Leave Teachers Alone This Summer: Stop Giving Them Bullshit Work

“Have a great summer!” Then comes the email.

Complete this professional-development module. Read this book. Watch these videos. Prepare your classroom. Review the new curriculum. Attend this workshop. Fill out this survey. Develop your goals. Join this committee. Complete this “brief” summer assignment before September. Enough!

If teachers are on summer break, let them be on summer break. Schools cannot spend ten months talking about teacher burnout, mental health, retention, work-life balance, and the educator shortage—and then invade one of the few extended periods when teachers are actually supposed to be away from work. Summer break isn't a professional-development dumping ground.

Teachers Need to Disconnect

Teaching is exhausting in ways that are difficult to understand unless you've done it.

Teachers aren't simply delivering lessons for six hours and going home. They're managing classrooms, differentiating instruction, communicating with parents, grading assignments, attending meetings, documenting interventions, dealing with behavioral problems, analyzing data, writing lesson plans, completing paperwork, responding to administrators, learning new technology, implementing new initiatives, and worrying about children long after those children have left the building. And they're doing much of it while being expected to remain patient, enthusiastic, professional, and emotionally available. That takes a toll.

Summer gives educators an opportunity to decompress.

-They need time to sleep.

-Travel.

-Sit by a pool.

-Spend time with their children.

-Go to a baseball game.

-Read a book that has absolutely nothing to do with education.

-Do nothing for an afternoon without feeling guilty about it.

Teachers are human beings. They shouldn't have to justify wanting several weeks when they aren't thinking about lesson objectives, test scores, observations, parent emails, or professional-development requirements.

Stop Calling Mandatory Work “Optional”

Schools also need to stop playing games with language. If an administrator sends teachers a 200-page book and says, “We'd love everyone to read this before our September meeting,” everyone knows what that means. If you're going to discuss it during the first faculty meeting, it's an assignment. If employees will be questioned about whether they completed it, it's an assignment. If failing to participate could affect how administrators perceive an employee, it's an assignment. Calling something “optional” doesn't magically make it optional. And if you require employees to perform work, compensate them appropriately and make sure the expectation complies with applicable contracts, policies, and wage-and-hour requirements. Don't disguise mandatory work as a summer vacation activity.

Not Every Summer Assignment Is Meaningful

Let's address another uncomfortable truth. Some summer professional development is bullshit. There. I said it. Too many organizations assign professional development because someone believes teachers should be doing something over the summer—not because the activity will meaningfully improve instruction. Another webinar. Another educational buzzword. Another book somebody discovered at a conference.

Another reflection form. Another initiative that will probably disappear within two years when the district adopts the next initiative.

Professional development should solve an identifiable problem or improve an identifiable skill. If administrators can't clearly explain how a summer assignment will make someone a better teacher, improve student outcomes, satisfy a genuine compliance requirement, or prepare employees for an actual change coming in September, perhaps the assignment shouldn't exist. Busy work doesn't become professional development simply because adults are doing it.

“But Teachers Get the Whole Summer Off!”

Here comes the predictable response: "Teachers already get summers off." Yes.

That's generally part of the profession's employment structure. Teachers also frequently work beyond the student day, take work home, spend their own money on classrooms, attend evening events, communicate with families outside normal hours, and operate in an increasingly demanding profession. More importantly, summer break isn't some loophole teachers discovered. The school calendar existed when districts hired them.

If a teacher is employed under a 10-month contract, stop acting surprised when that employee expects the non-contract portion of the year to belong to them.

Want employees working additional days? Fine. Put those days into the contract and compensate them.

Good Teachers Will Prepare Anyway

Here's the irony. Many teachers are going to work during the summer regardless.

They'll see something at Target and think, That would look great in my classroom.

They'll stumble across an article and save it for September. They'll think about a lesson while sitting on the beach. They'll reorganize materials. They'll buy supplies. They'll text colleagues with ideas. They'll eventually walk into their classrooms weeks before students arrive because they're excited about another year. The difference is choice.

There is an enormous psychological difference between thinking about your classroom because you're excited about something and thinking about your classroom because an administrator assigned Chapter 7 and a reflection worksheet. Give teachers room to rediscover why they enjoy their profession.

Administrators Need Summer Breaks, Too

And this isn't only about classroom teachers. Principals, supervisors, central-office administrators, counselors, support professionals, secretaries, custodians, paraprofessionals, and other school employees need opportunities to disconnect as well.

Education has developed a strange culture where exhaustion sometimes becomes a badge of honor.

It shouldn't be:

-Sending emails at 11:47 p.m. doesn't prove dedication.

-Working every weekend doesn't automatically make someone an effective administrator.

-And bragging that you haven't taken a vacation in four years isn't leadership.

Sometimes it's poor boundary management.

-Great organizations don't measure commitment by how miserable employees are willing to make themselves.

September Will Come Soon Enough

-There will be plenty to do when everyone returns.

-There will be opening-day meetings.

-There will be professional development.

-There will be new students, new schedules, new policies, new initiatives, new technology, new challenges, and probably at least one new acronym everyone is suddenly expected to understand.

It can wait.

Teachers have spent an entire school year taking care of everyone else's children.

For a few weeks, let them take care of themselves and their own families. Close the laptop. Stop sending the assignments. Cancel the pointless webinar. Put the professional-development book back on the shelf. And unless something genuinely requires their attention, leave your teachers alone. Summer break should actually be a break.