Summer vacation is a break that students all over the country look forward to throughout the school year. It is a topic novels are written about and movies cover extensively. What many people fail to recognize is that along with students, teachers also have a two-and-a-half month break from school. What do they do with all that free time? It depends. Some prepare for the upcoming school year while others give themselves a break from the endless work they do throughout the year.

Like many teachers, Steve Skaer doesn’t have any extravagant plans for his summer vacation.

“I don’t have like a Disney World vacation planned or going to the Bahamas,” the math teacher said.

“I’ll hopefully do some camping. If someone else has a boat, sure, I’ll get on a pontoon,” Skaer said. He also wants to do some leisurely reading. His favorite authors include Michael Crichton and John Grisham. Crichton writes more mystery while Grisham is more known for his legal novels.

One of his biggest goals, however, is to finish the remodel of his kitchen. “We started it last summer and we’ll hopefully finish it this summer,” he said.

On top of these plans, he will be taking PIR classes with the school district as well as classes for MAP testing.

“I’ll take math – specific [courses] and we’ll go over other things. I think I’m taking one about how to do the reports for the MAP testing. They have all these reports that teachers can look at, so I’m going to take one on that. I’m going to take one on collecting data, like statistics,” Skaer said.

For the most part, though, he will be using his time to take a much-needed break from the constant stress.  Skaer is the new math department leader for the next school year.

“I’ll recharge my batteries for next year because you get to the end of the year and everybody’s worried about their grades and getting stuff in and there’s a lot of stuff to finish up, so it’s kind of nice not to have deadlines.”