Hardly Hamilton

Let’s set the scene: chances are, you’ve probably clicked on this article, having woken up during your summer holidays, with the aim of being productive. I get it; same. Sometimes, you get that inspiration and simply must act on it. It’s weird; sometimes we’re a creative profession by nature, having to work when the mood takes us.

However, you absolutely should not do that. At least, not very often. As teachers, we get 13 weeks off every single year – and that’s brilliant, I wouldn’t want to trade that away. I love my time off, but that’s what it is: time off. Time off should not equate to working time, unless we’re being paid for it. Sadly, though, you probably won’t be able to keep away from a keyboard or notepad for the entire summer. There will be that tiny part of you wanting to crack on to make a good start back to the next term.

I get it.

I’ll most likely do the same. I already have a long to-do list of things that need to be in place before September, like topping up my subject knowledge and refining some strategies. Your first focus, before any of that, should be on relaxing. Focus on fun. Focus on doing anything and everything that’s not related to your job.

Only once you’re done with that, can you then start to think about preparing for the next term.

With those heavy-handed caveats out of the way, here are the most productive things that you can spend your summer doing as a teacher. I’ve broken this into two halves, with some actionable steps in the second half of the article.

Step One: Get caught up on You Time

Term gets so busy that I will sometimes stop being Josh, and start being Mr Hamilton full time. It’s not a healthy thing to do long term, which is why I’m glad that my school is so supportive with marking, deadlines and data entry – but it’s still tough.

As the summer term whirls on, this disconnect happens less and less frequently. You get more time to do self care, to go the gym and to play video games, which is great. But it’s still a lot less than you should be doing.

So, first things first: self-care. While maintaining good morning and nighttime routines is essential for staying human (and keeping your skin looking good), it’s easy for those to slip, so get that sorted first and build it into your daily life in the summer, especially if you’re going to be spending a lot of time outside in the sun.

Then, it’s time to start doing what you love. For me, I’ll be catching up on my reading, my writing, and my video game-playing. Plus, I’ll be jetting off for a big trip to a destination that’s been on my list of places to go for as long as I can remember, so there’s that. Often, I find that we teachers give it our all so much during term time that all we have left in us at the end of a working week is to watch Netflix or doom scroll social media. I’ve put as many measures in place as I can to stop that from happening, which I’ve detailed here, but you probably don’t want to spend 6 weeks off doing that. Plus, you might have already fought off your phone addictions anyway.

Make sure you use this time to do what you love.

Step two: Planning and preparation

Okay, so once you’re sure that you’ve fully switched off, it might be time to start thinking about what you want to do about the first week back.

I’d like to reiterate something: if you can get away with doing very little while you’re off, more power to you. Holidays are for you, not for your career (regardless of the profession), and it’s essential that you keep it that way as much as possible. But here’s my checklist of things that I want to do before the new term starts:

1. Enhance subject knowledge

Teachers are expected to learn and remember so much to pass onto the next generation. While that is totally fine – and an obvious expectation of the job – there is a significant amount of time that we need to spend on learning what we’re about to teach.

When is that content easiest to acquire? When you don’t have classrooms full of children to look after, of course! This summer, there’s a little bit of content that I’d like to enhance for the A-Level courses that I teach, just to ensure that I hit the ground running in September and can deliver the best experience possible for our young people.

2. Plan for the first week back

With a curriculum that’s constantly evolving or being called for to be scrapped, it’s not always possible to get ahead by planning in advance for the first week back. Generally, though, you’ll be able to at least put together an outline. I, for one, will know exactly what I’m going to be teaching my exam groups, but not necessarily my KS3 groups, so I’ll be able to sort out my resources and lines of questioning to an extent in my Teacher Planner.

Just as important as the lessons will be the class lists, the seating plans and the expectations. I am a firm non-believer in the ‘don’t smile until Christmas’ myth. Students deserve to see us as the absolute best representation of what adults can and should be, which is why my expectations are always about being firm, friendly, but fair. Have a think about your expectations over the summer, how they embody what you’re like as a teacher, and how they’re reflected in your school’s rules, and the rules in your own classroom.

3. Improve your lessons

In the final week of term this year, I was tasked with putting together a bank of resources that we as a department would be able to deploy whenever somebody was off sick, to save the morning stress. On searching through my Google Drive for any cover lessons I had already put together while off, I looked at some of the old lessons that I used to deliver.

Wow. They showed their age. So many of my old lessons were absolutely fine at the time, and they probably still fine. But I compare them to the lessons that I delivered this year, and it’s like night and day. You will tend to just naturally improve some of your lessons over time the day or week before teaching them; sometimes, it can be wise to get ahead, to save future you from more work later down the line.

I remember, this year, I didn’t even have some of my lessons for the Medicine Through Time module that we teach. It was my first time teaching it last year, and I was off for a week, which is when a colleague kindly offered to cover my class. It was absolutely no issue to then make the lesson from scratch this year but, if I hadn’t realised this ahead of time, I could’ve been greeted with the job of producing additional resources, while having to do a lot of marking, which is never ideal.

What are you planning to do over the summer to hit the ground running in September? Hopefully not a lot. If you have any essentials on your to-do list, please share them below!

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