What do teaching faculty do during semester breaks?

In the United States, the "9 month salary" for a faculty member is typically paid out over 12 months. For those faculty who engage in research or other pursuits during the summer months, the "9 month" designation gives the rate at which their salary can be enhanced through external funding.

So, what do "full time teaching" faculty do over the summer? Colleagues of mine in such positions generally still look at this time as an opportunity to focus on their professional interests, whether that is doing research or some other field-appropriate equivalent such as writing books, directing theatrical performances, etc.

Teaching responsibilities may also extend through the summer (and may be additionally compensated or not, depending on circumstances). Examples include teaching summer courses, preparing new course material, and supporting student groups' activities (summer is a common time for technical competitions, for example).

And some, in some circumstances, really do just take the summer slowly. In my experience, though, that tends to be the exception rather than the rule, with so many other opportunities and responsibilities at hand.

I'm pretty busy providing teaching and pastoral support for student who are doing resits or late assessments due to mitigation (such as medical issues). In addition I'm supporting student overseas via skype and instant messenger and pre-arrival support for overseas students. The time-zone difference also makes this quite challenging. Some of that is helping student work remotely who lack the technical skills to do it.

Shortly the late submissions will be submitted (as noted above) and then I have to grade them and give feedback and then start preparing for new student induction and welcome events. There will be examination boards and invigilation duties also.

I'm also improving the current teaching material, online pages on the VLE and so on.

There are quality process reports to be prepared on completed courses so management get their reports and completing students can look at quality and course reviews.

I also have to deal with a significant number of individual student queries from students who do not fully understand their results, or see a problem in their results or are in some other way unhappy with the information they have received from the automated information systems and want a human face of the system.

Then on top of that every thing @flyto listed. Then all the new edicts and demands from university managers who thinks we have nothing better to do with our summer.

Here at the college I work for, most full time instructors (we aren't a research place) are on "9 month contract" which means they teach 5 classes in the Fall and Spring terms, and are off Summer, but their pay is split across all 24 paychecks we receive in a year. Note that we have a few 12 month faculty, mostly in specialized areas that are working other jobs at the college - for example, the Stage Manager for our theater teaches in the drama department, but his teaching 2 classes is part of his regular 40 hour work week. Our nursing faculty (well, most of our health sciences - nursing, resp. therapy, radiology and nuke med, etc) are also 12 month contracted employees, since they teach courses and do clinical supervision all year long.

During summer, quite a few folk "check out" and we don't hear from them until the day before classes start. Some are even proud of the fact that they don't check email, etc. which makes administrative stuff kinda hard to do at times.

Many 9 month faculty also choose to teach extra classes over the summer, which they do at adjunct pay rate (about $2200 for a 3 credit class over 6, 9 or 12 weeks depending on sub-term the course is in). Teaching extra in summer can be a major pay boost for faculty, since in theory (and some do this) you can teach a full load (4 classes) in A term, and another 4 in B term. Most often I see this as people get near the "entire retirement" stage, since our state retirement system is based on the average of your highest 5 years of pay over your service time.