With summer winding down, there is a lot of chatter among parents around getting back to the grind of the school year. One teacher, however, is advocating for kids to attend school all year long, and honestly, he’s made some really convincing points. Mr. Rupp, as he is known to his students and on TikTok, has been teaching for 20 years and after all this time believes that school should be year-round, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t believe in breaks.
What Mr. Rupp is proposing is the same number of school days but broken up into nine-week clumps with two-week breaks in between. Another way to do it would be a 30-day summer break with three 15-day breaks and a short Thanksgiving holiday break.
@hashtagjrupp I have no clue what the opinions on this are #teacher #teachersoftiktok ♬ original sound – MR RUPP™️
“Summer break is great, I’m not complaining about it, but two and a half months from the last bell until the first bell of the next school year just feels like that’s a lot of time for a lot of students to get out of the swing of school,” he lamented in his post. “You know that thing where you go back to school after a long summer break and you’ve forgotten how to handwrite? Maybe we could just do away with that and have a shorter summer.”
He went on to say that he has worked in districts where they did do that and it worked out better.
A surprising amount of people in the comments agreed.
“Summer break ruins student’s AND teacher’s routines. Shorter summers sounds bad on paper but would be more beneficial in the long run,” wrote one follower.
“I’ve thought this since I was still in school. Summer break is an antiquated concept that doesn’t need to be around any more,” shared another.
There is also a lot of evidence that suggests it would be beneficial for all students as well. The American College of Education states that the “summer slide” negatively affects both teachers and students as kids experience a decline in academic and social-emotional skills.
Of course the biggest challenge we’d face if this was adopted as a society is how parents’ workflow would need to alter. But should those two things align, it could be a really nice way to spread things out and avoid the burnout.
