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Year Round School
"It was only four weeks into the summer vacation, and I wished I was back in school!"
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By Thanh Vu
It was 12 noon when I woke up in the summer heat - just another boring day that I reluctantly dragged myself out of bed. My parents had gone to work, leaving me and my three siblings at home with nothing to do. It was only four weeks into the summer vacation, and I wished I was back in school!
The traditional school calendar doesn’t work for me. I want to try a year-round system. While some parents argue that the summer break enables kids to get jobs, my parents think the opposite. It can actually spoil kids. So, naturally I’m not allowed to work.
Some kids think that year-round school means you don’t get any time off. But it is actually a better schedule. You go to school in blocks. You might get two weeks on and two weeks off, all adding up to about the same amount of days you would get off for the entire summer. I come from a low-income family, which cannot afford to go places during the summer. So for me, there is no such thing as summer ‘vacation.’
Another problem with taking so much time off in the summer is the brain doesn’t get exercised. I tend to lose what I have learned in school during the summer because of the lack of stimulation. I forget the simplest equations I learned the previous year.
I believe we all would benefit from a year-round school.
-Thanh Vu is a junior at Grady High School.
Youth Radio Atlanta is produced in cooperation with WABE and funded in part by The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation.
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