For Teachers, Summer Passes So Quickly

So Much Summer, So Little Time

Source: Pixabay/Prunkova

For teachers, when the day in June comes for Summer Break to begin, the summer seems to stretch out before us as a long series of lazy days we can fill with trips to the beach, days spent lounging around the house catching up on our favorite television series, vacations with family, writing that book, taking that photography course at the community college, attending a Professional Development conference or two, and working on improving our lesson plans for next school year.

And then there is the list of things around the house and yard we want to accomplish over the summer. The list is usually long and ambitious. Then the first day of summer break arrives.

We get up early because our bodies are still on school time. This doesn’t bother us. We vow to stay on school time all summer because it will allow us to get so much more done.

A comfortable pair of short, a t-shirt, and a pair of flip-flops later and we are booting up the computer on our way to the kitchen to brew our first cup of coffee of the summer. We think of the money we’ll save making coffee at home instead of stopping for a cup at the most convenient fast-food restaurant between home and school and it makes us smile.

Coffee in hand, it is time to check our e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and any other social media site we may try to stay current on. (In my case, it is time to work on my next blog post.) We like and share and comment until we’ve had quite enough of the computer for the moment; about one cup of coffee’s worth.

A second cup of coffee in hand, perhaps we venture onto the back porch/deck/balcony to take in the morning and revel in the fact that we are standing there in comfortable clothes instead of standing in the hallway at school waiting for the intake bell to ring. It isn’t too hot in the mornings yet. We decide today would be a good day to pull the weeds sprouting up in the flower bed.

By late morning the heat has arrived and working in the yard loses a lot of the appeal it had earlier. We head inside, switch our coffee cup for a nice cold glass of apple juice over ice and decide to see what’s on television. One hundred channels later, we realize there really is nothing worth watching on television in the morning and launch Netflix to binge watch the shows we missed during the school year while writing lesson plans and grading papers.

Lunch time rolls around. The idea of making lunch doesn’t appeal to us. Neither does cleaning up to go out to lunch. With a laugh at the audacity of our action, we pull up Dominos.com on the computer and order lunch delivered to the house. We order enough so that we can have the leftovers for lunch the next day.

By the end of the week we are growing tired of hanging out at home and look forward to Saturday when our significant other will be on vacation and we will head out for this year’s escape. Oh what a week that is, no matter where we chose to go.

Vacation ends but Fourth of July comes soon on its heels. Then, since this is an election year, the Republican convention, which we as teachers feel obligated to pay some attention to, monopolizes the news for a week. Then the next week the Democratic convention does the same. All the while, we’re working on those summer projects we promised ourselves we’d get done this year.

And, suddenly, July is nearly over. The first of August is only days away. We find ourselves going out for breakfast just because one more morning at home with a toasted English Muffin and a bowl of Special K is unbearable to face. We look at the calendar and realize our days of relative freedom are passing quickly.

We still have some things to look forward to. A couple more trips to the beach, the Summer Olympics, maybe a birthday to celebrate. But reminders that the new school year is fast approaching are numerous.

The text books we brought home so we could begin on our lesson plans for the coming year sit in stark relief on our desks. Reminders in our e-mail that it is time to register for the Summer Curriculum & Instruction Seminar at the local four-year college remind us the summer is quickly waning. The time until the first teacher workday is no longer more than a month into the future, it is only a few weeks away.

But, we’re not ready for summer end. Our lists of what we hoped to accomplish over the summer stare back accusingly at us, more things still to be done than have been crossed off. We shrug and tell ourselves, “There’s always next summer.”

We get up from the table, pour ourselves another cup of coffee, and log into Facebook. Maybe tomorrow we’ll head for the beach. Today we will relax and try not to think about July coming to a close.

As always, I remain,

The Exhausted Educator