Teachers in the Summer.

I'm guessing that today's department meetings should, somehow, signal yet another "beginning of the end" of the school year, as it was the official unveiling of our teaching schedules for the fall.  This week has been filled with emails allocating budget figures and invitations to submit purchase orders to spend our $150 for classroom materials for the entire next year, along with schedules for final exams, senior parades, slideshows, and class picnics.  We're 48 hours from the "SINGLE DIGITS" left in school calendar days to be counted down.

To the non-teachers in the world, the assumption is that the pool will be opening, and the latest beach novel will be in our hands with our toes in the sand, for the next 90 days or so.  To those of us gathered at the department meeting today, it was about defining how to refine, reconfigure, and rewrite lesson plans, curriculum, CMAPs, unit maps, and Student Learning Maps before the first day of school in the fall.

It's overwhelming.  It's daunting.  It's got to be done.  

So yes, you might see a teacher reading a steamy novel this summer.  Ask that teacher what's on her nightstand at home, or in the bottom of her beach bag, because chances are pretty darned good that she's reworking something, somewhere, to make the lessons better next year -- for the preservation of her own sanity, and for the good of her students.