With record-shattering, soaring summertime temperatures, added to the fact that the air conditioning is shut off in our classrooms over the summer to conserve energy and resources, spending time in the classroom during the hottest part of the year can get rather warm—but even this horrendous heat can’t diminish the lure of the classroom for teachers who are supposed to be “on break.”
Did I say “break”? That’s really kind of humorous. As a teacher, I’m often asked, “Isn’t it wonderful to have summers off? You get to sleep in, you can lounge around in your pajamas all day long! That’s the life!” I always have to laugh. “Wow! If they only KNEW!”
Teachers’ families are a little different. All of our “Dental check-ups,” and “Wellness check-ups” are scheduled in June or July. Our home “Spring cleaning” happens in the hot summer months, and we try to get all of our annual shopping out of the way during this time as well.
As teachers, we also stay busy during the summer with work-related activities, the only difference is: we don’t get paid for the time we put in. The state requires a certain number of continuing education in-service hours in order to maintain our teaching certificates. Most of us don’t have time during the year to meet this requirement, because they either require missing days of school (most administrators frown at this) or are held on the weekend, and our family frowns at that! So a large part of our Inservice hours are done during the summer. A great deal of coursework is done through the District. Workshops on methodology, technology, educational philosophies as well as practicums are offered and taken all summer long. When we do have these workshops to attend ( sometimes they can last for days, others for weeks) we have to find daycare or sitters for the kids and arrange all kinds of schedules to make them happen!
It’s a bigger job than you might think…getting ready to go back to school.
The multi-page checklist that hangs on the door is proof that maintenance crew has been busy all summer deep-cleaning carpets, waxing floors, washing down desks and chairs, and a “hundred or so” other chores in prepping the school for the return of the children. Before I closed down the classroom for the summer, I faithfully stripped the place down to bare bones after finishing up in June…the books are stacked neatly by subject in the lockers, all the chairs stacked up in one corner, desks in another, bulletin board borders sit in strips in a basket in the corner, all of the computers turned off, powered down, unplugged and covered in plastic…All of the math manipulatives have found their way back into their bins on the rolling cart, the science equipment is boxed and stored…except for that which is still necessary to house and care for the myriad of classroom critters that remained at school for the summer.
I have to look at the disaggregated data from this past year’s TAKS scores. This will help me to determine testing areas that my students from last year (as a group) may not have done as well as I would have liked. I then have to review the TEKS objectives (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills) that are associated with the areas that I need to look at and find some new approaches to teaching. I then do a “survey of the literature,” to research alternative teaching methods in each of the areas of Math, Reading and Science where my students fell short.
And then…there is the copying. I have to make copies of the stories and forms that will be used in the Diagnostic Reading Exams, the Benchmark Math, Reading and Science Exams, and of course the Introductory packets for the students and their parents outlining my expectations, school and classroom rules and requirements as well as a look at the TAKS and other educational objectives for the 5th grade, which include passing the Exit Exams in Reading and Math for promotion to the 6th grade.
So coming back in, I’ve got to look at my new class list. Teaching in a Title I school means our students have a very high mobility rate. This is especially true for the Hispanic community that I serve, so before I get too involved in planning for this group of children. When teaching our local bilingual kids, I have to develop a relationship with the parents and sometimes even the siblings in order to do the work that I need to do for and with the child. In a Title I school, we are required to keep records of every call and/or contact we make with parents or guardians (or any other family member for that matter) on behalf of a child. I have to make copies of the log sheets that make up my Parent Contact Notebook. As I make calls, I will have to enter each call in the log that I will maintain throughout the year. I make phone calls to the parents to introduce myself, and to make sure that the family is still living in the area of the district assigned to Southridge. If all the numbers on file are not working, I ask other parents who live in the same area if they have numbers and may even make home visits if there are several unreachable families living in the same area.
Once I’ve determined who is going to actually be a physical presence in my classroom on the first day of school, I’ve got to get into the school office when someone is there with a key to the file room. I pull the Cumulative Files (educational tracking history) for each new student and begin the task of note making as to the areas of strength and deficiency for each student. This normally takes about an hour for each child and helps me to make up preliminary groups for Reading, Writing, Science and Math. Currently, there are 19 students on my preliminary list, and one student that I retained from last year. Between today and the first week of school, there will be several additions and perhaps some attrition, but the work has to be done in order for me to “hit the ground running” when school starts.
Like most teachers that I know, my family members get conscripted into the school classroom preparation process. Elvia (my 15 year-old FMHS sophomore) goes into the classroom with me daily and feeds all of the container animals that have spent the summer in the room. She takes my prepared lists of student groups and arranges table areas from the stacked desks and chairs. We scope out and study the room for centers areas, make lists of essential items for these areas and begin the building process for constructing usable workable and viable learning areas and environments for each discipline.
Additionally, I have an area in my room where I keep board games like Mancala, Chess, Checkers and backgammon, packed up and ready for check-out. These are wonderful games for teaching the children mental strategies and thinking ahead. My children don’t have these games in their homes, so I provide them at school. I will have the children divided up into groups of 4, and bring them in before school to teach them how to play the games (most are totally unfamiliar with them) and when they have been through the game orientation for that particular game, they will “earn the right” to take check it out and take it home for a weekend.
Elvia goes through my cabinets looking for items that were put away or acquired in our Saturday morning garage sale quests over the summer. Organizing the new acquisitions with the old, throwing out damaged or unusable items, and revamping the classroom for a different class size, and set of children can be daunting. There are curtains to hang, plants to bring back in, fabric to staple to the walls, borders to staple, a horticulture center to set up, an animal husbandry area to set up and in general a lot of “set-up” within the walls of the classroom.
We’ll all be reporting back to school in a couple of weeks on the 18th, this morning though (fully two weeks out) there was a parking lot full of teacher’s cars when I pulled up at school. The administrators are in their offices, the floors are polished to a shine that you can literally see yourself in, there is the “buzz” in the air that lets you know there is life in the building…and all of us looking forward to the new school year…the new students we will have, the new faces we will meet, and the new lessons we will learn.
