Holidays and Afternoons-off

I spent the last week trying to come up with a witty--verging on cutting--response for the next person who tells me how lucky teachers are to have holidays and afternoons off. I wouldn't mind this so much if the tone of the speaker didn't almost always imply that, really, teachers have it easy. How unfair it is that all the rest of the world has to slave away 8 to 4 or 9 to 5 while teachers (and honestly, how hard is it to qualify as a teacher?) get to lounge the day away after lunch and get whole weeks off at a time!

I did not come up with any fittingly biting responses because I was too busy spending my afternoons, evenings, early mornings, late nights and weekend marking, prepping and writing reports.

Two weekends ago I had 14 different sets of marking to do on my list. About 3 of those were small sets of less than 5 pieces each but the rest were all full-class marking sets. This weekend I only had 12. And this is before grades and report writing. Not to mention the recycled fashion show I am helping to plan and run with the Environment club, the book drive with the Volunteer club, or the hostel I'm supposed to be running.

I often feel bad and that I should apologise when someone points out the extra time off awarded to those of my particular career and I usually mumble quickly, "Yes, it's great, we are lucky, shame poor you, you hard-working lawyer/doctor/receptionist/banker/waitress," shame-faced and full of sympathy for their terrible, cruel situation and guilt at my light, happy, carefree one. And I wish I had a ready retort that was punchy, to the point, and perfectly explained how, yes, the holidays are wonderful, but a large part of them is spent preparing and marking, reading for the next course, getting over the flu that hit you as soon as school closed because the final weeks were too much for your body, and how, in those final weeks, teachers walk around like zombies, grunting to each other over papers and books and computers, trying to teach students in between, pushing and pushing, until the end, and then, the end is not really an end but the time to pick up the pieces that you couldn't pick up throughout the term because there were 14 or 12 more important things to do...

But I don't--have a clever retort, that is. And I don't think I ever will.

Because I don't think any amount of explanation of what it really takes out of you to teach (and I haven't even mentioned what happens when you venture beyond the surface level of teaching and into...oh my, say, relationships?) would really, truly be understood by someone who wasn't a teacher.

So, yes, I am lucky to have my holidays and apologise for them to everyone else.