Just Like a Day at the Beach

I interrupt your life for a brief rant.

I’ve had some form of this conversation many, many times in my life. If you’re a teacher, you’ve had it too. Maybe you’ve even started it.

Idiot who doesn’t know what he’s talking about: “Summer, huh? Man, you’re so lucky to have three months off. All those breaks you get during the year too. Pretty cush job. Like a day at the beach.”

Me (after I count to ten, exhaling long breaths, and relax my fists instead of punching him in the face): “Yeah, I guess you chose the wrong profession.”

Others have refuted this sort of blather before, but I can still take my shot, right?

I’m reminded of this because I’m on my summer break before I start summer school. As a retired full-time high school teacher (now teaching community college part-time), I am finally firmly in control of my schedule. I could quit right now and just collect my pension. Or I could teach full-time (haha, never again!). I choose to teach three speech classes.

But let’s discuss those teacher breaks on Easy Street.

Christmas Break: Sure, so as not to offend they call it “Winter” or “Holiday” break, but as it falls right before Christmas every year, let’s just call it what it is: it’s Christmas Break. Every year, I was off for two weeks, just before Christmas to right after New Year’s Day. It’s the first chance to breathe since before Labor Day.

Teaching swallows your life like a hungry python. It’s not like many other jobs where you work till 5pm, put it away, and then go home. Teachers have bulging briefcases and usually a hunchback from lugging papers and books around. With the transition to electronic grading, more teachers may have healthier spines, which is just a trade-off for carpel tunnel and poor eyesight.

A two-week breather in December is a relief. It’s the halfway point of the academic calendar and a chance to lace up our sneakers for part two of the marathon.

Spring Break: This one arrives at the 3/4 point of the year, mid or late March. Like Christmas, it’s a chance to breathe, sleep in, and clear your brain a bit. You get to see your family more, maybe take a trip to a warm climate if you live in the snowbelt. You might get only one day off (Good Friday) in the last quarter of the year, so you better be in shape for the final leg of the race.

Summer: Finally, June arrives and the year ends. Papers are strewn all over the hallways and suddenly there is an awesome sense of quiet. Ten weeks off with nothing to do, right? Wrong, scantron breath! I estimate that fewer than 10% of teachers take the entire summer off. How can that be? Let me count the ways.

If you coach a sport, virtually any sport, you’re probably running a summer camp for at least three weeks of the summer. Maybe six weeks. They meet for several hours/day. You have to set them up and clean up the mess at the end. And you probably had to prep the camp while school was still running.

Or you teach summer school. If you do one semester, it’s sixty hours spread over three weeks. If you take this route, you have to prep all the materials and do the grading. Generally, summer school students aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer, so you’re not teaching the best and brightest.

There are also some workshops where teachers meet for several days and revise curriculum. It pays a little, but it’s really helpful in having discussion with course-alike teachers when you’re not in the frenzy of the regular school year. But you’re not going to DisneyWorld on workshop pay.

All those options are paid gigs. For my fam, they helped us have some fun and an actual vacation. Teaching ain’t lucrative, especially in the early years. Most of the teachers I worked with have a passion for the job, not an illusion of fat bank accounts and luxury cars.

There are also unpaid expectations. Teachers further their education, master’s and sometimes doctorate degrees. Post grad degrees are the expectation, and the fees come from the teacher’s pocket. I know many teachers who supply their classrooms with Kleenex, notebooks, staplers, markers, posters…Pretty cushy, huh?

There’s also plenty of work to do to revise courses or prep for new classes coming in the fall. When I was asked to teach AP Lit, I spent hundreds of hours over the first several years in order to teach the course well. I also didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of top-notch students.

Am I pleading for sympathy? Spare me the hankies. I chose my profession and never regretted it. Teaching teenagers shaped me, provided memories and highlights to last a lifetime. I could have followed my dad into the military, gone corporate, worked as a pastor or any number of jobs. I didn’t.

Note to all ye complainers: I didn’t make up the salary schedule or the pay for various extra-curriculars. I didn’t create the requirements for teacher certification or mandate the number of days in the school calendar. The pension I receive was funded in large part by me over the years. The remaining funding comes from taxes, also something I had no hand in creating. Same for tenure laws.

In short, I didn’t write the rules. I simply invested my 33 year career in a game already established. Nobody blamed Babe Ruth for the distances to hit a homerun. Steph Curry didn’t design the 3-point line in the NBA. I saw the teaching game, liked the job and the set-up, and joined.

My rejoinder to the whiners: If teaching is so easy, why didn’t you do it? If the benefits are SO grand and glorious, the job so simple, why doesn’t everyone teach? It’s an open field. You could hop on the gravy train and teach right now. If you are interested, join me in the classroom for a day.

But you probably won’t, will you?

Around 1995 I had a student teacher named Rachel. She was intelligent, articulate, and had achieved much in her first few decades. A graduate of New Trier HS (a terrific North Shore school) and honors student at University of Illinois, she was seemingly perfectly positioned to succeed in education.

After four or five weeks (out of fifteen) of student teaching, Rachel admitted she didn’t want to teach. I thought it might be the vast difference between New Trier and WHS in terms of ethnic make-up and income levels. Nope. She didn’t want to teach any student at any level. In her words, “I have no passion for this and it’s a lot harder than I thought.” She never became a teacher.

And there it is. Teaching is difficult. No, it is very, very difficult. Most people don’t want to do the job. Some jobs you can do half-heartedly, take your paycheck, and enjoy your evenings. Not teaching. It’s like the old cliche about the pig and the chicken. The pig, like the teacher, is all in.

If you decide not to teach, no worries. But the next time you run into a teacher friend, maybe just thank them. None of that rubbish about easy jobs with long breaks, short days, and fat paychecks.

My title is apt, by the way. Teaching is like a day at the beach. A blistering hot day where you get sand in every crevice, you have to walk a mile to the bathroom, flies bite you relentlessly, the beer-swilling frat boys on the towel next to you want the whole world to enjoy their AC/DC soundtrack, seagulls are dropping bombs, and you have no sunscreen. Yep, a day at the beach.

And I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

My rant is concluded. You may now return to your regularly scheduled life.

Thanks for reading!

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