Jillian Price was going to be so productive.
Post-cruise, she was going to hike with her 1-year-old and conquer required readings and organize her Eagle Harbor High School classroom.
“And then the TV got in the way, a little bit,” the 28-year-old confessed.
Specifically, “My Six Hundred Pound Life.”
“It made me so depressed when I realized that my Sonic order was the same as one of the guys,” Price recalled. “I was like ‘Oh no! That’s going to be me!’”
Joking aside, Price knew she needed to get into high gear. In a few weeks, she’d attend the Wing Luke Museum’s Summer Scholars Program to beef up on Asian American history, which meant she had a boatload of articles to skim on top of regular curriculum planning.
You can’t skip summer planning if you want to stay sane during the rest of the year.
“When September comes, you’re on a speeding train and you do not stop until Christmas,” Price explained. “If you’re not prepared, it sucks. It sucks a lot.”
Summer vacation may be the envy of us non-teachers, but it’s not a ticket to unfettered leisure, like it may seem.
“Mostly it’s about taking care of the rest of your life because you get nothing done during the school year,” said Betsy Carlson, who teaches social studies at Woodward Middle School. “I bring home about four hours of work every day — including on weekends.”
At the top of Carlson’s summer bucket list is spending time in the mountains. She also asks herself what she wants to do for herself, what she needs to recharge and to improve for next year.
“I try to bring multiple dimensions into my life because I’m so one-dimensional during the school year,” she added.
As part of that edification process, Carlson just wrapped up an improv class in Seattle.
“I love it,” she said. “I’ve always been amazed by people who do improv because of the wealth of knowledge they have available in their brain.”
Each summer, the 50-year-old challenges herself to learn a new skill in order to better understand the experience of her eighth-graders.
“I want them to sit with frustration and be OK with it,” she explained. “I can’t just say that; I need to know what it feels like to experience discomfort and be a beginner at things.”
Vicki Milander, a seasoned Wilkes teacher, has a hard time tearing herself away from the classroom. She’s mentoring a new teacher, Beth Mass, and the duo frequently show up to map out lessons and bond. “We’ve probably worked at least 20 or 30 hours,” Milander said.
But there’s also crème brûlée to be had. One morning, the teachers gathered to make dessert. In her joy, Milander got distracted and made a silly mistake, beating the sugar with whipping cream instead of eggs. With a dose of laughter and a trip to Safeway, the crisis was averted and a bond was made. “You can learn a lot about someone while cooking together,” Milander explained.
The pursuit of fun is an essential goal, especially as expectations skyrocket, Milander said.
“When I started teaching second grade, in 1986, the goal for writing was a complete sentence: a capital, a period, a subject, a predicate. And you take that expectation to now, where we are doing beginning, middle and end paragraphs of opinion, narrative and expository writing with a topic sentence, supporting detail, closing.
“The expectations are way up here,” she said. “[The kids] can do that — it’s amazing what these kids can do — but it’s at a cost of something else.”
For teachers, who have to solve these puzzles of time and pressure, the cost may be rest and leisure.
Consequently, Milander’s strategy for summer is catching up on what’s important outside of class.
She goes bowling with her four kids, plays tennis and visits her home state of Idaho, where she rides horses.
“I think that’s the closest to heaven I feel,” Milander said. “But it’s not just the riding.” It’s the spirit of the land: “the wide horizon, the lizards, the different rock formations,” she added.
