Summer is a difficult time for me. It’s the good kind of hurt.
I know that you are probably thinking: what a whiner – you still get a summer and I am in the real world, where summers no longer exist.
Let me explain. I go from having days full of constant responsibility, attention, noise, and busyness to beloved, maddening silence. Somebody slammed on my brakes – I must be stopped for needed repairs, but the transition is disorienting.
Throughout the year, immediate response and feedback (wanted or not) is given on all my lessons and projects. Now anything I work on for my classroom has the verdict out for months. Time is golden all year, and now the action that I am acclimated to is the missing piece. Too much time can be debilitating. Agendas always get halfway completed because of my inability to calculate large chunks of time after managing things in ten-minute blocks all year – third grade attention spans are contagious, I think.
The past couple of years, planning ahead to map out the summer was just too difficult to do in February and March; summers have simply shown up as a blank canvas. After adjusting, I have done some needed things – organizing my personal life and papers, missions trips, designing my class website, cataloguing my library (no small task), doctors appointments, creating and refining lessons, units, and procedures, sleeping, watching TV, reading professional books; all the things impossible during the year. This year I was slightly ahead – I managed to actually coordinate taking grad courses!!! I love it, by the way. If I was really good, I would’ve coordinated tutoring, too – but I didn’t.
I miss the hugs, the laughter, the constant affirmation that children give. I know that in order for me to avoid burnout that I need to avoid children that I am not related to for these months, but it is still hard.
I feel dull and dormant, like a teacher in hibernation. During the summer, the instinct to tell other people’s children what to do begins to diminish (not a good trait to have when in stores, at the movies, etc…). My voice becomes softer and less commanding (the teacher voice is also a love-hate trait). I begin to forget how to interact with older women and relearn how to interact with people my own age. I’m a little bit more like my old self.
Teaching would be impossible without the summer. Energy and patience must be replenished for the next year, but it is so tough to transition your whole life and being – at the beginning and the end of the summer.
I do feel the need the need to point out that teacher summers are almost a full month shorter than student summers – most of us (the good ones anyway) are in that hot classroom preparing weeks before the kids arrive.
I understand if you still don’t pity me, but maybe now you will understand us teachers a little bit more.
Jenna, hooray for blogging! Keep it up!