The Children Finished School Last Thursday and I Will Finish Today

So...people ask, "When's the last day of school?" And I answer, "The kids get out on the 31st and the last day for teachers is June 5th." People look at me funny. Then they ask, "Since when do the teachers have to stay at school longer than the kids in summer?" And I answer, "Oh, since about ten years ago when they started stealing our summer vacation." Now...I can't rightfully use the word stealing since you are not technically forced to attend. However, if you don't attend, your administrators notice, and even though they're not supposed to judge you or anything...they notice. Also, you don't get paid if you don't attend and the carrot they dangle here to persuade you to trade in a couple of non-contract days is money.

Inevitably, people ask, "When do you go back to school?" I will say, "The first day of school for the students is 20 August, but my first meeting is 10 August." Sometimes I see raised eyebrows.

Here's to the next 45 days "off" (one friend calls it seasonal unemployment) for summer vacation. I plan to read a lot of books relating to my curriculum and the fifth graders whom I teach (in hopes they will be inspired to read them as well). I plan to work on my language arts, math, and science curricula as well as some social studies. I will shop at Wal-Mart at 4 or 5 a.m. one morning in July to obtain the school supplies I need for my class this year. I always go that early so I can dig through all the notebooks and folders in order to get the colors I need. I still end up sweating even at that time of the day. I will volunteer at two National Park Service sites, adding to my background knowledge in geology so I can improve my teaching there.

Our contract days are 8 hours (7:30 a.m.-4:00 p.m. with 30 minutes off for a duty-free lunch). I will be "off" for 45 working days (normal work days, and I didn't count July 4th, a national holiday, or July 24th, a state holiday, or any weekend days). Those 45 working days multiplied by 8 hours each equals 360 hours. There's about 38 weeks in a school year, but let's just call it 36 weeks. Those 360 hours divided by 36 weeks equals about 10 hours per week. Those 10 hours per week divided by a 5 day work week comes out to 2 hours a day. I have already worked those 360 hours I'm about to get "off" throughout this past school year. On Memorial Day alone I spent 12 hours at school volunteering. The next day, I volunteered another 3 hours after I was off the clock. If you add up all the times teachers get to school before contract time, all the hours they stay late, and all the stuff they do on their own time at home in the evenings and on weekends, we have more than earned these 45 days of "summer vacation" as compensation time. I just don't want to hear those comments over and over about "Yeah, but you get the WHOLE summer OFF!" No, we really don't.

Or this comment, "You chose this profession. You knew what you were getting into." I like to think of myself as being "called" to this profession. And no, I didn't know exactly what I was getting into. But I love it. And that's why I keep doing it. This is not a rant. This is not complaining. This is just an explanation that teaching pretty much takes up my whole life which sort of leads to the bristling that occurs when people suggest it's just a job. It's when they "calculate" my hours that it sort of bugs me. So this morning I calculated a few hours to show evidence. My husband has only had jobs in our marriage that clock in and clock out. If he's not getting paid, he's not working. He doesn't spend any extra time at home preparing for the tasks he'll be doing at work. He hasn't taken any classes since I've known him, unless the government paid for him to do so. When he's off duty, he's off duty. He doesn't walk into visitor centers at national parks and exclaim, "Oh! I NEED this for work!" He doesn't even think about work when we recreate. There's a difference between teachers and non-teachers. Unless you're a teacher, you haven't experienced it.

Here's to my last day of "work!"