Summer learning loss

by Danielle Baer, School's Out Washington

In addition to lack of outdoor play time and adequate nutrition, learning loss is another major issue impacting kids during the summer.

The Center for Summer Learning at Johns Hopkins University has compiled information from several research studies pointing to the impact of summer learning loss especially on low-income children and youth. According to one study, two-thirds of the achievement gap between lower- and higher-income youth can be explained by unequal access to summer learning opportunities. As a result, low-income youth are less likely to graduate from high school or enter college. While most students lose about 2 months of grade-level equivalency in mathematical computation skills over the summer months, low-income students lose more than two months in reading achievement, while their middle-class peers make slight gains. When this pattern continues throughout the elementary school years, lower income youth fall more than two and one-half years behind their more affluent peers by the end of fifth grade.


Access to quality summer programs for all children and youth is key to both addressing summer learning loss and providing a healthy environment that promotes nutrition and physical activity. The Center for Summer Learning has great resources on their website around what makes a quality summer program including thematic learning and engaging, experiential activities. The Center also is active on the policy front and is working to increase resources at the federal level for summer programming. Some of the legislation relating to summer includes:


· The Summer Term Education Programs for Upward Performance Act (STEP UP) re-introduced this year by Senators Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Barbara Mikulski (D-Md) to provide grants for “summer opportunity scholarships” to local education agencies, for-profit education providers, non-profit organizations, or summer enrichment camps. The scholarships would entitle students in grades K-3 to 30 full days of instruction.

· Expanding the Simplified Summer Food Program from 26 states to all states in the 2008 budget. Expansion would eliminate complicated accounting procedures making it easier for all sponsors to provide children with healthy meals over the summer.

· The Federal Summer of Service Act would provide the Corporation for National and Community Service with $100 million to engage middle school students in intensive and structured community service during the summer. As an incentive for participation, youth would earn $500 for education after completing 100 hours of service.

Summer shouldn't look like the school year, but kids need opportunities during the summer months to continue learning, engaging in new life experiences and having fun in a safe, healthy environment. We know that many kids do not have these opportunities, especially in remote rural or other isolated communities. Working to increase resources from local, state, and federal governments as well as raising awareness among private funders of the importance of summer programs in supporting learning for children and youth is an important step for the out-of-school time field.

Danielle Baer is Communications and Grants Coordinator for School's Out Washington





Thanks to viewoftheworld and sleestack 66 for the flickr creative commons photos.

Summer nutrition

A recent article in the New York Times addressed an apparent increase in childhood weight gain during the summer months. The author speculated about why: was it bad quality camp food? Lots of snacking?

The trend is worth looking at, although I'm skeptical about her camp hypothesis. First of all, not every kid spends the summer at camp. It’s expensive, for one thing. For another, while the Northeast may have a culture of full-summer camp, the Northwest and some other areas have traditions of shorter summer camps of one or two weeks. Not exactly representative of a full summer’s diet. While camp budgets are tight, and some camp meals are meant to be bland and crowd-pleasing, other camps do focus on getting adequate nutrition into campers' bellies.

I think the two main culprits in summer weight gain are cost and sugar. In terms of cost, for lower-income families, the additional cost of feeding the kids lunch during the week may contribute. If it’s a challenge to afford to feed your kids, you may end up feeding them lower quality food, like fast food or simple carbohydrates that are cheap. As to sugar, summertime is the season of extra treats like ice cream, lemonade, cookies, and pies. There may be a snacking factor at work as well, especially if kids are in charge of more of their own meals during the summer.

So, how do we make sure kids eat well in the summer?

Here are a few tips for programs and families:

Make sure they're eating in the first place

Whether it's your own kids or kids in your community or program, ensure that every child has access to meals this summer. Kids who rely on school lunches in other seasons may go hungry in the summer months. In Washington State, only a small percentage of students who are eligible to receive lunches at school in the summer take advantage of this opportunity, or know it exists. (For more information about summer learning and meal availability, check out School's Out Washington's Feed Your Brain project). If you run a summer program, make sure the kids are eating the food, and check in with them privately if they are not eating. There may be something else going on, like an aversion to something unfamiliar, an allergy or dietary restriction, or an eating disorder.

Limit sweets

I'm not saying the kids should go the whole summer without ice cream, but be aware when a "treat" turns into a near-daily or daily phenomenon. When it's time for sweets, if you're set on having them, choose sweet treats that are lower in sugars, or opt for ripe fruit, like perfect summer berries, instead. Avoid high fructose corn syrup.

Field trip!

Take the kids on a field trip to a small, local organic farm (pre-arranged first, of course) to see where their food comes from and how it's produced. Getting familiar with the source of the strawberries, carrots or milk may make them more appealing. Alternatively, take the kids to a farmers' market. Ask the vendors questions, and plan a picnic together if you have a budget. Check out Puget Sound Fresh for farmers' markets and farms you may be able to visit.

