My first day of vacation was greeted by the highest close of oil futures in history, just shy of $140 per barrel. The stock market dropped and unemployment increased by.5%, the largest one month increase in some time. I went and filled up the truck with gas and it cost $70.00. On top of that I still had to go to my classroom to bring some things back home so I could work on them over the summer. After all of this, maybe I shouldn't have vacation. That is quite a bit all at once.A lot of people think that once the end of school comes and summer vacation starts that teachers live a life of leisure. I guess that some do. Many, many others teach summer school, prepare for next school year by planning, rewriting curriculum, going to classes to catch up on latest research, prepare things for their classroom, etc. Summer is not necessarily a vacation for teachers.I started my summer (All right, I know that the Summer Solstice doesn't officially arrive until June 20th.) by heading to school and cleaning out my classroom; dusting, rearranging, cleaning out, and minimizing. I will spend quite a bit of time organizing things, preparing learning centers, and generally planing the upcoming school year. Oops, I forgot about my reading books. You see, some of the students can get a little rough with the story books so I have to bring them home a play "Story Book Hospital" and repair many of them. This next school year our campus will be downsizing the Kindergarten from 4 classrooms to 3.The best thing about summer is the lack of deadlines. That means if I don't feel like taping up books this morning I can do them later. Of course, If I want to do it all tonight I could, highly unlikely but I could if I wanted.Later this summer I will be taking 57 hours of training for this next school year. Fortunately, 30 hours will qualify for a $200 stipend. That leaves 27 hours. If I can take another 3 hours I will qualify for another stipend of $500. That' $11.67 per hour. It could be better but at least I have a job for next year. Unfortunately, there are many that can't say that.© 2008 Barry T Horst
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