-conditioning, it remains standard to take a summer break even today (Association of California School Administrators, 1988) despite research that shows that a “long summer vacation breaks the rhythm of instruction, leads to forgetting, and requires a significant amount of review of material when students return” in the fall (http://www.ldonline.org/article/8057/). Long breaks can be especially detrimental, when students are trying to learn a new language, often leading to significant regression in language production and comprehension.

But, by signing up for our July summer session at The Spanish Clubhouse, returning students won’t experience such a long break in their learning and will be able to increase their knowledge of Spanish while also doing something productive and fun once a week! And the summer sessions are a great time for new families to sign up as well because they are each four weeks long, giving families a great trial-run for our engaging classes during the flexibility of the summer.  I know that signing up for classes at The Spanish Clubhouse would have been a perfect solution for my family when my siblings and I were younger because the classes (rather than a day long camp) would’ve given our busy family flexibility in the summer while still doing something productive and fun, even on the hottest St. Louis summer days.