It’s true, teachers get too many holidays

There’s nothing teachers hate more than hearing how lucky we are to get so much time off, but we secretly know it’s absolutely true, writes Wendy Davis.

At first I convinced myself it was almost two months.

Then I consoled myself that there were still weeks to go. Now, I’m counting down in days.

Teachers everywhere, know what I’m talking about. Our gorgeously, lazy, long summer holiday is coming to an end. We must wrench ourselves from the comfort of our sofas, turn our backs on Netflix, ignore the lure of the beach, put away the great Australian novel that we’ve only just begun (again), start getting out of bed before 8am (OK maybe that last one is just me) and go back to school.

What does back to school mean for a teacher? We know what it means for students. The excitement of stationery shopping, shiny shoes, checking to see if the uniform still fits and perhaps a new lunch box. Meanwhile parents too count down the days until school goes back for different reasons, not least of which is that they can stop wondering how to occupy their offspring every day and ship them back to school.

For one teacher I know, back to school brings the rude realisation of just how little of the reading and work she optimistically brought home with her in mid-December has actually been done. Indeed, this teacher (definitely not me) still has the aforementioned bag of textbooks in the car that she popped in there at the end of Term 4.

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The last day of school sparks joy for both teachers and students, like Reagan Barby, Jacob Fordyce and Hope Machar. Picture: Glenn Ferguson

At the end of the year this teacher had high hopes. She was definitely going to use the holidays productively. She was chock a block full of resolve! She’d get those set novels re-read. She was going start planning the first term’s lessons, so she was all organised in January. Done and dusted before Christmas. Heck, these holidays are so long she might even do the second term as well. Goals! She’d be kicking them because she had so much time in this long holiday.

Oh December. For teachers it’s a time for telling ourselves little stories to make ourselves feel better about the fact that we get so many weeks off. In reality, and I know this may shock some of you, there are teachers (again, obviously not me) who drive out the gate on the last day of school, blithely humming Christmas carols. It’s holidays!

Sure, we might tell our friends and family that we’re doing hours of planning and preparation and it’s not really a holiday. Why would we tell such barefaced lies? Mainly so they shut up about all the holidays bloody school teachers get and don’t they know that normal people only get four weeks a year. Sometimes the lies work. Not often, but sometimes.

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Teachers don’t like to admit it, but the school holidays are looooong.

So why didn’t this teacher (OK it is me) do the work she had brought home so she could go back to school smugly proclaiming about how organised she was for the year? Laziness? Exhaustion? That sinus infection she had for the first two weeks of the break? OK, the last one is true. But the real reason she’ll panic her way back to school wondering just when the flip she will actually get herself sorted is that ….(pause for effect)….the holidays are too long.

You heard her. I mean me. There’s too much time. I’ve been bored witless for the last two weeks. If I want to get stuff done I have to be busy. I needed less time. I needed some pressure. Good gracious I haven’t even finished my holiday reading, let alone looked at To Kill a Mockingbird. Have I cracked open my school laptop? There’s always next week. I’ll charge the old iPad then too. There’s plenty of time. Heaps. Lots. Plenty.

“To achieve great things”, said American composer Leonard Bernstein, “two things are needed: a plan and not enough time”.

That’s what back to school means for a teacher, lots of plans and not enough time. It’s then that the productivity starts sparking and we get down to business. But if you’ll excuse me for the moment I’ve got just under a week of naps to schedule before going back to school.

Wendy Davis is a Bundaberg teacher librarian and writer.

Originally published as It’s true, teachers get too many holidays