It’s no lie, teachers get incredible holidays.
But like Spiderman was once told,
With great holidays comes great responsibility
Okay, truth be told we may have possibly made that up paraphrased misquoted a well known lesson.
With all of this incredible responsibility to take on during these 12 weeks of holidays, what is it that these superhumans get up to?
Staying Up Late
During the term, every teacher knows once you get to 9:30pm it’s wind down time…if you haven’t already fallen asleep on the couch. But, when it’s holidays, it’s a whole new ball game. We’re talking 10:00pm, 10:30pm, hell, even 11:00pm at night.
Seeya teacher bedtime!
Who would have thought that you can make bookings at restaurants after 9:00pm?! Or better yet, there are places out there in the real world that actually serve meals after midnight (read: kebabs. Delicious, garlicky kebabs).
That’s right, I made it to midnight one of these days.
#hardcore
Thinking About Your Class
At some point during all holidays teachers figuratively get slapped in the face with Phase One: there’s still a class of kids that are coming back at the beginning of next term. This usually leads to some sort of panic about planning, preparing, organising, resourcing and setting up the lessons in the first two weeks. Then the researching for ways to extend those students who need to be pushed, while also working out the best ways to assist those students who need more time and opportunities to grasp a concept.
Pinterest, TED Ed, Teachers Pay Teachers, Instagram, Teach Starter get a hefty workout at this point.
Usually after this point of preparation and #teachspiration I remember a whole bunch of things I was supposed to follow up or complete. Which begins Phase Two of Thinking About Your Class: Beating Ourselves Up For Not Following Something Up.
This could be a variety of things that we take on as massive, world ending problems.
A student didn’t complete their restorative behaviour reflection sheet, a parent email, a poster advertising an upcoming SRC meeting, putting out sign up sheets for a Coding Club, having a subtle lunch time conversation with a kid about their friends, who are actually acting like jerks, or forgetting to check how many of the top 200 words a kid in my class can fluently recall.
Don’t get me wrong, they are problems, but the amount of pressure we put on ourselves during our time on holidays can be ridiculous.
Having a “Sick As” Time
There is no doubt that holidays are fully sick. Like. Fully. Sick.
Well, the start of them are. And by sick imagine a Man Flu and Bird Flu got together, had a few drinks, shacked up for the night and produced the next generation of evil viruses.
Bird…man Flu? Yep, Birdman Flu.
Picture the worst flu you’ve had, but stronger…er. What better way to start any period of two weeks of holidays than sweating and hallucinating in a bed, thinking you’ve forgotten some aspect of your planning or most recent assessment.
Listening to Music…With Swear Words
Forget about that “Engaging Curiousity, Wonder and Creativity“, “Mindfulness and Meditation” or “Kids Are Listening” playlists. We are talking full on adult conversations.
No Disney songs here. Okay, maybe a few, but they aren’t the majority.
You know it’s holidays when your happily embracing the dreaded f-word, s-word or any other four letter word you can think of.
Justifying Why They Get Holidays
Once we’ve made it out of our beds, and survived another onslaught of Birdman Flu, and ventured out into the real world, we face real people. Non-teaching people. People who don’t quite understand what a day of teaching actually entails, but know exactly how many weeks of holidays we get.
Which is normally around the time that a conversation like this ensues:
Non-Teaching Person: Are you on holidays again?
Me: Ah, yep.
Non-Teaching Person: You guys get, like, heaps of time off. What is it, twelve weeks?
Me: Ah, yep.
Non-Teaching Person: You know I haven’t even taken any leave yet? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I respect, you know, what you do, and stuff, like, it’s really important. But, you guys seriously get so much time off.
Me: Yeah, it probably would look like that. What time do you get to have lunch?
Non-Teaching Person: What? Whenever I want. Usually between some meeting or if I need a break.
Me: Interesting. Do you just walk out to the toilet whenever you want?
Non-teaching Person: What? Of course.
Me: Interesting. So you can just go whenever you feel like it? Do you go into the cubicle next door and tell the other person, just in case someone comes by, an emergency breaks out or something happens in your office?
Non-teaching Person: Who would ever have to do that?
Me: Hey, with that team of six people you’re currently working with, how many visual and organisational methods do you use to support their comprehension and fully scaffold their understandings to help them achieve their personalised success criteria? When you do, do you keep logs of the effective or ineffective strategies that work with your team, sharing them with other colleagues to then research ways you could further build on these skills to enrich your team’s learning, efficiency and all round human contributions for the future?
Non-Teaching Person: Um….good to see you again, Dan. Ah, enjoy the break.
Me: Best of luck with the team!
Hey! Happy holidays!!
Need help switching off or forgetting about school for a little bit? Grab our 4 simple tips to switch off and get into holiday flow!
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For me holidays are my time to get my odd jobs done because during the term we can’t just leave a class full of students alone so we can head to the bank or go to the dentist!
Yes! Nothing more rewarding than using your holiday time to pay bills, get to the bank and touch base with your post office (that felt bad even as I wrote it)
I see a lot of Teachers posting on Facebook well before 18:30 each night.
And surprisingly many who can keep up with the latest Netflix shows.
And many who don’t look like they are starved from eating everyday.
Are they the only Teachers that aren’t working as much overtime as you say, and missing lunch?
If Teachers were better communicators with parents, would community beliefs about the work they actually do change?
Rod, it’s always great to have the discussions and hear more perspectives from our community. It sounds like you’re interested in finding out more about a teacher’s typical day, how they manage their time and what we can all do to help everyone realise the impact teachers make on communities.
How could we help you with this?
Cheers,
Dan