Well, thanks for joining us here on News Moms Unscripted. I'm Beth Hunt. And today we're talking about summer brain
drain in kids. This is really the idea that kids
knowledge slips during the summer and they not only aren't
learning any more, but they lose some of what they learned
during the previous school year. I'm joined by Dr. Shoutell Richardson
with the Little Rock School District. She is the principal in the district. Thanks so much for being with us today. Thank you for having me. I'm e
xcited to be here. Well, this is this is going to be
an interesting conversation. I told you, this is something
I'm dealing with right now. So I know that our other moms
and caregivers must be as well. But before we get started, if you would, give us a little background about yourself
in education and just personally a little bit about yourself
being a principal here in the district. Okay. Well, a little bit about myself. I issues that I'm Dr. Sheetal Richardson. I'm the principal of Bell Elemen
tary,
home of the Bobcats. Go Bobcats. I've been with the district. Now I'm embarking on my 30th year
in education. I've worked in several
different capacities as a principal
and executive director of education. I am a teacher, of course, but most importantly, a mom. And so I think that is my first job as a teacher. And so three children of my own,
my oldest being 36, my youngest being 30. So I think I've been in the mom
game longer than I've been in the education gang. But I'm just excited. And
this is something that, you know,
we all struggle with as parents, but also as teachers, because as we send
kids out for the summer, we're often trying to encourage
parents of things that they can do so that we can combat the brain,
the summer brain drain, or as we sometimes call it, the summer
slide in education, because we know kids regress during those couple of months
that they're off during the summer because they're not actively engaging their brain
and things that stimulate them to learn
. Well, I think you're the perfect person
to talk today, not only because you have an education background, teach
your principal, but you're also a mom. So you know all sides of this. Let's just start by talking
about how real of an issue this is. Is this a real problem for kids
when they go back to school in the fall? This is a real problem. You know, I was just talking
to a colleague of mine of mine just a couple of days ago,
and we were talking about the brain drain or the summer slide that w
e
sometimes refer to. It is and we were talking
about some of the research. And the research is real. It's been out for, you know, four years. And what the research tells us
is that children on average lose about two months of their academic gains
when they're out over the summer. And more specifically,
research tells us that children lose about 2.6 months
for math, two months for literacy. But on average, they just average it out
to be about two months. But when we look at it, when they return
to school, what we see
is the first six weeks of school. We're using that to try to regain
what we've lost during those six months. And it takes us about six weeks
of the beginning of the year of school just to regain
what we've lost during the summer slide. So the research is real. The reality is real
that children really are losing a lot of what they have gained
over the school year during the summer. So on average, you know, about two months. So you think we go to school
for nine months when
they go home for their summer break? They're losing two months
of that academic gain. And when you add that up over their whole,
you know, career, I guess in education from K through 12
that you're talking about months. But in the two years,
that equates to years. And, you know, that's just to say,
you know, if you have a student who's been engaged all year
and they had missed school and they you know, they they've
been on time, they've not been tardy and they've been engaged, those nine
and a q
uarter months, if they have been engaged that whole time,
they're a solid student. But just think if they've been absent
or they've been sick or they've had COVID or anything else or they've had some
extenuating circumstances, some death, then you add that to my summer
slide to that. That's a lot for child. So the summer can be really,
really detrimental to a lot of our kids. So that's why we have to make sure
that we really go into the summer thinking, What can I do to overcome
that summer lear
ning loss? Yeah, and I would imagine we'll talk about some of those things
that we can do coming up in just a moment. But I would imagine coming off
of the pandemic and the learning loss that we've seen there,
that it's even more important to, you know, engage kids
during the summer, that you are absolutely right
before coming off of the pandemic. And the fact that we were not engaging
with the kids personally and many of them were engaged
with technology. You know,
we had video games teaching o
ur children. We had, you know,
we were virtual in a lot of places around the country. You and out places around the country
doing COVID. And some schools were out
longer than others. And we had parents
who were really not equipped to educate our kids. That summer loss was was really, really hard
for many of our students. Yeah. So let's let's dive into some things
that parents can do during the summer. I know the number one thing
that I hear from teachers is to read with your kids
and that it's i
mportant not only to have them read, but you also have a conversation with them
about what they are reading. And if you can just talk
about the importance of all of that. Well, it's very, very important. And, you know, it doesn't take
