After a long school year, summertime is the perfect opportunity for teachers to relax and recharge. For those teachers who are also publishing books, vacation can look a little different. We reached out to five author-teachers to see how they’ve been using their time away from the classroom.

Torrey Maldonado, middle school teacher in New York, N.Y.

Author of Just Right (Penguin/Paulsen, out now)

Summer hits different for teachers who are writers. I’m both.

My year includes Times Square’s chaos in a classroom, re-explaining directions 700 times, and writing busyness.

Two songs reflect my summer days and hopes. “You can feel it in the streets,” Childish Gambino sings, “On a day like this, that heat—it feel like summer.” Seals & Crofts melodize, “Summer breeze makes me feel fine.”

In June, I become delusionally ambitious: “In the summer, you’ll write chapters everyday.” Then summer arrives, reminding me: “We plan. Life happens.” My brain that barely survived balancing teaching and writing needs rest. Constant family duties get my attention, sparking another reminder: “Be gentle with yourself.”

That shapes how I “summer” and discuss summer. Different resources mean different summers. Families are different. I don’t ask about travel plans or what your family will do. Instead, I’m sensitive: “What great summer moments happened?”; “How could your summer have been better?”

My great summer moments have included savoring time with my daughter before her first year in college, pretending to understand World Cup matches, virtual author talks, tanning, and time to recharge and create (even if it’s less than a paragraph per day, that’s magic; if I can write pages, that’s even better).

Andrew Hacket, elementary school teacher in Shrewsbury, Mass.

Author of In This Classroom (Red Comet, out now)

Summer for me means opportunity. Of course, it means the much-needed opportunity to recharge and spend quality time with my family through beach days, hikes, and fishing trips. But as an author, it also means having the time to tackle all the things that are harder to fit into the school year. I try to make the most of the summer by setting up marketing opportunities, scheduling events, and drafting new work while my brain has the extra capacity to do so. That way, when I’m back in the classroom, I already have a plan in place for my writing life, making it much more manageable to balance both.

The big focus this summer is promotion. My latest book, In This Classroom, illustrated by Arthur Lin, hit shelves in June. After a relaxing July, I'll be heading out on a seven-stop book tour across Massachusetts and Rhode Island to help spread the word to teachers, parents, and students ahead of the new school year.

Rasha Hamid, elementary learning support coordinator in New York, N.Y.

Author of Uncommonly Curious, Eternally Autistic: A Book About Autism (Free Spirit, out now)

As an AuDHD educator exhausted by June individualized education program (IEP) meetings, I’m trying to turn off my “school brain” and step back from constant “people-ing” to recharge. It always takes me a week or two to shift into summer mode.

My balcony garden is thriving with tiny tomatoes, sweet potatoes, hot peppers, and sunflowers. Feathered visitors include mourning doves, blue jays, pigeons, and starlings who help themselves to my herbs. I also pop out to the park with my camera, occasionally, to look for more interesting birds.

Creatively, I’m crafting tactile versions of my first book, Kadisa كديسة, making the illustrations literally feel like Sudan: brick walls, dry grass, fuzzy cats, and clay water pots. Professionally, I’m upgrading my “SpEdsheet,” my favorite tool for my IEP work. I’ll admit, I love my spreadsheet a little too much.

Summer allows for a deep flow state that’s rarely possible during the school year. The imagination, creativity, and problem-solving involved in my summer projects are incredibly satisfying.

I love summer!

Ernesto Cisneros, middle school teacher in Santa Ana, Calif.

Author of Queso, Just in Time (Quill Tree, out now)

People sometimes assume that summer vacation means teachers get to “take it easy.” I always smile when I hear that because, for most of us, that simply isn’t the case.

I’ve spent 25 years teaching sixth, seventh, and eighth grade, and the job is exhausting in ways that are often invisible to everyone except those of us who do it.

Our summers off aren’t so much vacations as opportunities to catch up on the parts of life we’ve neglected during the school year. That’s when we finally schedule dentist and doctor appointments, update our glasses, fix the leaky faucet that’s been waiting since last August, and tackle all the other maintenance we’ve put off all year.

As an author, summer is also when I make the most progress on my next book, writing during the early mornings or late nights whenever I have the energy, while making sure family time doesn’t take a back seat.

By the time the new school year rolls around again, my homework is simple: to be refreshed, caught up on life, and excited to welcome a new group of students, knowing I’ve done the work to give my students and my readers the very best version of myself.

Caroline Brooks DuBois, director of the literary arts conservatory at Nashville School of the Arts

Author of All the Sunshine in the World (Holiday House, out now)

My summers are a mashup of accumulated appointments and delayed whims. I’ve been reading no fewer than six books at once, several written by friends. I probably have a book in every room, sometimes in my car and on my porch. Of course, there are always daily dog walks, weekly hikes, weekend strolls through farmers markets or vintage stores, and an occasional nap—plus lots of porch sitting, butterfly and bird watching, and flowerbed watering.

In addition, I’ve been chatting with bookstores and applying to festivals with my third middle grade verse novel, All the Sunshine in the World. I taught a workshop at Parnassus Books and was the writer-in-residence for a camp at Fairytales Bookstore. I also took myself on an idyllic country retreat with my critique group to complete a novel revision.

What I haven’t been doing: lesson planning, fretting, and sleeping late, as I like to cram my eight weeks with activities that inspire me to venture back into the classroom while sustaining my dream of being an author. Currently, I’m the director of the literary arts conservatory at Nashville School of the Arts, where I teach many forms of writing for grades nine through 12.