Every time I look into research on the summer slide, I get more confused. It’s no wonder professionals and families are scrambling every May as they think about how kids should be spending their time in the summer. 

I’ve intended to do a deep dive into the research and gain a better understanding of how significant the “slide” is, for who, and what, exactly, is sliding. At the time I’m writing this, I still don’t feel I’ve done that. 

What I can do is speak to what I DO understand, which is why I wanted to share my commentary and a clip from my interview with my colleague, David Schipper, as we discuss our conclusions on the “summer slide”. 

At the end of the interview, I ended up with more questions than answers, but we both came to the conclusion that kids who are already behind will benefit from consistent, explicit intervention, and that we’d both want to take advantage of time available to close gaps in students who are already behind at the end of the school year. 

David Schipper is the director of Strategic Learning Clinic, a position he has held since 2013. David obtained a B.A. in English Literature from Concordia University in 1998 as well as a B.Ed. in Secondary Education (English and History) from McGill University in 2002. After some work as a local teacher in Montreal, David founded 2Torial Educational Centre in 2007. Aside from his ability to put both parents and students at ease, David is able to help families get to the root of the problem(s) and propose the most suitable programs to resolve these issues. As a father of two children, David knows how to relate to the concerns of parents and as an experienced educator and passionately understands the struggles of students. His passion and dedication to teaching and learning is second to none.

Here are some questions and discussion points from this episode:

✅ Why we need to think about the summer in the preceding fall, not in May.

✅ Looking at cumulative gains over the entire year rather than focusing on ONE time period.

✅ Some students are already behind when summer starts. So how much time should we spend debating if a “slide” exists”? 

In this episode, I mention the School of Clinical Leadership, my program for related service providers who want to take a leadership role in implementing executive functioning support. You can learn more about the program here: https://drkarendudekbrannan.com/efleadership

I also mentioned Language Therapy Advance Foundations, my program that gives SLPs and other service providers a system for language therapy. You can learn more about the program here: https://drkarenspeech.com/languagetherapy/

You can connect with David on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-schipper-1537972a/

You can learn more about Strategic Learning Clinic on their website here: https://strategiclearning.ca/, on their Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/SLCStrategicLearningClinic, or on Instagram @strategiclearningclinic (https://www.instagram.com/strategiclearningclinic/).

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