A New Calendar, A New Paradigm

By Karen Thickstun, NCTM | American Music Teacher, February/March 2011
Fri, 08 Aug 2025 15:46:44 -0800

It is 20 degrees and snow is still on the ground here in the Midwest; what better time to think summer, or better yet, re-think summer. The superintendent of my state's largest school district, Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS), met last November with hundreds of out-of-school-time providers (such as YMCA, Boys and Girls Club, afterschool enrichment programs, church groups) and challenged them to &lt;em&gt;re-think&lt;/em&gt; summer as "out-of-school-time" programming. IPS is championing a new "balanced" calendar that reduces the current summer break from 10 weeks to five weeks, adds three-week breaks in the fall and spring, and increases winter break to four weeks. A primary reason for this proposal is to counter the documented "summer learning loss" of children who are away from a structured school routine for two to three months. I can almost hear music teachers cheering! Our profession has long advocated that taking the summer off from music study results in skill and learning loss and the need to catch up in the fall.