It’s the classic first-day-of-school writing assignment in English class: “how I spent my summer vacation.” There are films with this title: an adventure from 1967 starring Robert Wagner and Jill St. John; and another from 2025, a drama about a 13-year-old girl who spends the summer with her gravely ill grandfather. There is also a great children’s book with this title, in which a boy named Wallace Bleff recounts a fictional summer adventure in which he is carried off by cowboys to learn the ways of the Old West, and saves his aunt’s house from a stampede!
Q: What are the three best things about being a teacher?
A: June, July, and August.
There is this common misconception that teachers have some easy schedule. You’ve heard it, and probably said it: “nine months on, three months off.” I don’t know where that legend emerged, but it was probably first stated by somebody who never set foot into a classroom after their time as a student was completed.
I’ve never had “nine months of work for twelve months of pay,” or anything of that sort. I think it is widely documented that teacher pay is among the lowest of any profession. It is often said that teachers are compensated by getting a real-time view of student success. That is very true. And the benefits package for a state employee isn’t bad at all, because public school teachers are on the same salary matrix and receive the same insurance as other state employees such as judges and state troopers.
But no teacher can ever say they have had “three months off” – maybe, at the most, four or five weeks?
There was also a time when teachers led somewhat private lives during those weeks in which they were not standing in front of a chalkboard, lecturing. There is really no such thing as a private life anymore. Everyone throws it all out there on social media for all to see – myself included, because part of my job these days as a college admissions recruiter and music professor is to constantly keep the name of our program and our people out in front of the public. How else to do it, but make consistent posts that will goose the almighty algorithm?
There is another phrase out there, “back to school, back to church,” as if it is somehow okay to take three months off from church attendance. I don’t get that one, either. Remember in the Gospel of Matthew, in the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus finds the disciples sleeping. He says to Peter, “So you could not keep watch with me for one hour? The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
While the season of summer itself may indeed be three months (in Alabama, it sometimes seems more like six months), the distance between Memorial Day and Labor Day is the traditional measurement of summer. That’s about 100 days, which would be great if that truly were a vacation from work and school. However, look at the school calendar. This year, between Graduation night and the first teacher inservice, it was 68 days. That’s really two months – and during those two months, did teachers and their families really have the chance to get away and enjoy summer? Maybe.
As I have often written in this space, I work several jobs – four, if anyone is keeping count. One of my bosses at a job last week said, “I feel like our family hasn’t had a summer,” and once again as we approach the first days of school, I am inclined to agree.
Michael Bird is an assistant professor of music at Faulkner University.
