Then there were other teachers at the school who took off on the last day of school and you didn't see them again until the week before school started. Those were the teachers that were still teaching material from 30 years ago that all the parents dreaded their kids getting.
Just like any job, if 90% of what you're doing is new to you or something you have to develop yourself if vastly different than if 10% of what you're doing is new or something you're developing yourself. Given the actual in class time doing the lesson plans is fairly static, that means the non-classroom hours of the day, or your own time, is what is required to make up the slack.
I imagine teachers of fields that have lots of changes (or of districts or states that adopt whole new curriculums) have it worse than some others. At least if they care about doing a good job.
It would be interesting to hear what your family members have to say about their first few years teaching compared to later years, and what period your memories correspond to.
1. Teachers in positions new to them probably do have more work to do
2. A lot of that work may be due to their own inefficiency having not yet learned the role.
3. That inefficiency ends up being paid for with a) time and b) stress, including family stress.
4. Even still, I sincerely cannot remember a single time in my childhood where we were not traveling all summer long.
5. Fortunately budget cuts can end nonsensical programs and save everyone the hassle :-/
What a weird period of time that was.
The idea that most teachers are attending conferences or blogging about teaching all summer is odd though.
I come from a family of teachers. My mother started teaching later in life, got her Masters and was hustling when I was a teenager. After a decade teaching, I don't think she spends even a minute thinking about school during the summer.
My dad is now retired and has probably the best sort of pension imaginable in this country. Certainly nothing like that safety net will ever exist for me. I can't really compare his experience though because it was a different generation of teachers. He was very involved with his union too.
Teaching just seems like a varied profession based on where you are. I hear and believe the talk about teachers being undervalued, underpaid, overworked etc. But my family has done very well for themselves back in NY, with a lot less uncertainty than a lot of other professions.
This perception is usually pretty inaccurate. There's no time given during the school year for essentials like curriculum development, continuing education requirements, training new teachers, etc, so that eats up time during the summer 'break'.
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/07/myth-o...
> Klem says she’s spending the rest of her summer this year attending meetings, developing school curriculum, helping train new teachers, and contacting families of her students, among other tasks. Past summers, she says, have been equally busy: graduate-school coursework to complete her master’s degree (which isn’t required but can mean higher pay), classroom organization or relocation, and so on. While some of these responsibilities come with a stipend, teachers say they’re relatively negligible given how much time they take—no more than $1,000.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/16/hold-on-before-you-get-too-j...
> As an educator you constantly have to be on top of trends, so it’s not like it’s just six weeks of me laying by the pool,” said Sara Holloway, a fifth-grade English language arts teacher from Monongahela, Pa.
> “You are taking classes in the summer, or you are reading material, or you are conferencing or blogging with other teachers, you are planning for the next year,” she said.