What Time is It?
Summertime! It’s Our Vaca…well…
Like every other truly educated person, I’m a huge fan of the High School Musicals.
(No, actually, I’m not, but I’m fiercely agnostic on whether you should be, and anyway that’s not the point of this article.)
Point is, yesterday was my last classroom day at the last of my schools to shut down for the summer. For those catching up, I teach at two schools — Liahona Preparatory Academy (JrHigh and HS) and Mount Liberty College (obvs) — plus I run a history class in Boise, ID (hey, there, Idaho Legion) and an intensive writing workshop in Lehi, UT (anthology coming soon). All told I teach 20 or so class periods a week, which is not terribly unusual for a full-time teacher, and I have upwards of 300 students, which, um, is. Anyway, it’s great to hit the summer break, and it always feels surreal for the first couple of weeks.
Nothing to do! Nothing on the calendar! Don’t have to get up and get onstage by 8am every day! It’s like, totally unstructured free time that I can do whatev…what’s that? Faculty meetings? Well, that’s not a big deal. I mean, there are, what, four per school? So that’s only 8 days. No biggie.
What? Professional development conferences? Well, sure, but there are only a couple of those. Two, three days max. But we’re up to 11 days of work now. Two full weeks.