Summer school

Crazy as it may seem, summer also means summer school.  And since this is a non-traveling summer for me, which also means it’s a teaching summer for me.  Easy to balance, one summer has to pay for the next summer.  And I really like summer school.  No seriously.

            First, the students are special.  And I don’t mean special as in challenged in any way.  These are seriously committed folks.  They are giving up valuable play time or free time to either work on getting ahead or catching up for past mistakes.  This also can mean they are demanding in ways students in the regular semesters never are.  Summer students have deep, probing, insightful questions and they want well structured responses.  Summer students hunt you down to meet with you.  I set aside some time for summer students to drop in and meet me, and HOLY COW they showed up. 

            Second, part of what makes them so special is that there aren’t quite so many of them.  During the regular semesters, I am fairly certain students are trucked in to take classes.  I have so many of them, and in so many different places, I can only keep up with each individual class, not the aggregate of them.  In the summer you have these polite manageable little classes, which you have to spend lots of time with because the time frame is so compressed.    

            Third, you get a real sense of all being in this educational process together.  Students and teachers.  During the regular semesters it has this us vs. them, teacher vs. student, sort of feel, which may be due in part to the oppressive numbers of them, students.  But in the summer the sense is we are all here to get through this together.  We start at A and in half the time, and some cases a quarter of the time, we will end up at Z.  I always tell my students, regardless of the class size or time frame, that I expect them to make an A in the class.  Only during the summer does that ever happen.

            Finally, it helps me define mercenary.  That whole question “what would you do for money?”  Yeah, I teach summer school.  Face to face.  In the classroom.  I commit to getting up, out and in the classroom during the summer.  It is insane.  It is mercenary.