If you work in a school board where the school calendar runs from September until June, you are probably sitting on a lawn chair right now enjoying your summer break. Also, if you work in a school where you have two summer months off, the day you wake up and see that the month has changed from July to August, a little pang of anxiety will most likely hit you square in the chest.

Yes, right about this time of the summer break, teachers all across the country start to get a little fidgety as we all know half the summer vacation is over. The reason for the uneasiness of it all: there might be that slight notion that we are not enjoying our summer break enough. Well, if that is how you feel, here are three things you can do to make sure that you do enjoy your summer break.

1. Get Out

Please, please, please do not spend your entire 8-week vacation indoors. I mean it’s all good to catch up on some of your favorite TV shows and get in a few of the movies you’ve been dying to see, but you don’t want to be the person who comes back to work after summer vacation and lists off every “must see” show on Netflix.

Plus, if you live in a place like me (Toronto, Canada), these warm weather days are fleeting. Soak them up: go for a walk to the park with a book, take a trip to a public pool, or better yet, the beach, or head to the city and explore a bit. Who cares what you do outside, it is much better than anything you can do indoors.

2. Achieve one Goal

And no I am not talking about playing Pokémon Go. See, in real life, there are things that actual humans set out to accomplish. Think back to right before the school year ended. You probably whispered to yourself something to the tune of, “I swear this summer, when I get the chance I am going to…”. That thing, whatever it was, go and do it. I bought a bicycle right before the school year had ended and I have made sure I’ve used it at least a few times every week. It is not necessarily a massive goal to go out for a bike ride every now and then. But it is something I said I was going to do, so I am following through. However big or small, get a few of the things you promised yourself done.

3. Do Not Think About School Until it Is Time to Think About School

This might end up being a whole new blog onto itself. But it is true, many times we end up spending too much time tinkering with “school stuff” over the summer only to end up…never even using it! 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 never got the 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. It is never a waste of time to prepare for the upcoming school year, but preparing does not need to be done in bits and pieces over the entire summer break. Take a two-week block right before school starts and get back in “teacher mode” then.

Fully feeling like you are making the most of your summer vacation isn’t as easy as it seems. Hopefully these three ideas will help make August a little more relaxing for you.

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