Happy Summer, but it’s not all a vacation

I never tire of getting to say “Happy Summer” to our students. I had that chance a lot last Wednesday. I said it a lot to faculty again last Friday. 

Contrary to a popular belief, the next two-and-a-half months are not a vacation for us as educators. Every teacher and administrator from FWCD will be spending time, even when they might be out of town, doing work to prepare for 2023-24. 

That work might include recharging from the last 10 months of lesson-planning and grading and communicating, of late nights and early mornings, of dance chaperoning and lunch duty, of playground-monitoring and carpool door-opening. If you have never taught an entire school year, you cannot know the sense of bone-deep exhaustion teachers feel right now. They are smiling, they are crying a bit as students move on, and they are feeling the effects of 10 months of school days and nights.  

Beyond recharging, FWCD teachers will be reflecting on their teaching in 2022-23 and planning for 2023-24’s students. The reflecting could involve watching a video each teacher makes, a video of them teaching a class, a video they watch and use to critique themselves. The reflecting will also involve looking at lesson plans and thinking about what worked and what did not. We are good role models for humility and self-criticism. We are driven to “up our game” from year to year.

Some of the summer will also be projecting forward, even while a teacher is on a hiking trail or cooking at the backyard barbecue, as they imagine and plan new lessons, new readings, new approaches to whatever it is that that teacher might be wanting to repair or create.

A few summers ago, we developed a program to encourage a particular kind of planning, the group kind. Calling them Summer Fellowships, FWCD provides teachers a small stipend for each day they collaborate with other teachers to generate new learning opportunities. Lower, Middle and Upper School teachers and coaches all apply for the mini-grants, and then they come up to school to do the work of their fellowship. It was a summer fellows group that came up with the initial Capstone Project concept, for example. Some of this summer’s projects include developing a Financial Mathematics course, continuing to align the Lower School and Middle School Science curriculum, updating the eighth grade Kimball Art Museum project’s curriculum, brainstorming a “Doing Democracy Day” about civil discourse, creating a therapy garden, and exploring a storytelling collaboration between Upper School English and Photography classes. The products of those fellowships are always special.

So, as we say “Happy Summer” to our students, know that FWCD educators are already at work on the “Happy New Year” that is still two-and-a-half months away. While our faculty need to be able to turn school off for long stretches in June and July, somewhere in the backs of their minds, they will always be reflecting and planning, the sort of fully committed thinking that makes them wonderful educators.