Quote:
Originally Posted by HHW
In many countries in Europe, for instance, students get five weeks of summer vacation, but also have both fall and sprink breaks of 1 and 2 weeks respectively.
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True. But the problem with the long summer breaks is loss of learning retention.
Quote:
Originally Posted by redforever
As far as in classroom days in a school year, that has changed dramatically from when I taught. At that time, students had to be in class for 190 to 200 days a year. Those were in class days...professional days were not counted in that number. As far as professional days, I had 3 per year and then Teacher's Convention.
Although my children are no longer in school, I still check on in school days, more recently in the Foothills School Division as that is where I used to live. Last year they had 179 in class school days and 13 professional days. That is a minimum of 11 fewer in class days from when I taught. I don't think that bodes well for our education system.
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I'm curious how many professional days teachers in Sweden and New Zealand have. As redforever commented, Alberta teachers already have far more than they did 20-30 years ago. It's a rare thing for a kid today to have back-to-back 5 day weeks. When I was a kid in Calgary, we had one short day - Wednesday - when school closed at 2:20. Now, my kids school closes at noon every Friday. All done, no doubt, in the interests of students.