The Small Joys Teachers Forget They Need

I took the opportunity to fly down to Florida for four days at our second home in Vero Beach. The main reason for the trip was to spend time with my mother, Evelyn, who is ninety-five and recovering from her second broken hip.

She is doing remarkably well, and I was grateful for the time together. We had lunch, talked, and laughed so hard at some of her stories about the people in her retirement community that tears were running down my face. At ninety-five, she still has a sharp eye for the comedy in ordinary life, and being with her reminded me how much joy can live inside a simple afternoon.

Of course, there were projects waiting for me too. Our refrigerator had died, which meant a ninety-minute drive to Melbourne to buy a replacement. The back porch ceiling is still under construction, and there are always a handful of small jobs around the house that seem to whisper, “Since you’re here…”

But one morning, I sat with a cup of coffee and watched the squirrels and birds moving through the beautiful bit of nature God has placed just outside our window. The morning was quiet, and for a little while, nothing needed my attention.

Then an email from my former school district appeared on my phone.

I am still on the district distribution list, mostly because I remain involved in a few things here and there, and I do not mind that. But the subject line read, “Please Read—Urgent.”

I looked at the email.

Then I looked back outside.

And I thought, No. Not this morning.

I put the phone down and returned to my coffee, the birds, the squirrels, and the slow unfolding of the day.

That small decision stayed with me. It made me think about the little joys I am able to notice more easily now as a retired teacher: an unhurried cup of coffee, the movement of God’s creatures outside the window, a beautiful morning that does not need to be improved or explained.

It also brought back memories of many mid-July days during my teaching years, when I did not yet understand how much I needed moments like these. I thought summer restoration came mostly from having fewer responsibilities. What I know now is that renewal often arrives in much smaller ways.

A quiet morning.

A good laugh with someone you love.

A moment when the urgent thing can wait.

Sometimes these ordinary joys are how we begin to find ourselves again after a long school year.

When Urgency Becomes a Habit

Teachers spend much of the school year living inside a world of urgency.

Even on a relatively calm day, something is always approaching: the next class, the next decision, the student who needs reassurance, the lesson that needs adjusting, or the email that should have been answered yesterday. The pace becomes so familiar that we may stop recognizing it as a pace at all. It simply becomes the way life feels.

We become skilled at scanning for what needs attention. We notice confusion, frustration, exclusion, unfinished work, changing behavior, and the quiet signs that a student may not be doing well. That attentiveness is one of the gifts teachers bring to their work, but it also trains the mind to remain watchful.

Then summer arrives, and slowly, almost shyly, some of life’s smaller pleasures begin returning to our awareness.

Coffee that stays hot because no one interrupts us.

A walk taken without counting the steps.

A book chosen because we want to read it, not because it might make us better at something.

An evening outside as the air begins to cool.

A quiet dinner with someone we love.

A day that does not need to prove its value.

These moments can seem almost too ordinary to mention, especially in a culture that encourages us to turn every free hour into an opportunity for improvement. Even rest can begin to feel like another assignment. We are encouraged to establish the perfect morning routine, organize our homes, learn new technology, prepare for the coming school year, and return in August as refreshed and improved versions of ourselves.

There is nothing wrong with growth. Teachers are naturally curious people, and many of us enjoy learning and creating.

The trouble begins when we cannot receive a good moment without asking what it is accomplishing.

Sometimes a cup of coffee is not preparing us for the day.

Sometimes it is simply warm, familiar, and good.

Learning to Savor What Is Already Here

Psychologists use the word savoring to describe the ability to notice, appreciate, and stay with a positive experience. It is not merely having something pleasant happen. It is allowing ourselves to remain with that experience long enough to receive it.

Researcher Fred Bryant has spent much of his career exploring how people respond to positive moments. His work suggests that well-being is influenced not only by how we cope with hardship, but also by whether we notice and deepen the good that is already present.

That distinction matters for teachers because many of us are very good at enduring.

We know how to keep going, solve problems, absorb disappointment, and carry responsibilities that are not always visible to others. What we may be less practiced at is letting a small pleasure remain a pleasure without rushing past it or turning it into something useful.

We may sit outside while mentally composing an email.

We may walk through a beautiful place while thinking about everything waiting at home.

We may share dinner with people we love while part of our attention remains somewhere else.

The joy is present, but we have not completely arrived.

Savoring can be as simple as pausing long enough to notice what is happening. The warmth of the cup in your hand. The sound of someone you love laughing. The way the evening light falls across the yard. The feeling of nowhere else needing you for the next few minutes.

These are not dramatic moments.

But they are real ones.

