All of my friends and neighbors know that I work for a school. Some may even recall that I work in educational technology. But none of them really get what that means in terms of workload.

“Are you enjoying your summer off?”

“When do you go back to work?”

“I envy your summer schedule.”

I patiently explain to them that I have a 12 month job, and that indeed the summertime is one of our busiest parts of the year as we try to cram a year’s worth of of IT upgrades and professional development for faculty and staff into ten weeks between the end of school and mid-August, when everything needs to buttoned up for the start of the next school year.

After my school decided to delay implementation of a 1-1 laptop program for at least a year, this summer was supposed to be comparatively easy one. Somehow that didn’t turn out to be the case.

The reason for this is relatively simple: in the world of IT there’s always more to do. Budget cuts? How do we maintain high levels of service with older equipment? Open Source software? The reason it’s free is that you have to figure out a lot of it yourself. Professional development? Always more to learn, and more people who want to learn. Using more web sites? How about making them work better together and allow for single sign-ons? Documentation? Don’t get me started. It’s the rare tech operation who has everything written down as it should be.

I love my job. And I love the fact that it is a twelve month gig. And I don’t begrudge the fact that faculty are on ten month contracts because I know that many of them spend their own time and money in professional development over the summer, writing new curriculum materials, and yes, showing up for tech workshops.

I have written elsewhere about the year-round school. For many of us this is already a reality.