As I near the end of Spring Break 2026, I felt I’d like to share a couple of thoughts about it. Spring Break hits differently when you’re in you mid 50’s and you’re an educator as opposed to when you’re a student 30 odd years younger. Sure, we all need a break now and then, but what effect will it have on our progress?
As a professor, I feel like the week off has been more like pupming the brakes on my students’ momentum. I’m really hopeful that I’m wrong, but it genuinely feels as though the week off couldn’t have happened at a worse time. Students in both of my classes really seemed like they were on the precipice of “getting it.” I’m concerned that the time off will be a setback.
We spent the first six weeks in what I consider the rhetoric part of the classes… what I lovingly call the “book learning” portion of both the tv production class and the news class. Once all of the boxes are checked off and state requirements have been met, comes the part that I consider to be the real learning experience. I’m a hands-on learning kind of instructor. I learned 85% of what I know outside of a classroom. When I began shooting and editing video for a local tv station I was, for lack of a better way of explaining it, thrown into the deep end.
Every skill that I teach my students is something that I have practiced in the past, or that I still practice to this day. The vast majority of those skills were learned on the job and I feel like the students will benefit from the same experience. Therefore, students learn by doing. At this point in the semester students are about ankle deep in shooting and editing their own video projects and news stories. If I had my way about things, a week off would have been taken a couple of weeks from now, if at all.
Time off is important. I rather enjoy the time that I have to myself, to wander off somewhere and shoot photos and time to do freelance work. As a guy my age, I certainly enjoy (and require) time to rest. Those things said, I only want success for my student population, so I’m not a huge fan of Spring Break this year.
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