Like Summer Lovin’ but for teaching?
Haha. What? Not funny? Yeah, Ok.
This summer, I finally get to be that teacher – the ones people always throw in our faces when we ever dare to ask for a raise. The ones that get the ENTIRE summer off. *gasp*
I just finished up my sixteenth year of teaching (also, how did that even happen? I just started a couple years ago, right?), and this will be only the second* time I won’t be teaching over summer. Like most teachers, I’ve always taught summer courses because I needed to – I needed the money. At first, because I didn’t make enough during the academic school year to live on without doing so. Later, because I’m a home owner, and things break. (Can we talk about how ridiculously expensive windows are to replace…?)
No, this is not a woe-is-me post – just an honest one. I said all that in the hopes that people understand the relief I feel knowing that for three whole beautiful months, I finally get to put work aside. (Well, some of it. I do have a new course to create for fall, so there will still be work.)
Teachers are supposed to love every moment of their jobs – it’s supposed to be a calling. So whenever we dare to admit it’s hard or that we need a break, we’re told, essentially, to suck it up – because we get summers off. How bad can things be?
Well, after sixteen years, I can tell you that it got bad. We are still seeing the fallout from the pandemic in our classrooms, all the while expectations of our time outside the classroom continues to rise, not to mention students who cannot put their cell phones down for a seventy-five minute class – oh, and Generative AI popping up like the worst game of whack-a-mole ever. (It also doesn’t help that according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics**, teachers on average were making, when adjusted for inflation, $9,499 less in 2022 than they did in 2000. Starting teacher salaries, according to the NEA**, last year were $4273 below 2009 levels.) A lot of folks got burned out and couldn’t take the time they needed to recharge – and many will push on to teach summer to make sure they can pay their bills.
I feel grateful that I’m at a spot (again – after teaching for sixteen years) where I can finally take a summer off. And I may have told some folks they could slap me if I took summer classes. (Because I may have stated that I wouldn’t teach for the past few summers, only to have something happen that required that I do so.)
Well, my face remains slap-free. I’m about to recharge.
… 👀
But now that it’s here, I’ll be honest – the panic has set in. I am one who thrives with routine (even if it switches up every semester), and I’m looking at three whole unscheduled months ahead of me. Likely, that sounds like paradise for some folks. For me? 👀
As a tunnel vision worker (I’d rather take a day and knock out a big project than do a little bit every day), I’m opting to assign full days. Mondays and Tuesdays will be creating that course (through mid-June if I can stay on track of my schedule – not sure yet about after that 😬), Wednesdays and Fridays will be writing days (with the added bonus of the Farmer’s Market on Wednesdays), and Thursdays will be for home care tasks (I may be scheduling week-specific deep cleans for every room in my house 🤦🏻♀️🤣). The main goal is to end the summer recharged and be ready to walk into the classroom in August.
How do you do with unscheduled chunks of time? Are you someone that thrives by tossing the planner aside, or does having that much unscheduled time also make you itchy?
*The only other time I took a summer off of teaching at my college was the summer I went to Kenya – because I literally couldn’t teach for them, even online (where I was, I didn’t have access to internet). That being said, I went to Kenya for the purpose of teaching. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (I did teach online while I was assistant directing the study abroad to Costa Rica because I didn’t get paid to oversee the program.🤷🏻♀️)
Ami Maxine 