Trade ya-- my summer "teaching" for your real classes.
Actually, I found that my students retain a bit more of the material from my lectures (actually, it was very odd to see my comments parroted back to me on quizzes instead of the book's take) because of the compressed time. And the students were a bit more invested in succeeding than average, too (they're paying extra for this!). You're right about the problem of having them think things through; research projects are pretty much impossible, too.
A couple of good points about summer teaching (cup half full!):
You get it over with in six weeks
There are still six weeks left to get a life
The overall quality of summer students is generally better
You can afford house repairs, which you otherwise might not on your regular salary
I find that you don't have enough time to digest during regular semesters anyway ( 1) at least 3 other courses of material 2) at least 2 lab reports per week, sometimes 4 3) at least 2 3 hr labs per week, sometimes 4 4) lecture hours 5) other involvements like community work 6) eating 7) sleeping 
breathing 9) possibly living if time allows). You know, I'm actually a 'good student', so I hate to seem like a whiney, complaining undergraduate, but seriously, I would love to be able to sit down and fully understand all the concepts and details that we get taught during a semester, but there really isn't enough time. So I'm forced to learn the general concepts and research 'on-demand' (i.e. for lab reports, etc). Though some of the stuff sticks quite well, a lot of the detail you spend time agonising over for exams... well, they're forgotten the next day when you clear your head for the next exam (which you probably have about 18 hours to study for...13 weeks of material).
Anyway, what I'm trying to say is (oh yeah, I had a point)... if the regular semesters are like that, what's really the difference between that and summer semesters? They're probably both (in terms of timing), crap for understanding. On the one hand regular semesters has more time overall, but you have other courses at the same time, whereas over the summer, you're probably only doing one or two courses. Who knows. Might as well get it over and done with and start something postgrad where it's more real...
Anyway, enough complaining and time to get back to yet another lab report (don't get me wrong, I think they're much better in terms of getting us to understand something... but I spend way too much time on them for what they're worth...about 10 hours for 3.3%?? hmmm.)
Anyway, I think it's super cool that you blog... and in a way that's sort of.. 'accessible' and 'real'... in your language, etc.
Commenting by HaloScan
