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by Joshua A. Taton, Ph.D. | September 6, 2023 | 2 min read

An article posted, earlier this summer, on the website "We Are Teachers" (weareteachers.com) really struck a chord. The piece is entitled "What Do Teachers Really Do During the Summer" (located here). And it nicely debunks a common myth—that teachers quote-unquote "have the summers off."

I remember this derisive, jealous-but-not-quite comment regularly made by my friends and family, practically each spring: "Boy, I sure wish I had the entire summer off."

The article makes the point that: a) teaching is an extremely demanding profession which affords its practitioners little "time off" during the school year, and b) summers are often filled with teaching work, usually unpaid, that can't be completed during the school year.

The writers list several activities in which teachers, commonly, engage during their summer "not-so-break":

• Work summer job(s), because teaching salaries—relative to professions requiring similar amounts of training—are usually unsustainable for most;

• Earning professional development continuing education credits (or engaging in other forms of professional learning, like summer classes, that may take several full-days or weeks to complete);

• Catching up on home-repair, medical appointments, disputing charges, getting new cell phones, etc.—things that sometimes take many, many hours and that are impossible to do while teaching;

• Writing grants, making purchases, and otherwise planning for next year's classes, which can take a significant amount of time and resources; and

• Recovering and re-connecting with other adults—because teachers can't take days off during the school year, they deserve a vacation, too, right?

I'm sure there are many other activities that are being overlooked. The point is, though, that teachers' lives are busy in the summertime, too, and they don't simply sit at the beach reading novellas.

There's a similar misconception applied to school administrators, including members of the central office staff. Summertime is when buildings get mothballed, refurbished (all too quickly), and reopened, or when new programs are purchased and implemented, or when calendars need updating, and so on. Summertime, I found, was the busiest time of the year for administrators.

In the summertime, as an administrator, the clock is ticking and there's not remotely enough time in the day to get everything done. So, if you're transitioning from the classroom to an administrative role, you can often kiss those "recovering and re-connecting" periods of the summer—however brief, when experienced as a teacher—goodbye. This is not to imply that teachers work harder or less hard than administrators, just that the responsibilities are spread differently.

More importantly, though, why are we SO compelled to judge others without seeking to understand their experiences? And why are educators assumed to be so much lazier than counterparts in literally ANY other field?

What I like most about this article, uncomfortable though it may have been for me to read (because of the stress-response it provoked), is that the writers are mightily trying to upend common misperceptions that persist in our culture. Let's hope the conversation continues, so that the "myth of the summer break" can be rooted out, forever. 

I welcome your thoughts.