Learning is year-round and doesn’t stop. During the school year, your child receives thirty-five hours of education each week while at school. Come summer break, this time comes to a halt. What can Canadian families do to keep kids busy this summer and prevent the summer slide?
The Trager family may have found the answer. For the Tragers, the challenge is to keep their son busy with the right type of activities while school is out. Their son, Nicholas, like many 11-year-old boys, loves to do anything active. He plays hockey and soccer, he runs, and he skis. He’s constantly on the go from day until night. When he’s not playing sports, his summertime is filled with camping, road trips, and days at the beach.
Many families have a similar story during the summer, rushing kids off to soccer practice, baseball tournaments, or swimming lessons. How is possible to fit tutoring into an already busy summer schedule? Andrea explains, “His attendance at Scholars is as important as any other extracurricular. We fit everything in together as a family, but tutoring is the thing that always remains consistent—it’s first priority.”
There’s no argument that sports and physical activity are important for children, especially during the summer. However, finding the right balance is important. Andrea says, “Nicholas is a very talented athlete, but being a good soccer player isn’t a promise that it will get him into university or college—passing a math test is.”
Andrea, a teacher herself, recognized that her son Nicholas was really struggling in school. “He was clearly six to eight months behind all of his classmates. His classroom teacher came to us and mentioned he had a hard time staying focused in class. I knew there wasn’t enough support for him in the classroom and that extra help was needed.”
Andrea and her husband decided that summer was the best time for Nicholas to make some serious gains in his learning, and they contacted Scholars Education Centre for a free assessment. Once they saw the results of his assessment, Nicholas started attending Scholars four times a week in the summer. Andrea finds summer is the best time for Nicholas to get ahead because, “In the summer, that gap increases because he’s not in school every day, let alone every week. During summer break, I look at it as the opportunity to relax, to kick back a bit, but also to utilize that free time to fill that gap that tends to build over the summer break.”
When asked how she teaches the importance of tutoring over the break, Andrea explains: “We don’t have to; he sees the benefit himself. He knows and sees that tutoring makes school easier. He knows that if he didn’t do tutoring, that school would be much harder—he wouldn’t enjoy school.”
“Scholars teaches him the fundamentals, but he also learns skills that he can apply to his other school subjects—that he can apply to life. He doesn’t only learn about math, he learns how to focus when he is doing his math work. This is what makes school easier for him,” says Andrea.
Nicholas is approaching his fourth summer with Scholars. When asked why, Andrea says: “If you’re going to spend time putting your kids in camp or anything else this summer, why not do a summer program with Scholars where they can get ahead or catch up to what they’ve learned over the school year?”
For families looking for something outside of regular tutoring, or students looking for a challenge, Scholars is proud to now offer Summer STEM programs. Our STEM program is a fun way to learn about robotics and coding through play!