(Courtesy photo)
Jacobs’ students Sean, Danny, Sezan and Charlie took time in Dublin to pose before a statue of James Joyce during vacation. “I don’t know whether they liked Joyce when we read him in class, but they knew I would like the photo — and I loved seeing their faces.”

Erica Jacobs, The Examiner
2008-08-06 07:00:00.0
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Teachers are saddled with two different stereotypes during the summertime. The first has us lounging around a pool or on the beach, reading classics and complaining about how hard our job is and how little we’re paid. The second has us selflessly teaching summer school for pennies in order to keep the evil mortgage collector at bay.

Neither stereotype is wholly true, of course, although there’s a bit of truth in each. In March 2008, the Monthly Labor Review published statistics comparing teachers’ use of time against other professionals’ use of time, and found the biggest discrepancy on Sundays, when teachers were more likely to work from home. The summer statistics showed only half the teachers (in July) were not working. (Interestingly, only 20 percent were not working in June, and 30 percent in August.)

The “half full” take on this report is that teachers do have more free time than other professionals in the summer; the “half empty” take is that more than half work at least part of the summer. I can verify the Sunday statistics by mentioning that I have never seen a single episode of “Desperate Housewives.” I didn’t even know it appeared on Sundays — at which time I am a grading machine.

Yet summertime work is different than it is on a Sunday. I usually conduct a weeklong workshop for high school teachers planning to teach Advanced Placement English Literature, and I also teach two college composition courses.

But before you feel sorry for me, remember that summer is long, and teachers can work a whole summer session and still have three or four weeks before school begins in the fall. So many of us working teachers still have leisure time.

Using my viewing habits as evidence, I am addicted to “So You Think You Can Dance,” and that would never happen during the school year. My summertime schedule allows for television watching.

I once wrote a column titled “Summer Is Another Word for Teacher Rehab” in which I likened a teacher’s work year to being “strung out”; summertime is our rehabilitation. When not sleep-deprived, we begin to like students we might not have been so fond of the third week of June.

Last week I was reminded of my rehabilitation when I received a photo of four former students who had traveled in Europe with a school group. Sean, Danny, Sezan and Charlie took time in Dublin to pose before a statue of James Joyce. I don’t know whether they liked Joyce when we read him in class, but they knew I would like the photo — and I loved seeing their faces.

So here I am in August, on vacation after five weeks of work, and I like students again. I might even smile the first day of classes. Teachers don’t fit into the easy stereotypes of whiners or martyr — but we do love your children, and we try our best to inspire them. None of this would happen without the semi-leisure of summer. By summer’s end, we become the kind of teachers parents want in their children’s classrooms. Sometimes your children even like us, too!

Erica Jacobs teaches at George Mason University. E-mail her at ejacob1@gmu.edu.