By Kelly Keene

“You get summers off,” people tell me whenever I mention the challenges of teaching. They’re right, we only get paid ten months out of the year. But what they don’t realize is that even though teachers don’t get paid for those two months, we somehow are still expected to work through them. Telling people that teachers are seasonal employees makes some sense. However, with demanding school years, and rigid working schedules, teachers deserve time off. What we don’t deserve is the expectation that unpaid time is still work time.

When talking about “time off” from work there are year-round employees who still expect a certain amount of paid time off. Some of this is sick leave, but there is usually paid time allotted for vacation, jury duty, bereavement and other life necessities that might demand a reasonable break from work. Many year-round professionals expect several weeks of paid vacation each year, without their salary stopping. Teachers’ schedules look different. Our extended break comes with an equally long interruption in pay. Teachers have to either save from their ten month salary to cover housing and living costs in the summer, or defer a sizable portion of their paychecks to allow for a smaller check to still come through during those months when our working contracts do not cover us. I’ve even had to lie about being sick to get a day off to attend a good friend’s wedding in October. “You don’t get vacation days,” the admin told me, “that’s what summers are for.”

It’s a system that functions. Teachers have accepted this two month void and school districts depend on it to keep costs down. But the problem I have with it, is that there is an operating assumption for many students, parents, administrators, and even teachers themselves that expect a lot of teacher work to get done over the summer breaks.

Last summer a colleague of mine insisted on meeting for over three hours on three separate occasions during our unpaid summer break. She wanted to review course material for a class we were both teaching. We did need to meet and get that work done. I resented it, though, because I knew that that time had not been pre-approved as paid time. Nobody factored those nine hours into a budget, and there was no guarantee that I would be compensated for that work.

We did the work anyway.

Individually, teachers also work over the summer. With experience, I’ve learned that a well-thought-out lesson planning session or two from the comfort of my couch, or the beach can mean the difference between a stressful or routine fall semester. Not to mention all the reading, both professional and personal, that happens during this time. Despite teaching being an age-old profession, there are new practices, great lesson plans, and research that comes out every year. Most teachers who keep up with the latest trends use their summers to do so.

I also can’t read a book for fun without flagging passages that might be relevant to lessons for my future students. I fold down corners, and scribble in the margins. I keep an extra stack by my nightstand of hard copies to carry back to the classroom that fall.

Many teachers use summer break to go to trainings like AP training or AVID Conferences. These conferences might be just a day or two, but some stretch on for an entire week. In order to attend, teachers pay to fly, or carpool with colleagues from the same school site. Hotels might be involved and, if you’re lucky, a per diem for food.Often, a school district will pay the fee it costs to send the teacher to a week-long professional development, but it is rare that they pay the teacher for their time. If the hotel, food and transportation are covered, and often they are not, teachers attending work events in summer are volunteering their time.

If a teacher needs income during the summer months, summer school is usually an option. It’s a less demanding schedule, and usually paid for in the form of a stipend instead of salaries. The problem with the stipend system, is it often grossly underpays professionals with credentials and multiple degrees for the work that they do. And, by committing to a summer school schedule, teachers miss out on the crucial decompression time that a demanding school year requires, and the time off in summer creates.

If teachers really did spend two months doing nothing, perhaps the criticism would make more sense. But summer isn’t simply an absence of work. It’s also the season when many of us become ourselves again.

So how do I spend my summers?

I relax. I read. I do lesson plan more than I should, but I never check my work email. I try to set boundaries with my colleagues, my friends, who ask for some of my time, but it’s difficult.

The first thing I do when late May hits is plan a trip. I’ve done it most years and love getting out of town and clearing my head after any school year has come to an end. It’s a nice reminder that I am free, unencumbered, and a whole person outside the classroom. The trips can be small, a road trip up the coast with a tent and sleeping bag packed in the car, or big, like the honeymoon I took this year with the husband I married in January. Wherever I go, I give myself time to wonder, relax, and use the restroom whenever I need to, not on a bell schedule.

One of my teaching friends packs her whole summer with trips. She drops her pets off with her parents and spends her summers, months at a time in Europe or South America. I’ve tried this a summer or two myself, and it was quite the adventure. I missed some downtime at home though. Summer can be a great time to make appointments mid week, without needing to create a lesson plan or request a substitute to cover my class. Physical healing at doctor’s and dentist appointments sometimes gets neglected or put off when there are exams to grade and parent-teacher nights to attend.

Other friends dive deep into hobbies they didn’t have time for, or projects that they’ve put off. An elementary teacher learned Spanish one summer on Duolingo, then finished his July off with a fishing trip to Mexico. Another coworker wrote a play, joined a choir and got into an adult volleyball league. When we do reconvene, the staff share out at our first meeting back, and I’m often amazed at how much gets accomplished in just those two short months.

Maybe my bias as a high school English teacher also takes me to the bookstore on my time off, though I do know many math and science educators who use this time to read for pleasure too. I’ll never forget how sad I was, six months into my first year of teaching, realizing that I had not read a single book for fun, or for myself. How can I help students live a reading life, if I do not practice what I preach? I also love reading. Reading was part of who I was before I even thought of becoming an English teacher. From that moment on, I started setting annual reading goals on Goodreads, and following friends to see what they read too. This habit has made me a stronger reader, and expanded my social circles to include book clubs and literary exchanges with family and friends. Nurturing this hobby is another important part of regaining my sense of self, and being creative outside of work.

This summer, I traveled to Greece for my honeymoon, then spent another ten days in Scotland walking the West Highland Way with a few other educators who also had their summers off. It is a blessing, knowing that it doesn’t dip into our sick time to make time for trips like this. It will also be nice, if I have children of my own someday, to have the same time off that they do. My husband has a work-from-home job, and I dream that maybe one summer, we rent a place abroad and live there for two months.

It might come down to cost, though. For every teacher who travels and works out the creative side of their brain, there are many others, especially newer educators, who can’t afford to have two unpaid months out of the year. Those were the years I spent bartending on my time off, or tutoring to make ends meet. If school districts paid teachers a more competitive wage, we could afford to pay off the student loans we took out to qualify for this profession in the first place. And we could use some of our summer time to do the necessary work that would enrich the rest of the school year.

If all my lessons were planned, all my copies made, if all my sample work was organized, and professional reading done, I could be a better teacher during the year. I would evolve each summer break and push my instruction to be more relevant, more engaging. More of my colleagues would expand their skill sets and get the training that helps them teach a more diverse courseload.

So what can be done?

While I am hesitant to work during these precious sun-shining days, I know this work still happens, unpaid, on the couch after the summer sun has set. But maybe a stipend for every teacher, to use at their discretion, would be a good solution. Every August, classrooms fill with teachers who somehow found the energy to return. That energy doesn’t appear by accident. It’s built on long walks, books read for pleasure, trips with family, professional learning, and yes, the lesson plans quietly written on living room couches after the sun goes down. If schools expect that work to happen, then they should value it. Pay us for the work we do, and protect the time that allows us to become the teachers and people our students and communities deserve.