At the endodontist, my jaw was throbbing. The dentist remembered me.
“Still teaching? Off for the summer?”
I nodded dumbly, my mouth crammed with metal instruments.
“What are the three reasons for teaching?” he asked gleefully, barely pausing before delivering the punch line: “June, July and August.”
Yanking tools out of my mouth, I throttled him until his eyes rolled back in his head.
Just kidding. But I imagined it, as I do whenever someone tells that joke. So let me set the record straight.
Public school years are uniform in length. If students finish the end of May, they begin mid-August. If they finish mid-June, they begin the first of September. Teachers officially begin four to five days before students and finish a few days after them.
Official and actual start days are different animals. “Official” dates mean meetings and paperwork, little time to plan or prepare classrooms. Conscientious teachers are “in the building” the week before.
At my DPS school last year, teachers began Aug. 13 and students Aug. 19. Carrying in a box of materials on Aug. 4, I saw three other teachers, also schlepping. One of them asked, “How was your summer?” Please note the past tense.
Is that clear? Teachers have two months off, at best.
OK, you’re saying, that’s still six weeks more than most people get.
I taught for 17 years, my second career. The eight-hour school day is a fact. Even the worst slackers are in the building eight hours, because it’s required. At my school, our hours were 7:15 to 3:15, with classes from 7:30 to 2:40.
Some arrive at 7:15 and begin teaching 15 minutes later, but most don’t. I aimed at being there by 6:45, or I wouldn’t be ready when those first-period children tumbled in like small tsunamis. And other teachers’ cars were already in the lot when I got there.
There’s a 2:45 faculty or committee meeting weekly, giving teachers five minutes after the last class to get there. The club I sponsored also met weekly after school. On meeting days, I got out at 4:30 or after. Whenever I left, I took work home. If my 170 language-arts students wrote essays and I spent six minutes reading and commenting on each one — well, you figure it out. It can’t be done in a planning period, I can tell you.
Every year that I recorded the overtime — for which teachers are not paid — it was more than 400 hours, more than the full 10 weeks teachers technically have off. And those were average years. The years I was faculty coordinator for graduation, it was worse.
Summer isn’t just compensatory time, however. Summer is also when teachers take recertification classes; do research for the new course they’re teaching in the fall; have surgery; finally clean their houses; get reacquainted with family; remodel the kitchen; work in the garden; begin exercise programs; and — by the end of July — start planning their fall classes.
“Ah, yes,” the dentist’s receptionist said, “it’s June, so teachers are making their appointments.” Summer is when teachers try to do in two months everything they’ve postponed for nine.
So, please don’t tell a teacher that teaching joke: It could be dangerous. I’m just saying.
Patricia Dubrava lives in Denver.
