Who says teachers have
summers off? That’s just bullshit, and
teachers know it.
Oh, sure, some teachers
can relax all summer if they’re not back in classes, reworking curriculum, or
desperately searching for ways to recertify and/or pass new state and federal
regulations being added to our license requirements every time we sit down to
have a bon-bon.
Just to be clear, I have
had exactly one full week off so far.
Last week. Yes, I’ve been out
(technically) for eleven week (“business”) days, but so far I have:
·
Booked a December
field trip so we wouldn’t lose the date (or field trip)
·
Reworked
curriculum to match federal CORE standards (as opposed to our better
Massachusetts state Frameworks)
·
Researched
extensively the new SEI (Sheltered English Immersion) requirements
·
Researched
extensively places and costs of where I can go to obtain this 45-hour
additional license requirement (apparently nowhere, regardless of the costs,
which range from $400 to over $2,000 for the seemingly phantom course)
·
Accepted that
although I do not legally need to obtain my SEI until 2020 because I just
recertified, I am going to do so for the good of the students entering my
classroom in the fall who require SEI-certified instructors in order to be
academically successful
·
Studied and
organized parts of my curriculum in five different languages to be aligned with
SEI standards
·
Railed at the
idiots at the Massachusetts Department of Education (now DESE) for outlawing
Bilingual Education in the first place
·
Discovered and
studied an entire grammar curriculum that my former discipline mate was
hoarding, hiding -- and ignoring
·
Reworked the
reading level test we will now be required to give to align with MTSS
(Massachusetts Tiered System of Support)
·
Tried to discover
and understand exactly what the hell MTSS is, looks like, etc.
·
Madly tried to
come up with an initial plan to put MTSS in place in September
·
Discovered that
five district-required tests in my subject at my grade-level need to be tweaked
and/or completely reworked
·
Gone through
every single folder, every single supplemental text (of which there are about
thirty), and every single worksheet for every single literature selection I
will be teaching this coming school year
·
Fielded and
responded to multiple school-related emails
This is only a partial
list, but it is relatively comprehensive without getting into the
minutiae. Yup, this list is not even
close to the minutiae.
Am I complaining? A little bit.
You see, this summer is
supposed to be my summer to travel and to write, and by write, I mean pay attention to the novels I have started writing
and maybe, just maybe, finish one or two or three or four of them and send them
off to agents or publishers.
I am also complaining
because people say things to me like, “Oh, you’re a teacher. It must be nice to have the whole summer off.” Really?
Because I WOULDN’T KNOW.
Just for the record, my
summer is unpaid. I’m not on vacation; I’m
on uncompensated leave. The work I’m
doing right now? Pro bono, baby. You’re paying a teacher through your
taxes? You are definitely getting your
money’s worth. (P.S. I’m a taxpayer, too, so zip it.)
I’m going to keep plugging
away, though, because no matter how many times people tell me this is not my
circus and these are not my monkeys, I understand completely that I am IN the
circus and I AM one of the monkeys. Come
September, the Big Top will go up, my cage door will open, and, like the little
chimps at the circus all dressed up in finery, I’ll put on my best show of
jumping through hoops and hanging from rafters.