The Restorative Power of Ordinary Places

Another area of psychology helps explain why these modest summer experiences can feel so renewing. Attention restoration theory suggests that sustained concentration and constant directed attention eventually become tiring. Certain environments, especially natural ones, can help restore attention because they hold our interest gently rather than demanding it.

This may be part of why sitting beneath a tree, walking near water, tending a garden, or watching birds outside a window can feel different from scrolling through a phone. The natural world invites our attention without pulling at it. It gives the mind somewhere to rest while still allowing us to feel quietly awake.

Teachers spend much of the year directing attention deliberately. We hold a lesson in mind while watching student reactions, monitoring time, anticipating interruptions, remembering accommodations, and adjusting our next words. Even an experienced teacher performs an extraordinary amount of mental coordination that no observer can fully see.

Summer restoration does not always require a dramatic vacation or an elaborate retreat. Sometimes the mind begins to settle while we sit on a porch, wander through a farmers market, walk a familiar trail, or listen to rain against an open window.

The ordinary world becomes visible again.

This is one of the human rhythms of schools that our calendars rarely acknowledge. There are seasons when we pour ourselves outward, and there must also be seasons when we allow life to pour something back into us.

Sustainable generosity cannot depend on endless giving.

Eventually, even the most devoted teacher must receive.

Joy Does Not Need to Earn Its Place

I sometimes wonder whether teachers feel a faint sense of guilt when they are doing absolutely nothing productive.

We are accustomed to being needed, and usefulness can quietly become part of our identity. When the demands subside, even temporarily, we may feel restless. A day with no obvious accomplishment can seem wasted, even when it leaves us more peaceful, more connected, and more ourselves.

Yet joy does not need to earn its place in our lives by making us more efficient.

A slow conversation with a friend is worthwhile because friendship is worthwhile. Time spent laughing with family matters because laughter and family matter. Reading a novel on a summer afternoon does not need to become a lesson plan.

This is where presence over performance becomes more than a classroom philosophy. It becomes a way of living.

There is a quiet spiritual wisdom in receiving what is good without immediately reaching for something more. Ecclesiastes reminds us that it is a gift from God to find satisfaction in the ordinary experiences of eating, drinking, and the work placed before us.

The passage does not describe a spectacular life.

It describes an inhabited one.

Perhaps that is one of summer’s invitations—not to build a better life for a few weeks, but to become more present to the life already around us.

To taste the meal.

To hear the laughter.

To feel the evening air.

To stay for the sunset instead of merely noticing that one is happening.

Remembering the Person Beneath the Role

In When Rest Finally Gets Quiet Enough to Speak, I reflected on how genuine rest sometimes begins only after the noise inside us has settled. In When Summer Begins, the Body Still Remembers the School Year, the invitation was to become reacquainted with the self who exists beyond the classroom role.

The small joys of summer may be where that person begins to reappear.

Not through a dramatic revelation, but through preference, pleasure, and presence. You remember what music you enjoy when no one else is choosing it. You notice which books draw you in. You rediscover a place you like to walk, a meal you enjoy making, or the friend whose company leaves you feeling lighter.

These may seem like minor discoveries, but they are part of returning to yourself.

Perhaps the practice for these middle weeks of July is simply to notice one good thing and resist hurrying past it. Let the coffee remain an experience rather than a beverage consumed on the way to something else. Pause when the breeze shifts. Put the phone away during dinner. Stay outside for another ten minutes. Allow yourself to enjoy a day that produces nothing you can measure.

You do not need to photograph every moment, improve it, or share it.

You only need to be there.

Returning With Our Humanity Intact

Soon enough, the school-year machinery will begin turning again. Advertisements for classroom supplies will appear. District emails will arrive. Calendars will fill, and part of the mind will begin leaning toward August.

There will be time to prepare.

For now, perhaps it is enough to trust that these quiet pleasures are doing their own kind of work within us. Positive emotions do not erase the hard parts of teaching, and a peaceful afternoon cannot repair an unhealthy system. We should never use personal well-being as an excuse to ignore the policies and working conditions that exhaust educators.

Still, joy gives us something those systems cannot manufacture.

It reminds us that we are larger than the work we perform. It reconnects us with the people and places that sustain us. It softens the edges that constant responsibility can create, and it helps us remember why protecting our humanity matters in the first place.

Joy is not a distraction from meaningful work.

Sometimes it is what helps us return to meaningful work with our humanity intact.

As I think back on these few days in Florida, the moments I will remember most are not the refrigerator, the porch ceiling, or the jobs that did or did not get finished. I will remember laughing with my mother until tears ran down my face. I will remember the morning light, the squirrels and birds outside the window, and the cup of coffee I chose not to interrupt for an urgent email.

Those moments did not ask anything from me.

They simply invited me to receive them.

And I am grateful that, this time, I noticed.