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Five Questions to Ask Instead of "How was Your Summer?"

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 Checking in with students after a long break feels...natural. As adults, even working adults without a summer break, we ask how summer has gone. Many of us travel, relax, or otherwise take a "break" from reality. That "break" is not always the happy, magical bubble we envision for our students.  For numerous reasons, from having responsibilities, to living in an unsafe neighborhood, to not having a family budget that allows for travel, the idea of "summer" varies widely for our students. Requiring students to answer "How was your summer?" can actually cause harm. So, what can we do instead? After all, regardless of how our students experienced summer, we have all been away from any traditional sense of school.  We are usually with new students and we need the opportunity get to know each other.   Here are five questions to ask, instead of, "How was your summer?" that can build community in a classroom. How does your family cook rice? W
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Summer Slide

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The story goes that, in the summer, students lose a big part of what they've learned over the course of the school year. Without frequent practicing of skills and standards, their performance "slides. As a parent, I have thoughts around the other  skills students develop when not in school seven hours a day, but I digress. As an educator, my own skills "slide" a bit in summer without constant practice. While I don't "work" in the traditional sense over summer - I try not to plan or engage in classroom specific content - I do engage in other professional growth.   This summer, my top three professional activities have been: 1) Reading and Reviewing Young Adult Fiction A local bookseller contacted me about donating ARCs (Advanced Readers Copies) of YA Fiction to my classroom.  As a middle school educator, I try to read what lands on my shelves before my students do.  This summer, I've read nine works of YA fiction and added seven of them to my classro
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