Summer "Vacation"

Here it is - my last official day of summer "vacation." It's been a break from the daily routine of school, but like most of my summer breaks, this has not been a vacation.  If I had a dollar for every time I heard some variation of  "Oh, you're a teacher. Must be great to have 3 months off" or "Teachers only get paid to work 9 months out of the year"  - I would have been able to retire to Hawaii by now.


How others view teachers spending their summers


The fact of the matter is, most teachers WORK over the summer. Some need to work because they need the money. Many teach summer school. I have known several teachers who mowed lawns over the summer to make ends meet.  Many get other part time jobs to help pay the bills during those tough summer months where we don't get a pay check.


The sad reality for many teachers


Many teachers, like me, are working on curriculum all summer. Since I teach AP courses, I assign summer reading to my students.  I could take it easy and assign the same books year after year, but instead, I assign different books each summer. This means I have to read, annotate, come up with discussion questions, essay questions, and tests for each of the books I assign. This summer I was particularly brilliant and decided to assign my 2 different AP classes 3 books each. Not that I mind reading ... but reading for fun and reading with the intention of teaching what you are reading .... are two very different things! This summer, I was promised a new textbook for one of my AP courses - which meant going through my sample teacher's textbook to decide which works would be studied and how, coming up with projects, questions, essays, tests, - only to discover that my textbook hasn't arrived and we have no idea when it will arrive. Yay! All that work ... for nothing!  This is also a summer that I attended a week long continuing education conference for AP teachers. I attend one about every other summer.



What my summer felt like (not that I'm complaining ... too much!)

In short, summer "vacation" isn't really a "vacation." It's a nice change from the routine of getting up early and reporting to class, but it's not always lazing around working on our sun tans.