as much time as people think. On average, if you could spend about 2 to 3 hours
a week with your child, just reengaging them in some things
that would pique their curiosity, which would engage them in things like,
for instance, practice writing. So with our young k
ids, when I started
practice writing, you know, practice writing a sentence,
give them a sentence, write, you know, our kindergarten first graders,
give them something to write, have them go to the grocery store
with you, help them, ask them to help
you write the grocery list. Give them the sales papers
that come out in the mail on Tuesdays with these whatever, you know, whatever
they come out in your neighborhood and say, hey, you know,
mom's going to go to the grocery store, We're going to go
grocery shopping. I need apples and oranges. I need cereal
and have them to go through the sale paper and actually copy down what it is
you're going to be shopping for. That's one way to encourage writing. Or for the younger kids,
they could cut out the pictures and paste them on a piece of paper
that would be a way to encourage writing for your older
kids, have them to journal, have them to write about what they did
during the day or what they would like to do. So just 2 to 3 hours a week,
havi
ng them to write for a purpose. Also encouraging students to just be
creative and thoughtful during the day. You know what? What is something
that you can do to help your community? What is something
that if we could take a vacation, you know, where would you want to go
and have them go through? You know,
everything is technology based now. Social web, Where would you want to go? How far would it take us
or how long would it take us? Google, how far we would have to go,
What cities would we pass
through? So using things that they're engaged in
and that they're interested in to help them
stay creative and also thoughtful, write a letter to someone
you know, send an email to your granny, you know, get them away from the phone,
don't text, or because when they text,
they're using shortcuts in their language. They're using shortcuts in their spelling. So you want to get them back to writing. You know,
we don't really do old fashioned letters, but I encourage my G baby
to write a letter. So
I write a sample for him
and I say, Hey, write your mom a letter when he's with me. Here's a sample. Write your mom a letter, and we're going
to go to the post office and mail it. So you want to encourage them to be creative and be thoughtful
in the things that they do. Write letters to a stranger. Let's take it to the nursing home. Other things that we want to do is
we want to of course, spend time reading, taking kids to the library,
making sure they have library cards taken. We would always
take a laundry basket
and as many books as we could put in the laundry basket,
that's how many books we would check out. So I had three kids. So I allowed your basketball would be
pretty, pretty handy by the time we left. But it's just little simple things
like encouraging them to read. Our read you read, we read. So I would read a book. They would find a book to read to me,
and then we would read a book together as a family. So sometimes that book
would be a chapter book, and it might take us
t
he whole summer to read it. But we always had that that,
that thought process. You read me a book,
I'm going to read your book, and then we're going to read the book
together as a family. So reading Summertime
reading is really, really good. We would go
to the library and before we checked out books, we would just sit around
the library and read. My family
are one of our favorite field trips. Every week was Barnes Noble's. And so in back then we always had
Books-A-Million, but we don't. So we wo
uld go to Barnes Noble's
and everybody would find a place in the in the bookstore, and they would just kind of lay down
and lounge and we would read magazines and it was cheaper
because we didn't have to buy them. We read magazines,
they'd read all the books they like. But reading, writing, creating powerful experiences,
and then also field trips. Now sometimes it gets too hot. It depending on the amount of kids
you got, it could be very expensive. But embarking on field trips,
whether they are
virtual field trips, you can log on to the Internet,
go to YouTube. You know, we would go to London, we'd go to pairs,
we'd go to Africa to see the animals. We would just take virtual field trips
and then we'd also take real field trips. So there are four things that you can do
with your kids 2 to 3 hours a week, field trips, riding, reading, and then doing something thoughtful, whether it's just sending a letter
to someone in your family, going to visit a nursing home,
going out to a park, or j
ust doing something just thoughtful in a neighborhood,
whether it's just picking up trash or just write, like I say,
writing a letter to someone you love. But all of those things encourage creative
and it creates thoughtfulness and it really helps
with their social emotional learning. And it seems like a lot of these, you know, real life experiences, like a field trip or something
as simple as going to the grocery store. I mean, those things are fun to bear. And in many situations they learn mor
e from that and
maybe they would sitting in a classroom. And that in that is true. You know, those are some of the things
that we also do during the school year. You know, we try to make interesting. We try to make learning
interesting to children and we try to connect
real life experiences because those are the things that they connect
to, You know, children are often, you know, we can open up a book,
but until they see the the they see the connection to that
