Cruel Summer

The arrival of the fourth month of the year used to be a time for celebration. For the students, April marks their liberation from the endless schoolwork, sleepless study nights, and stressful exam days. The “tag-init” season is best spent in the comforts of our homes or on beach vacations, not in stuffy, unventilated classrooms.

However, the recent global pandemic has forced the academic calendar to pause and fall into disarray. School breaks now start in July or August, meaning students must now spend their time inside stifling classrooms during the scorching summer. Worse, it is outright dangerous for students to be confined in such a stressful environment. Just this March, 120 students from a school in Cabuyao City, Laguna, got hospitalized due to heat exhaustion during a fire drill.

The Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) has brought this issue to the Department of Education’s attention, proposing the return of the summer school break from April until May, since the most sweltering months of the year are not acceptable for learning.

The Teachers’ Dignity Coalition (TDC) has also spoken against this issue, claiming that shortened teaching time and smaller class sizes should be imposed during the summer months. They also expressed that the return to the former school calendar should be a gradual transition, since it may disturb the two-month break that is given annually.

Band-aid solutions are implemented in response to the growing complaints against these conditions in schools nationwide.

Class suspensions, shortened school hours, and distance learning modalities are enacted as a solution to this issue. The problem is that DepEd doesn’t look deeper into the reasons why students and teachers are fighting for the return of the summer school break. It is not for nostalgia’s sake— the students’ and teachers’ welfare and academic performance are suffering because of the cruel summer conditions that they undergo every day because of the shift to the academic schedule.