Seasonal breaks are beneficial for students throughout a lengthy school year. A simple one to two-week break helps students gain focus within the classroom and relax from the stresses of school. Students and teachers have the year-long pressures of getting work in on time and having certain tasks completed. Students desire extended breaks as they feel that certain academic hiatuses don’t fulfill their needed periodic unwinding.
Students and teachers have to persist from spring break until the beginning of June in order to attain another needed break.
“Benefits from breaks can be having more time with family and vacations and also more time to clear your minds and focus on mental health before going back into school” said senior Alyssah Castrellon.
Spring and Thanksgiving breaks are one week while winter break lasts two weeks. Students and teachers prefer a two week break since it allows more time for family and friends.
“I feel like with a one week break, we can’t adapt so our sleep schedule gets messed up but with two weeks we can be more with family but also not mess up our needed sleep as teenagers” said senior Hannah Bernard.
(Alyssah Castrellon)
Teachers, unlike students, have grading throughout the lengthy school year. They utilize these breaks as a way to spend the lost time with family and to relax from the hard work of teaching.
“I utilize by breaks as a way to spend time with my family and take trips for example, during Christmas break I went to Peru to visit my husband’s family and travel around with my children; it would’ve been nice if Christmas break was three weeks because we would’ve had a little bit of down time between school and the trip,” said English teacher Emily Milon.
The downside, from a teacher’s perspective, is that the students will miss crucial curriculum and it can slow down the school learning process for the year. Longer breaks can disrupt the focus on curriculum and also can become a concern of students being out of school for too long.
“I notice some of my students went abroad to Mexico and had to take a couple extra days off of school. I think if we had longer breaks we’d have less teacher and student absences. Furthermore, there’s a lot of learning laws during summer, so I think it would benefit students to have a shorter summer but longer breaks during the year,” said Milon.
Longer breaks are favored and students hope that the school board can lengthen much needed breaks.
