The Funniest Phrase I've Ever Head: "Teachers Get Summers Off"

It's almost time for summer break, and I've been thinking that the first day off of school would be the perfect time to reboot this blog as well.  As the national conversation about education continues to center around teacher pay, test scores, charter schools, standards, and various bits of legislation, it is clear that teachers' voices are still not an equal part of the dialogue, let alone driving the conversation.  Furthermore, most of the public seems to be perfectly content with this fact, as the pervasive perspective seems to be that anyone who went to school must be as much of an expert on it as those people who have studied teaching and learning and have experience doing and refining, day-in and day-out, what they studied.  And so, in the process of adding my voice as a teacher into the conversation, I want to address some of the perceptions and misconceptions that often come up in conversations about teaching and learning. To do this, I want to paint a realistic picture of what teaching looks like on a day-to-day basis, both the successes and the challenges, and especially what it really means when people say that teachers are so lucky that we "get the summers off".