How quickly sweet summer goes! It seems like the last bell of spring class just rang not more then a minute ago, doesn't it? Yet, the hands of time keep moving. Summer is definitely that time of year when students—and no doubt teachers—look forward too all year. Vacations, swimming, camp, and just plain relaxing—that's what summer break was invented for, after all. (Actually it was invented to help bring in the harvest, but who's to know?)

Perhaps you are like the majority of teachers who have spent the summer working a second job. No matter if you spent your summer doing yard work, working in construction, tutoring, instructing in adult education, or vacationing in the French Rivera, you can use your summer adventures to benefit your classroom lessons.

Filling hallways and the cafeteria, students are fresh with stories when they come back from summer break. You can be too! Why not use your valuable experiences in your first week of fall classes? For example, if you worked building houses, you could apply that to geometry, history of humans, science of gravity, and so forth. If you were a cashier, you could apply that to accounting lessons, communication skills in speech class, or budgeting in home economics. Vacationing could examine mechanics of an automobile, time and distance problems in algebra, or the history of travel.

Really, your imagination is the limit. Students seem to connect better with lesson concepts when you give a real world example. Often students are wondering, How does this problem really affect me? or Why am I learning this? True life application can bring students into the perspective of how structured learning really does apply to their lives. Plus, you can take student's summer episodes and integrate them in lessons, too. More than just a report of "This is what I did," take their stories and put them into your lessons, combine all their stories to create a play or fictional story, use events in math problems, logistics in science, and so forth. Remembering summer doesn't have to be a sad, wistful memory. It can be a fun learning experience if you foster and apply it to lessons!

Do you use summer experiences in the classroom? How do you integrate the importance of structured learning within real life applications?