Summer, the way education members see it.

After all, you spent roughly 180 days (not including weekends) over 10 months teaching, marking, grading, disciplining, coaching, cheering, persevering… So it’s little wonder that school (and even your students) tend to follow you well into summer break.

So just how MUCH are the lives of education members intertwined with their professional alter egos?

Well we’ve dipped into our exclusive catalogue of ‘educator insights’ (as provided to us by your colleagues) to bring you our top list of REAL (and very entertaining) perspectives that describe what it’s like to be an education member on summer break—because while you can take ‘the educator’ out of the school for the summer, you can’t necessarily take ‘the school’ out of the educator.

You KNOW you’re an educator on summer break when:

• You enjoy finding typos in the newspaper
• You STILL plan your day in blocks of 50 minutes
• You’re giving ‘teacher looks’ when you’re out shopping
• Summer vacation planning happens on a graphic organizer
• You cannot remember the day of the week in July and August
• You get caught singing ‘The Tidy-Up Song’ while cleaning the bathroom
• Every time a bell goes off, you feel like you have to move to another room
• You still find yourself carrying extra pencils and post-it notes in your shirt pocket
• You can’t help yourself interfering in disputes between the children in your neighbourhood
• You buy gizmos during the summer holidays as they will make a great demonstration and lesson
• While packing for that summer getaway, you notice that your wardrobe and jewelry is compiled of articles that correspond with the statutory holidays from September to June
• Every word, sentence, paragraph, article, and book you read over the summer is highlighted, cut out, saved, and stored for use in the classroom next year
• You feel compelled to edit your mother’s birthday card for grammar and sentence structure
• You are on vacation and you buy books and other items to use with your students in the fall
• Every time you walk into the supermarket, you have to will yourself NOT to correct the express check-out sign to read: ‘Eight items or fewer’
• Walking in a mall reminds you of period change
• Everywhere you go, whenever you go—there are your students!
• Everyone you see out in public calls you ‘Mrs.’ or ‘Mr.’ (insert your own last name here)
• Instead of admiring your daughter’s new house, you think about what school is nearby
• You strategically plan every photo you take on that summer trip so you can use them in the classroom next year for Geography, History, or some other relevant subject
• You pay more for all your vacations because you can only travel at peak times
• You collect paper and pens from hotel rooms to supplement school resources
• 10 years after retirement you STILL can’t throw out the classroom memorabilia you brought home the day you retired
• Your own children tell you to stop using your ‘teacher voice’
• You start to twitch if you receive a grammatically incorrect text message
• You dread seeing those back-to-school commercials that cheerfully sing, “it’s the most wonderful time of the year”
• A stranger points out how well you explain things
• You think of “New Year’s” as being September 1^st, NOT January 1^st

Do you have a comical story about how YOUR ‘educator persona’ follows you everywhere you go? Share it with us on social media!

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