The Teacher's Guide to Having a Productive Summer

Teachers shouldn’t think of their jobs as “having summers off.” Instead, they should dedicate an hour or two of their weekdays to school during their summer breaks.

It’s way too easy for teachers to become hoarders of old lesson plans and resources. Go through all that you’ve accumulated throughout the year and get rid of anything you didn’t use and probably aren’t going to so you can enjoy a fresh start come September.

There’s no better time to begin researching new ways to energize your lesson plans. Maybe it’s time to turn to technology for new performance learning systems new performance learning systems to incorporate, or perhaps you could attend a seminar for teachers in your discipline. Keep an idea journal!

What supplies are you going to need? What theme are you going to incorporate into your bulletin board? Little by little, you can begin collecting all the things you need to make your classroom unique!

A lot of teachers have websites or blogs where their syllabi, resources, and classroom rules can be accessed. Summer is a great time to create or update yours!

Maybe you like giving your students extra credit for attending local events that are relevant to the course, doing book reports, or giving presentations. Come up with new ideas and decide how to fit them into the schedule.

Are you given a budget to take students on field trips? Try attending some local museums or historical locations to decide where to take your students!