Plant a garden

Summer is a great time to plant a garden with kids or youth, or to see if a community garden needs some help. Getting hands-on with the vegetables and fruits may help kids connect with what they're growing, and be interested in trying something new. Check out the Puget Sound School Gardens Collective for resources and ideas.

Bring local foods into your program's menu

Be inspired by the recent passage of the Local Farms Healthy Kids bill in Washington State, and connect with local farmers to bring fresh produce into your summer meal program. Think you can't afford it? You may be surprised. Many farms are happy to sell their products in bulk discount, and some will even be generous with discounts for a good cause. Going back to that field trip idea, the farm that supplies your program's carrots may welcome the kids for a visit.

Teach kids to cook

Children and youth may be more adventurous in tasting a food if they cooked it themselves, especially if they played a role in planning the menu or recipe. Cooking classes (indoor or outdoor) that focus on healthful foods (like fresh summer produce) can be a fun element to a summer program or camp, or can be carried out at home. Kids can assemble their own cookbooks and favorite recipes.

Service-learning

Do you run a service-learning program for youth, or a program with service-learning components? Healthy food is a great topic to explore. A few ideas for youth:

• Develop a website about local or healthy foods
• Plan a farm field trip for younger kids
• Ask the local farmers' market what you can do to help
• Map resources for healthy and unhealthy foods in various neighborhoods. Compare. Present your findings to local government and/or to groups that run farmers' markets or other sources of healthy food.

Ask questions

If you're a parent or caregiver sending your kid to a summer program or camp, ask about the food. What is a typical day's menu? How much focus is there on nutrition? How much of the food is made from scratch, and how much is pre-made? What is the prevalence of dessert, sweetened beverages, and vending machines? Is there any local food?

What are your thoughts on summer and nutrition? Share them in the comments below.

Thanks to EvanDC, moria, wrestlingentropy, sleestak66, jefield, color_line, smercury98, jonny.hunter, and Aaron_M for the flickr Creative Commons photos.

Summertime... but is the living easy?

What does the word "summertime" make you think of, when you're daydreaming during the darkest days of winter? Lemonade on a hot day? A picnic? Aimlessly wandering through meadows?

There's a bucolic fantasy of childhood summers as times of carefree adventure, exploratory laziness, and joy. For some it's a memory, for others a fantasy, and for a few, a reality. Most of the time, I tend to hear from baby boomers and their elders that summers used to be that way, from kids and youth now that it's not that way at all, and from folks in between those two ages that childhood summers were a little structured and a little unstructured when they were growing up. It seems we're trending toward more and more structured time and indoor time in the months between school.

There are pros and cons to this. The world may be less safe for kids to play alone and outdoors than it used to be, or it may be perceived as less safe; it's hard to say. Structured programs provide kids with a safe place to be, and with meals their families might not otherwise be able to afford. Programs can help kids catch up on academic learning that is overwhelming them during the school year, and can take kids on field trips to places they would never otherwise imagine getting to go, or engage them in creative activities like rocketry or photography.

Structured programs also don't have to be indoors; they can bring kids into the wilderness or city parks to explore their environment, play sports, splash in the water, or otherwise frolic, all with new friends and with caring adults to supervise.

And yet it's important to make sure children get some semblance of unstructured outdoor play time in the summer, not in front of a video game or in a classroom. A recent book argues that today's kids have "Nature Deficit Disorder" and that it's contributing to obesity and attention deficit. There may have been a reason we thought nostalgically about bucolic summers past, even if we never experienced them; explorative time in nature may be essential to our development. Kids today may be missing out on that need, and losing some skills and confidence as a result.

I'm not surprised. Earlier this month, I spent an hour exploring the lowest tide in four years on a sunny afternoon north of Golden Gardens Park here in Seattle. I walked far out on the sand flats, examining colorful starfish, fascinating anemones, geoducks that spit water, and all sorts of marine life. I overlapped a little with a few parents who had brought their young children on the adventure. The children were terrified. Not of the funny-looking creatures, but of being dirty and wet. The water, the sand, the seaweed were all shocking. They wanted to be dry and indoors.

A generation or two ago, I'm guessing that would have been more rare. Children were more used to exploring outside, to getting dirty, to jumping in puddles. It makes sense; we evolved in a natural environment, and we evolved to learn in one. When they're comfortable outdoors, children are naturally inquisitive and creative.

It's not easy to ensure your kids get some creative outdoor play time this summer, if you have kids or if you run a program. But see if you can make it happen. Bring the kids to the beach or a meadow, with some general guidelines for safety, and let them explore. Comfort in the natural world, a sense of inquiry and curiosity, fitness from moving around, and the creativity to explore will all benefit them later on -- in school and in life.