This article describes a part of a study on Summer School, based on the Cultural-Historical Psychology theory that has the purpose to: a) establish a critical analysis, applying the concepts of school psychology about Summer School programs on the public system of São Paulo; and b) understand the personal sensations of educators, mothers and students regarding Summer School. This ethnographic research, which has a qualitative characteristic, used the following procedures: participative observations; individual interviews with coordinators, teachers, students and mothers; and student's drawings. The results demonstrated a huge distance between the official proposals and its achievement in the daily routine inside the school. The search for a meaning for the Summer School has taken us to conclude that such method represents more a space of impossibility than a place to potentialities. The Summer School classes cause a negative effect of the "not knowing" crystallization, resulting in teachers who are dismissed from their roles to teach, and students who give up on their possibilities to learn.
School Psychology; public policies; elementary school