For many schools across Canada and the United States, the last weeks of August mark the wrap up of summer break. With that come the cram sessions of last-minute plans and summer “bucket list” activities. As school nears closer, many teachers begin preparing for the upcoming year. Hopefully, when it is time to actually start thinking about school again our teachers are not prematurely exhausted because they wound up spending half the summer already tinkering with school stuff. My point is, do not think about school until it is time to think about school.

As I mentioned in a previous blog, I remember one summer I devoted a bunch of time to creating units and lesson ideas for a geography course. The school year came and went and I was never able to find the appropriate opportunity to infuse them. It is not that I forgot about them, it was just that they were not going to work with my students. Preparing over the summer was not a waste of time, I mean how many days do you actually need to “relax”. But it was slightly taxing on my psyche. For everything I emotionally gained by feeling well prepared and organized, I lost in thinking I had not done enough. So after that year was over, I made a promise to myself that I would keep in every summer break since then: do no think about school until it is time to think about school.

When you live in an area where school traditionally starts in September, once you catch a few pictures and videos on social media of kids back at school in other parts of the country, you know it is time to start shifting that brain back into “teacher mode”. And hopefully, you have to “turn it back on” because remaining in it for an entire summer can have you exhausted during a time when you are supposed to come back fresh and eager. We are at the t-minus a few weeks stage now, so over the next couple of days or weeks, it is the perfect time to start thinking and preparing for school again.

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