On Wednesday I officially go back to work.
While I always feel a fair amount of regret that summer is ending, there is a tinge of relief lacing the disappointment. Relief that I’ll be back among the working parents with whom I so strongly identify, relief that I’ll no longer be enjoying something that not everyone has.
It might seem weird, but I feel a fair amount of guilt over my summer break. After all, most professions don’t come with a built-in 8 week break every year (along with others throughout the school year). Obviously summer break is one of the reasons teachers get paid less than most every other profession requiring a similar level of education. I also think it’s one of the reasons teachers aren’t generally regarded with the respect I believe they deserve.
I understand that my summer break is a luxury, but it also feels like a necessity. There is no way I’d still be teaching if I didn’t get that time away from the classroom to decompress and renew my inner resources. Teaching is incredibly intense work, it requires you be “on” for 8 hours a day with very few breaks. (I always laugh when SAHM talk about how they can’t even pee when they want to… I get two opportunities to go all day! And I have to wait in a long line (during a very short minutes break) to do it!) There is no room to feel tired or to be sick. You can’t hide behind your computer and just clock your hours until closing time. Even if you put on a movie, you have to monitor the classroom constantly. We may only work 190 days, but each one of them is utterly exhausting.
And then, if we have kids, we have to go home and parent our own kids after being a surrogate parent to other people’s kids all day. I have found that it’s much harder to be the teacher I want to be now that I have kids waiting for me at home.
{I won’t even go into the part where teachers are asked to do the impossible with meager resources every day. How they are expected to bridge the gaps between low- and upper-income students when it’s been shown time and again that what happens in a classroom can never make up for what doesn’t happen at home. I won’t mention how the federal government requires public education be accessible for all students and then cuts the funding promised to make that possible (but still expects the states to manage it without any money). Or how every 5-10 years they come up with new standards and assessments, changing the game, again and again.}
Teaching is a hard job, and most people don’t even respect the work you do. Most people think that since they went to school once they know as much about what goes on there as teachers do. And there’s always the charming adage: Those who can’t do, teach. God I love that one. Yep, teaching is a hard job with generally low compensation and less respect. Does that mean we deserve a summer break? No. But it’s probably good that we get one, or this country would be even more desperate for good teachers than it already is.
Having this time off, especially when I put my daughter in camp and take my son to daycare, does make me feel guilty, even if I do recognize that I need the break. It also messes with the delicate balance my husband and I maintain during the school year. When I’m working we are on more even ground–we leave each morning knowing we have a similar work day ahead, and come home knowing we spend a similar amount of time away from home and kids. That doesn’t mean we’re able to split all the parenting and household duties evenly–actually, I think time off my job provides creates some of the disparities in how we divvy up parenting responsibilities–but it allows us to feel like we’re coming from the same place.
When I’m on summer break my husband gets moody, even a little resentful. He said this year that I don’t vocalize how grateful I am to have my time off. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say. I am grateful, but how do I adequately express it? I try to accomplish goals that benefit the whole family. I work hard to get rid of things we don’t need, to clean out and organize, to make progress around the house. I doubt if he had the same time he’d accomplish as much. I don’t expect to be thanked, because I know how lucky I am to have the time to do it, but I also don’t think I should have to express adequate gratitude.
It’s complicated. And messy. As human emotions always are. And while I do appreciate the opportunities my summer break provide me, there is always a part of me that is relieved to go back to being the working mom I know myself to be. Is that crazy?