book to their self, then it doesn't
make any
it makes no sense to them. So we're always trying to make a book
to book connection. We're trying to make a book
to self connection in a book to real life connection. And when they can make a connection to what it is that you're expecting them
to learn, then it makes sense. One more thing about the
the grocery store. I would have my kids when we would say, Hey, I need groceries,
I need milk, bread, cereal, whatever. But one thing that would make it real to
them is I'd say, okay, you ca
n pick one thing that you want. And so you would see them go on that sale
paper your neighbor would be looking for, you know, chips and candy or whatever
it is. And very rarely is that in the sale paper. But, you know, their favorite cereal
would always be in the sale paper. But I said, okay,
that one thing you can find and if you write it on the grocery list,
we would get it. And so that made it interesting. It made it real to them because they knew
we were going grocery shopping and they would
get to pick one thing
and it was they loved it
when we'd go to Walmart because Walmart was heaven for them. So looking for things
and making things interesting and giving them an opportunity
to participate in what it is you're doing, whether it's grocery shopping,
whether it's, you know, going to Home Depot,
you know, we would use those activities to learn about math and science
and measurement. And I'd say, hey, let's grab that measure. And mom needs a, you know, a piece of wood
this big. And
we'd measure and they'd go in
and I'd say, okay, measure is what? Even though I knew it was too large
for what I needed my project, but just having them go to the store
and measure things, just, you know, like I said, 2 to 3 hours of time
with your kid would help to gather back those 2 to 3 months that they're losing
in math and losing in reading. Because what you're doing is
you're giving them real life experiences. So when they returned to school
in the fall, they have things. And, you know, t
eachers said, okay, right
about what you did this this summer. Now they have something to write about. They have something that's real that they can write about,
that they can add a voice to. They can add tone and style, which is what our kids really struggle
with when it comes to writing. You know, we say write about a field trip. Nicole I call it a field trip,
but this gives them something that's real that they can connect to and they can talk
about going to Home Depot imagery. Would it measur
ing lumber,
which is vocabulary. And so these are things that we are rich
now in that they were not written before. And it's amazing what kids the memories that they latch on to. Also a funny story I sit similarly
to what you were speaking about. One of my son's
teachers asked him to write about what his favorite vacation or whatever. And that year we had gone to the beach and some things
that I really thought were great, and all he wanted to write about
was going to the state fair, and he was v
ery descriptive
about the corn dog aid and all the rides. And I thought, Oh, wow. Like that was his favorite thing. That was his favorite thing. And so part of that, you know, one of
the things I did not talk about was, you know, the conversations we have with kids
and one thing that with all the kids and that it may not have to be real,
but are second grade when you're writing, journaling and this is one thing that I encourage all parents to do
is just get a dollar notebook and have your kids t
o write each day
about something that they done. They've enjoyed, they didn't enjoy. But what you'll find is it creates
a connection because they can ride. And then you always ask his permission. You said, Hey,
do you mind if I respond to your writing? And my daughter and I, we started this
when she was about five years old and she's starting now
and she and I still journal together. And so she'll,
you know, she'd say, Dear mom, today I, you know,
I play with a turtle with with a bear. I think t
hat was her. No, it wasn't. That may a bit morbid. And she said in
the turtle was this, this, this. And so I would respond with,
you know, dear, dear. I called a ladybug. Dear Ladybug, it sounds like you guys had
a wonderful time playing with the turtle. Did you discover
what type of turtle it was? And so I would use that opportunity
to enrich our vocabulary, to ask her questions, to make her think, but then also just to dialog
and keep that open conversation going. And then the next day she wou
ld write in. So I would find her
going back in the journal days later looking for words that I had written
that she didn't know how to spell, but she would go
and find them in the journal and then she would
then use them in her writing. And so we did that all the way
through elementary, all the way through middle school,
and that was our open communication. And so, of course, the journal gets to be,
you know, a little different. The terminology and the conversations
got to be a little different.
But that was our way of always having
a gateway to communicate with each other. And so now, even in college
and even through adulthood, she'll write me a little notes
and she'll leave them on my desk or she'll send me a text
make and it starts out, Dear Mom, and I'll respond, Dear Ladybug. And so it's, you know, so it's a rich way
to ensure your kids are writing. They're writing for a variety of reasons,
because sometimes it would be about school,
sometimes it would be about the turtles, someti
mes it would be about swimming
or her wanting a new dress for prom. But whatever it was,
it was always a way to communicate, but it was always a way to encourage writing. So guess what?
