The Myth of a Teacher’s Summer Vacation from The Atlantic sat in my inbox for awhile as a pondered a response. As I approach hour seven of planning (and cleaning out my inbox) on News Year Day, I post it here without comment. Liz Riggs writes:

For the most part, the charter school at which Klem currently works follows Tennesse’s traditional public-school calendar, only adding a few extra days at the beginning of the fall to include the time teachers spend in professional development before students arrive. But again, that calendar doesn’t factor in the summer hours. Klem says she’s spending the rest of her summer this year attending meetings, developing school curriculum, helping train new teachers, and contacting families of her students, among other tasks. Past summers, she says, have been equally busy: graduate-school coursework to complete her master’s degree (which isn’t required but can mean higher pay), classroom organization or relocation, and so on. While some of these responsibilities come with a stipend, teachers say they’re relatively negligible given how much time they take—no more than $1,000.