Seriously, Please Stop Saying ‘At Least You Get Summers Off’ to Teachers
It’s October, and like many teachers in this profession of the heart, I’m already longing for June. As the weather turns cooler, my thoughts return to a relaxing hot afternoon in July, watching my teenagers launch cannonballs into our friends’ pool.
Before you even say the words about the grass being greener in my summer yard, imagine a typical 9-5 job where extra responsibilities suddenly require 15-20 unpaid hours a week just to keep up: decline, and your evaluations tank. You risk being fired forever from your field. You get building keys and security codes to work after hours and weekends at home. You pay out-of-pocket for mandatory trainings, but never during work hours.
You manage 16-30 untrained “employees” who show up late (or not at all), goof off, argue, complain, and disrespect. Safety is always a concern, whether they are physically assaulting each other or you. Your performance is judged on their output, even though they can’t be fired—ever. Every screw-up is on you. One wrong word or lose your cool? Legal action and unwanted media attention are fair game.
Need supplies? It’s on your dime. Need to miss a day? No problem. Whoever covers your shift will be treated terribly, nothing will get done, and you’ve got a mess of issues to deal with the next day. And let me say it again for those who still disagree. There is no overtime, no bonus, and most certainly, no reimbursements. But hey! Don’t worry, there are a few perks…Occasional free lunches in the staff lounge and a 20% one-per-year discount on school supplies at Target.
Public outrage would explode if this happened to 3 million professionals. The Department of Labor would drown in complaints for centuries. Summers aren’t “off”; they’re a shift in chaos. As a mom and third-grade teacher with a master’s in clinical counseling psychology, and three classes shy of my second master’s degree in school leadership, I’ve heard this line more times than I can count. It’s not just annoying—it’s dead wrong. Teachers don’t get paid vacations. As teachers, our “summer pay” is just deferred wages from a 9–10-month contract spread over 12 months. Even if most teachers worked year-round, salaries would hover around $60K—too little for a single-income family to thrive, especially with advanced, professional degrees.
Let’s break it down—first, the myth of summers off. Teachers’ contracts typically run 180-190 days, from August to June. That “summer check” isn’t extra—it’s holdback pay, withheld from our regular checks and doled out over breaks to make ends meet. If we chose a 10-month payout, we’d get bigger checks during the school year but nothing in July and August. It’s like saving for a rainy day, but the rain’s mandatory.
The National Education Association [1] reports average teacher salaries at about $72,030 for 2023-24, but that’s for the contract year—summers aren’t “free” money. And don’t get me started on the unpaid work. We spend hundreds (yes, hundreds) of hours outside class: planning engaging lessons, grading papers, attending meetings, prepping classrooms, and buying basic school supplies out of pocket. A 2024 RAND [2] report shows teachers average 53 hours a week during the school year. The average teacher contract is just 37 hours per week. That’s 16 unpaid hours weekly—nearly two full workdays.
Job-related stress and burnout of teachers is twice that of similar professionals. Roughly three times as many struggle to cope. Managing student behavior, low pay, and endless admin tasks top the list. Summers? The occasional lounging by the pool is simply survival and recovery from a year of giving literally everything, including time we should be spending with our own families.
Sure, teachers can get a 12-month role at central office, but salaries still top out around $60,000 in many districts, far below what’s needed for a family. The NEA’s [3] 2025 data pegs average starting pay at $46,526, with full averages at $74,200—but that’s national: in lower-paying states, it’s grim. With student loans, rent, groceries, and kids’ needs, it just doesn’t stretch far enough to cover the basics. Forget thriving—most teachers are barely surviving. Single-parent teachers feel it the hardest—most work a second or third job just to make ends meet—coaching, tutoring, or gig work like Uber.
My summer? I finally got a breather. Well, sort of, because while I didn’t have to set an official alarm clock for the crack of dawn, you would have found me working my part-time gigs as a writer and consultant for a tech firm, recovering from a surgery I kept putting off, finishing a couple of graduate classes, and you guessed it: prepping for the new school year.
Just my regular Tuesday during the school year? After being part of an hour-long meeting after school, I ran home in time to braid my daughter’s hair for softball, and then it was off to her game 40 minutes away. The moment we parked in our driveway late last night after an 11-0 win, I sent everyone to bed and headed into my home office to prep math worksheets and make sub plans for today’s professional development workshop on our new science curriculum. Thankfully, this training was free! Then again, so were the extra 3 hours I spent working after school so that my students would have what they needed. See what I mean?
The summer’s off phrase stings because it ignores the heart and grit we pour into what we do each and every school day. We give up personal and family time far too often to build safe spaces for other people’s kids to grow and learn, partnering with parents through challenges and successes, and you know what? We keep showing up, school year after stressful school year. So next time, please skip the cliché about summers. Ask how you can support teachers instead. Advocate for better pay and more resources because effective teaching shouldn’t cost us our sanity or our savings. What if we valued educators like the professionals we are? Our kids deserve that, and so do we!
Endnotes
[1] National Education Association. (2025, April 29). Educator Pay Data 2025. https://www.nea.org/resource-library/educator-pay-and-student-spending-how-does-your-state-rank
[2] RAND Corporation. (2024). Findings from the 2024 State of the American Teacher Survey. https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RRA1100/RRA1108-12/RAND_RRA1108-12.pdf
[3] National Education Association. (2025, April 10). NEA 2023-2024 Teacher Salary Benchmark Report. https://www.nea.org/sites/default/files/2025-04/2023-24-teacher-salary-benchmark-report.pdf
