Back after short break

Most children are still splashing in swimming pools and picking out school supplies at local stores, but some students are already back in the classroom putting those new pens and pencils to good use.

Students at East Valley’s Continuous Curriculum School began school on Tuesday. The year-round school has a shorter summer vacation and more frequent breaks during the school year.

“It has a calender more like you would see in Europe,” said Principal Chiere Martyn. “They do six-week terms and then have a short break. They still go to school the same 180 days the other students do, it’s just configured differently.”

CCS is a choice school of about 200 students in grades K-8 that draws children in East Valley and other area school districts. The schedule runs from mid-August to the end of June, with a one- or two-week break at the end of each term. The school takes up half the building at Skyview Elementary School, 16924 E. Wellesley Ave.

The shorter summer break helps students retain what they have learned and the frequent breaks during the school year help prevent burn-out. “It keeps students and teachers and parents fresher,” Martyn said. “There’s always a break coming up.”

The schedule isn’t the only thing that is different at CCS. The teachers are on a looping schedule, meaning that a teacher will follow her first-grade students to second grade, which puts the same class and teacher together for two years.

There’s a loop for third- and fourth grades, but grades five through eight are a bit different. Those students will have the same teachers in core subjects like math, science and English all four years. Teachers often mix several grades in the same classroom at the same time.

Seventh-grader Kendall Steiner prefers the schedule at CCS. “I like it a lot better, and the education is better, I think,” she said. “On longer summer breaks, you get bored.”

She spent her sixth-grade year at Mountain View Middle School before returning to CCS. Because of the mixed classes at CCS, she was ahead of her peers. “I thought it was a lot easier,” she said. “I learned the same stuff I learned in the fifth grade. It wasn’t challenging at all.”

Eighth-grader Thomas Dedera is involved in basketball and baseball at East Valley Middle School and said some of his teammates would like to get into CCS. “The breaks during the year are nice for vacations,” he said. “A couple kids actually want to come here.”

On the first day of school Thomas was one of about two dozen students in Estelle Cordes’ morning English class. Their homework assignment was to be a paragraph summary of the last novel the students read. She told them it could be in pen or pencil, print or cursive. “I need to be able to read it,” she said. “That’s my only requirement.”

At 11 a.m. she dismissed her fifth-graders to math class and her eighth-graders to science. No bells echoed through the hall to announce the class change. “The fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth (grades) are the only ones who are shifting,” Cordes said. “The rest of the school isn’t interrupted. It makes you watch the clock.”

This is the second year Thomas has had Cordes as his teacher and said he likes having the same teachers again. “Then you know what’s expected of you,” he said.

The small class sizes and looping schedule make for a close-knit group, Martyn said. “Because it is a choice school, you have relatively little turnover. They’re coming back to the same peer groups. There’s a sense of community that builds in those kinds of settings.”

The school is popular and has a waiting list for most grades. There is a little room in third, fifth and sixth grades right now. The school is open to all local students, though East Valley students get priority over out-of-district students.