Her favorite subject is now? Writing. Writing, which you know,
and I'm sitting here thinking not only a great way
to encourage writing, but, you know, as they get older, too,
if they continue it a great way, you know, men for their mental health
just to get that feelings, that was the ultimate goal so that
we wou
ld always have a communication and she would always
have someone that she could talk to. And if she couldn't verbalize it,
you could always put it on paper. And we started that when she was like five
years old and so I did it with my boys. And of course, it didn't
it didn't last long. We probably dated till they were about 12,
but that was a long time for boys,
you know, actually sit down and journal. And so they became more verbal
after they were about 12. But, but for my daughter it's lasted
u
ntil you know now she's stopped. I bet you have kept those journals
and cherish. Actually, she's kept them. She kept them. And what's amazing is
she took them to college with her and she says, Mom, you just don't know
how many times I've gone back and read through some of those journals
and relied on a lot of the advice that, you know, and things that we talked about
and helped me through some really tough days. And people, you know, you know,
we take for granted that our children don't listen t
o us, but they don't listen
when we're telling them at the moment. But I think that as life goes on
and they experience life, you know, and, you know, but it started during the summer drawings,
you know, because as a teacher, I'm working. But, you know, I started doing the summer
and then we just one summer and we just kept going
through the school year and we found that it was something
that was really helpful for both of us and it helped both of us in our
and we just continued it. But writing
is something that I tell teachers. If kids can write,
that means that they can synthesize everything else that they've learned,
the reading, the phonics, the the content information, because writing
is where everything comes together. So writing
is probably one of the highest skills. So that's the application
of everything that they learn. So if you can write with them and you can
encourage them to write as a parent, it helps you to know where your children
are thinking, but it also help you to
see if they are able to synthesize
everything else that they learn. So it is really a difficult skill,
but I encourage parents to do it with them and it helps you with your writing too, because you have to make sure
you're a good model. But encouraging them to be thoughtful and
creative, go outside, play, build things. You know, I just I go to Home Depot and Lo and just had them
put me different little pieces of wood. And then I just put it out there
for my little grandbabies now and just see wh
at they can make with it,
you know, and encouraging them to read,
you know, and go in different places. We go to Mary Park, we go to different
parks, just different scenery. So when they're reading, they can hear
different sounds and it just puts them, you know, reading is, you know,
I always tell them reading can taking so many different places because your
imagination is what you take to reading. And so, you know, sometimes we'll go to the park
and we'll pretend that we're on a beach. You know
, we'll pretend
that we're pirates. And so always there reading, you know, you want to give them
just so many different venues and opportunities to be creative
and, you know, and next thing you know, they're up with sticks and they're,
you know, they're Jimmy, John, John. And they're they're they're just so, you know, you have to give them outlets to play in
and only takes a couple of hours a week. Right. And I love that a lot of these things that
you have spoken about are actually free. It's no
t something
that's going to cost a whole lot of money. No, no. But if you're interested in
spending money, you know, you can always grab a copy of kids the kids directory and,
you know, look at it. It has all kinds of activities. If, you know, if you don't have the time
and you want to put your kids in dance or put them in summer programs,
you can always look up the kids directory. This helps to lessen
the summer brain drain. But, you know, of course it's costly,
but the things that I like to in
vest in are things that are of value
that kids will take back with them and things that they can do when you're
unavailable and you know it's free. Yeah, well, something I've struggled with
this summer is having to work
while my kids are at home and I'm like, I'm not there to do some of this
for a better part of the day. So I have enrolled them
in some summer programs and then leaned on the grandparents
for a little bit of help as well. Advice for busy parents during the summer
in balancing it a
ll and maybe communicating your wants to that caregiver
who who's taking care of your child? Well, you know, being being an educator,
one of the things I did was I always had a to do list. I always had a list on the refrigerator. And one of the things that I did was
I had on there, you know, read, you know, 20 minutes a day, you know, you know,
do this, you know, outside, you know. So I had those things identified. So even if they were with, you know,
or they were with their on or they were with
dad because, you know, of course he
he didn't always execute the plan. So, you know, I had specific times. Okay,
everybody stop and read for 30 minutes. And so I had that big basket
of library books that we had gone in and gotten from the public library. And so just having some specific things
that you have identified in writing, because if it's committed to writing,
people are more likely to do it. And so I put those things
on the refrigerator. So even if they spent 30 minutes, like
I said, we
're talking 2 to 3 hours a week. If they spend 30 minutes a day
just reading. And I mean, you know,
and if you went by Walmart or somewhere and just got some little, little thing,
