(HOST) School will be out soon. Historian, teacher and commentator Vic Henningsen reflects that what teachers do – and might do – makes summer "vacation" a misleading term.
(HENNINGSEN) Someone said that the three best reasons for teaching are June, July, and August. To a certain extent, that’s true. Anyone who’s dealt with kids all day every day for close to ten months will tell you that "re-charging" your batteries really matters.
But if you think elementary and secondary school teachers become summer lotus-eaters, think again. In a country famous for demanding the highest quality instruction for the lowest possible price, many teachers go to work doing something else when the school doors close, because they have to.
For most of the rest, summer is time to re-think and revise. They review what worked last year, what didn’t, think about why, and change accordingly. They go to conferences, research new developments in their disciplines, read the latest books, and catch up on relevant aspects of educational theory.
Increasingly that involves technology: its applications in the classroom and its impact on how students learn. I struggle to teach careful analysis to students adept at multi-tasking. They review the Constitution while listening to music, checking Face Book, text-messaging their friends, and talking on the phone. Planning how to meet that challenge keeps me occupied during the summer. And that’s before I contend with the increased presence of standardized testing in my work, whether it’s mandated by "No Child Left Behind" or by students desperate to do well on SAT’s and Advanced Placement exams.
Finally, there’s plain old personal growth. Years ago a colleague told me: "Every so often, you should do something that makes you feel like a student again." The important word there is "feel." Feel unprepared, feel nervous, feel dumb. We get so comfortable in our classrooms. We’re the center of attention; we know the answers; we know what’s coming next; we’re in control. Without quite being aware of it, we can become arrogant. We run the risk of losing our capacity for empathy, the ability to feel what others feel. Little by little, we lose touch with our students.
The antidote is to get into situations where we’re expected to perform but know nothing and feel powerless. Once I volunteered as an "Explainer"- a museum educator – at the Montshire Museum of Science in Norwich. Teaching an unfamiliar subject to a much younger audience, I had any number of opportunities to experience humility, especially when I started doing shows with the museum’s two boa constrictors. I had to learn a lot in a hurry; I made a lot of mistakes; I re-learned how to ask for help; and over and over again I was reminded that this was how students in my classroom probably felt. You don’t need snakes to do this. Just try to learn something new, in public. Become a better educator by welcoming the opportunity to feel dumb. Humility is a teaching skill too. And our so-called "vacation" is a good time to renew it.