With this year’s school year ending, unfortunately summer school recovery begins for students who failed or did poorly during the preceding year.

With the prevalence of this situation growing, this has been and is now one of the focal points for my services; Summer School Recovery.

This is a very challenging situation for the parents and students.

PLEASE READ CAREFULLY. And, contact me for more help.

+ Severely Compressed Schedule

Usually the summer schedule is very compressed—one semester of study in a summer month.

This leaves very little time, if any, for students, to get behind and complete the class. From my experience many students are NOT successful completing the summer program.

+ Which Format is Used?

Some summer recovery programs are entirely online; some are entirely in the classroom. Some are a mix.

As with any online learning approach, the format of the online program is critical for the parent and student to fully understand.

Some are purchased by the schools and may be lacking in quality.

Some of the online platforms that are used have little to no actual student-teacher contact.

Some have a limited number of “learning” videos.

Some do a better job.

Some of the platforms suffer from technical difficulties.

Some require students to have completely finished a unit before being able to access the “next” unit. I have seen issues with a student being “stuck” for multiple days without any ability to continue. This can be a serious problem with a short window “of completion."

+ How Does the Teaching Actually Occur?

There are some good summer school recovery programs.

Teachers must be very focused and clear in what and how they are teaching.

Students must be more involved in the learning process than perhaps they were when they took the class initially. They MUST do a very good job at taking notes and overall paying attention.

This is perhaps the most problematic aspect of summer recovery classes.

Students who need recovery generally do NOT have developed study habits and overall learning habits. Because of the compressed schedule, much of what they have to “re-learn” requires the students teaching themselves; which they are likely to have developed skills doing.

+ How Much Actual Learning Can Actually Occur In Such a Compressed Environment/Schedule

As is the same with all schooling, ultimately the level of learning is tied to the effort of the student. Summer recovery is no different. In fact it is probably even more important during the summer.

One of the hinderances that generally happens with 100% multiple-choice online platforms has to do with the reuse of the homework and test questions by the platform designers.

That is, many of the questions that the students see as homework or quiz or test questions have the answers online. In many cases, the student simply has to Google the question.

This focus on simple completion of the homework “comes home to roost,” however, if the student has to take exams in a proctored environment.

Unfortunately, many parents are not ever aware that this is going on.

Summer school recovery CAN be navigated.

Students, however, must display a level of academic effort above that which occurred which resulted in needing recovery.

This is a focal aspect of my summer tutoring efforts with students who are committed to doing the work. Success requires the parents AND students to be involved and to know what it is like to operate on challenging schedules.

I can help best to fill in the “learning holes” that occur. I can help the student with strategies to stay on track, but ultimately the parents and students need to make that happen.