no books for $0.80 and spent 15 minutes writing, if they did those things
and they just spent 30 minutes each day, then that would be much better than just,
hey, playing video games, you know, just lounging,
watching mindless TV. So if you write some of those things down
and give that list and say, hey, you know, I kno
w they're going to play
and they're going to do this, but I want to commit to at least
30 minutes a day where they're reading or you read to them,
you know, that they're writing or just doing something academic, you know,
then that would be better than nothing. Yeah, well, one last question
before we run this out. You mentioned video games, so I would love
to talk a little bit about electronics. You know, with parents busy at work,
a lot of people use those electronics as a babysitter. How impor
tant, as an educator do you think it is to limit
that screen time? And on the flip side,
do you see any good in it at all? Because a lot of people have these
educational apps that their kids use. So, yeah,
just give me your thoughts on that. Well, of course there is great benefits
and in the educational apps, you know, of course we use them in school because the reality is, you know,
that's that's where our children I mean, we're not dealing
I looks at star teaching 30 years ago. You know, we we
had a all white computer
sitting, you know, that went really slow. But these kids are, you know, generation
alpha males, you know,
and this is how their brain is wired. I mean, their brain is wired to move
like this. And, you know, and we talk like this. And so there is benefits to that. I encourage parents, teachers alike to limit it because we can't keep up with the speed of an app. But when they're on the apps, I encourage
you to make sure it's an academic app. It's something that's geared t
oward,
you know, in helping your child to read or helping them to problem solve,
not just, you know, letting them get on apps that's going
to be gang based all the time. There are lots of educational
apps out there. One that we use is education dot com for if you have younger kids you know there's Star falls and ABC. But there are some things
that really really are geared that have what we call standards
based information on learning on their where the kids are it's
grade level specific and the
parents can actually go in and select activities
for their kids to work on. Those are the ones that I encourage. Of course, you know, they need to have
some downtime where they select what they what they want because choice is very,
very important for our children. They need to have some autonomy, but just have enough free
for all, all the time. I think that that's not good for them
because what happens is they bring that choice into the classroom. And when you give them something to do, they do
n't know how to distinguish
or they don't know how to accept that. Okay, this is not a choice time. This is a teacher designated
time, and I have to put aside my choice to do what it is
that the teacher has expected or has acquired
or has set aside for me to do. And for a lot of our children,
especially our young kids, when they come to school,
they've been given a choice at all times and they don't know how to separate
and say, okay, this is a this is not choice time. And so that creates a lot
of,
you know, a lot of issues. Yeah, yeah. Because they're like, yeah, because they're so used to having their choice in their own,
their own autonomy. So, you know, giving them some things
where you has that, where you as a parent have said,
I need you to do this for 15 minutes. And then after you're done with that,
we will discuss what your next option will be. You know, I think having parents use words
like options and, you know, you have the choice
between this or this or this is you don't h
ave an option this time. This is non-negotiable. I think that that is
would be really helpful when it with technology
because kids don't get that often. And when they come to school,
they think that school is is a choice and they think
everything in school is a choice. And they don't really understand
non-negotiables and things that they have to do. That's not a choice. Right. Well, listen, I so appreciate your time today
and all of your insight and knowledge. I think you've given parents
some r
eally good tips. And here's to no summer brain drain and a good brain drain
and a good school year ahead. Yeah. So we don't want that summer slide. We want kids active, but we want them
to have fun and be resourceful and be creative because that's
the one thing if I could say, we are, that we don't see children utilizing as much of now,
and that's problem solving creativity and and thoughtfulness. You know, they,
they need to have opportunities where they can create things
and they can problem s
olve, you know, just giving things and say,
hey, what can you make with that? You know, like we were as kids, you know,
when we were you know, I always laugh. I said, you know, we had we started off
with four bikes at Christmas because everybody got a bike. But by January
there was only one working bike. But we took all four and we made one work. But that was problem solving. And our kids now, you know,
they don't have a sense of problem solving because if something breaks,
we just buy them a ne
w one. So they need opportunities to problem
solve and be creative and learn to work together. And that's the one piece
that we're missing. So giving them opportunities to instead
of buying everybody a toy, buy one toy. Let's figure out how we can make it work for about one toy,
buy for toys in one set a battery. How do you make that work? You know, it's call it exactly. I love it. Problem solving, skills, reading, writing. Let's hope that all parents, you know,
try it on. Yes. Yeah. All right.
Well,
thanks again for your time today. We appreciate it. Yes, ma'am. Have me back any time. Okay. Thanks a lot. Bye bye.
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