Tips for addressing the 2020 summer slump

Teachers know that students tend to forget some of their math over the summer, and refer to this as the “summer slump.”  That is why teachers will spend some time at the beginning of each school year to review material that students should have retained from the previous year.  The review gives students time to adjust to being back in school and it gives teachers time to get to know their students.

However, summer 2020 is very different.  School closings had a big impact on students and their teachers -- neither was really prepared for distance learning.  As a result teachers slowed down the pace of the class and/or covered material in less depth, in the hope that more students would be willing and able to keep up.  For the most part, teachers were hampered by a lack of technology, especially technology needed for students to test online effectively.  In most cases, the stress produced by school closures and social distancing caused students to lose much of their ability to focus and their motivation to keep up.  Below are some thoughts about what you should be doing over the summer, whether schools open in the fall or not.

General advice

In general, students should make a bigger-than-usual effort to be sure that they retained and fully understand the material that was taught during the interrupted school year, and if possible, find out whether some topics from the class syllabus were not covered.  This could be done using free online resources like Khan Academy, using your textbook or supplemental materials that your school might recommend, or working with a tutor who knows the material that your class should have covered.  Some schools post summer packets on their web sites, and these are an excellent resource.  If your school does not have these, check some other schools nearby.

In addition, I want to bring two special circumstances to your attention:

Students who took Algebra 2 this academic year, 2019-2020

Algebra 2 is the most important class in the high school math curriculum because it is the basis of all math classes that follow it.  Just as important, there are more Algebra 2 problems on the ACT and SAT than any other math topic.  Students who took Algebra 2 this year should spend some time reviewing the course content, in order to be prepared academically and to help to be prepared for when standardized testing takes place further down the road. 

Students who plan to take (or re-take) an ACT or SAT this next academic year, 2020-2021

Students who plan to take or re-take the ACT or SAT in the first half of this coming academic year need to spend a lot of time preparing this summer.  This is true under any circumstances, but this year it is vital that the preparation include some time (perhaps a lot of time) reviewing math content to compensate for the distance learning.  On the other hand, if your student does not plan to take an ACT or SAT until the second half of the academic year or beyond then you could postpone preparation, assuming that your student is prepared academically to start math class in the fall.