School is out. For students, that means fun. For administrators, it’s peaceful planning time. (Yes, they work most of the summer.) But for committed classroom teachers, summer has a very different meaning. Yes, some of us do fun things like take vacations and go to brunch with friends, but it’s more than catching up on the things that we didn’t get to do during the school year; it’s a time when we get to recharge.

I could paint a picture of what we do day to day, but if you’re on social media you’ve heard it a million times. From early August to late May, we pour out. We pour out into our students and fellow teachers. And just when we’re empty, God sends a colleague or student or parent to pour into us. But it’s usually just enough to keep us going. Even during long breaks, we don’t get to fill up.

If you can imagine never filling up your car with gas or never charging you phone to 100%, that’s us for ten months of the year – toggling between 25% and 75% and doing our best to stay out of low battery mode.

We work in a field where we’re overworked and underpaid…and WE LOVE IT! We complain about it, but most of us are called to it. We enjoy what we do, but we need to recharge. That’s what summers are for us. It’s a time to plug into our families and friends and social groups and churches to recharge. And if we plug in just right, we are mentally, emotionally, socially, and spiritually at 100% just before it’s time to go back and pour out again.

Soooooooo… let us recharge!

Many of the people in our lives perceive our summers to be free time. We get asked to do all the things people knew we weren’t available to do during the school year. Volunteer work, special projects, trips, social events, summer jobs … stuff just appears out of nowhere. There’s suddenly a new list of things that need our attention.

But we still aren’t available. We’re not bored or overcome with free time. We are on the charger. Please don’t pull us off the charger until we’re fully charged.

Yes, we want to be invited, but we want you to be understanding when we decline. We want our loved ones to be ok with us going into hiding for a little while – not texting back immediately or returning calls within a certain time frame. We aren’t getting paid to rest; we gave our employer permission to spread our pay for 10 months of work over 12 months. (Yep, we’re on levelized billing ;)

We want you to understand that we’re plugged in, and the cord is super short (like the really short 3-foot ones).

If this has opened your eyes just a little as to what teachers are experiencing during the summer, consider doing any or all of these things.

• Send us an open invitation to lunch or brunch. No pressure to hurry and get it done, just whenever we can pull ourselves together and look and act like a grown up.
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• Send us a small treat. We love Teacher’s Appreciation Week, but I promise you that sending a teacher a movie theatre or coffee shop gift card via text or email in the summer for a single movie ticket or cup of coffee will make charging so much more pleasant (and it may even go a little faster).
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• Let us volunteer – don’t pressure us because we’re off. I know that we’ve been largely unavailable, but when things come up at church or in our community groups don’t ask us to help out because we “have nothing to do”. Doing nothing on purpose is actually doing something.
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• Offer to help. If you’re close to a teacher with small kids, offer to take the kids out for a day. If you know a teacher who is taking on one of those projects that they can’t do during the school year (cleaning the garage or their closet or reorganizing), offer to help and make it enjoyable. (Let them lead –  let them choose the music or movie or method.)

I’m sure there are several other things that my fellow educators would love as well, so ask a teacher that you’re close to how you can help them recharge during the summer.

We love our work. We love your kids. We love our colleagues.

But please let us recharge!