What is Your Childâ€^™s Teacher up to This Summer?

As we pass through the halfway point of summer, thoughts of the next school year can start to creep back into our everyday life. Is your child ready for what the next year has to bring? When you begin to explore what your child might need to be working on to start school in the fall, you might not be able to get a clear idea by asking your child directly. You might need to call in reinforcements. Is it really okay to get in touch with your child’s teacher from the year before over the summer?  

It’s summer break, so getting in touch with your child’s former teacher should be a breeze. They a busy or anything – so they wouldn’t mind spending their time emailing you about some super-duper important intel regarding your child, right? The answer to this question is probably not what you’d like to hear. Some teachers go above and beyond for their students, both during the school year and even after the student has moved on to the next grade (some even after graduation). Teaching is about building relationships, after all. So it would make sense that your child’s teacher would care about them and hope that they succeed. The truth is, however, that even though teachers do genuinely care about your child, they can be busy during the summer and you can’t rely 100% on your child’s teacher to even check their school email over the summer let alone reply.  

You might imagine that your child’s former teacher is floating in a pool somewhere, relaxing and soaking up the sun, and you might be imagining correctly – some of the time. But what are teachers doing over the summer? 

• Working a summer job: many teachers take on extra work in the summertime to make extra money. These jobs could be for the entire summer or a month or two, but your child’s teacher may be continuing to work full time during the summer, and isn’t checking their school email. 
• Working on advanced degrees: school systems incentivize teachers to get advanced degrees by tying education level to pay level. Teachers find the summer a great time to pursue these advanced degrees, which can be all-consuming, keeping them from being able to be all-in with contacting parents 
• Going to conferences/professional development: at conferences, teachers learn about the latest developments in their field, and exchange ideas with other teachers. Conferences and professional development opportunities are chances for the teachers to become the students. Some teachers even partake in the conference in a leadership role, making presentations, which can be even more of a demand on their time.  
• Curriculum development: curriculums for classes change from year to year, with some involving tweaking here and there based on what worked last year. When teachers start teaching a new class it requires starting from scratch. New teachers, especially, have to spend a lot of their summertime on curriculum development. 
• Spend time with family/on vacation: teachers use the summers to spend time with (and take care of) their own families. Summer may be their only chance all year to take a family vacation away from all the stresses of the classroom. 
• Pursue hobbies they don’t have time for during the school year. During the school year, teachers don’t get much free time before and after school. So in the summer, they might want to take advantage of the extra free time to pursue hobbies that they love. Teachers may have a summer reading list they’re hoping to get through, or maybe they enjoy golfing and want to golf as much as they can throughout the summer.  

Regardless of what they are doing, the summer can be a sacred time for teachers to be able to get away from their school-year responsibilities. Meaning it’s probably not the best idea for you to contact your child’s former teacher for information or summer lesson plans. If you decide to reach out, you shouldn’t expect much feedback (or even a response) from them regarding your math student. 

Even though you might not ultimately achieve what you had hoped by contacting your child’s teacher over the summer, there isn’t a reason to lose hope! Mathnasium can assess your child’s math needs as the new school year approaches and prevent the Summer Slide from claiming your child as a casualty. Contact us today and let us help your child get fall-ready!