Kayla Hostetler

I have been blessed to have so many joyful moments in my classroom over the last twelve years of teaching. I can remember the very first smiles, jokes, and laughs from my first year of teaching in 2010. Years of writing, projects, poetry nights, family literacy nights, community volunteering, after-school meetings, and soccer games give me a number of memories to draw from. However, this last school year the joyful moments seemed even more meaningful.

Returning to a full in-person school year after two years of virtual and hybrid came with many difficulties. I knew that the year would be hard. I intentionally decided to make a commitment to students to have more “play” in my classes. My Next Generation youth have been leading professional development on Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) in classrooms for teachers, and one of the main points that they stressed is that classrooms are not fun anymore and play needs to be included in the classroom. One of the students said later in the 2021-2022 school year, “It seems that because we have not had normal school years, teachers are doubling down on the work and trying to make up for two years in one year.”

With a decision to be more playful, I found numerous moments of joy this last school year. One of my favorite units for my seniors was Pride and Prejudice. During this unit, we learned to waltz as a bell-ringer. We also learned a lot of the customs for courting during the time period. I found a simple “How to Waltz” video on YouTube. They picked partners quickly; I had another teacher step-in to be my partner (conveniently, my husband teaches math at my school). We all watched the YouTube tutorial and waltzed. We laughed. It was fun and it was simple.

In this same unit, we also went outside and played garden games that would have been played during the time. But the favorite activity was a tea party. Each student got a slip of paper to become one of the characters in the novel. They had to sit and sip tea, eat, and act like a character. I will never forget their smiles when they walked in and saw the room set up. They said things like, “You did all this for us?” We had fun. Seeing Jacob become Mr. Collins made all of us laugh. We had other students from neighboring classes seeking entrance to our tea party.

Another moment of joy this year came from my sophomores. My principal told me at the beginning of the year, “we don’t expect high scores on the EOC from this group, don’t get too worried, and send them to the office if you have to do so.” In true fashion, I ignored this comment. This group took a bit longer to build a community, but when we got to trust each other it became magical. My favorite moment with the sophomores was when we went on a field trip.

We went to the Art Museum in Augusta and stopped at the local Chinese Buffet where the kids ate for free. The day of the field trip they were smiling eye to eye. We got to the art museum and their amazement at the art made my heart swell. They kept writing notes in their journals and completed their analysis guide I gave them. Individually, each of them came to me and showed me their favorite piece of art. I found a gift shop that sold postcards of art and I purchased each of them a postcard with the piece of art they preferred. They were so appreciative and happy. I had former students’ moms chaperone the field trip with me, and they were impressed by my students’ creativity and joy. At the Chinese Buffet, the kids instructed me about what the best food was in the place. We ate, some of them until they were almost sick, and went back to school. They had smiles on their faces. They kept talking about how cool the art museum was and that they really liked the art. The art director told the kids that on Sundays it is free for everyone to come to the art museum. I heard, “I got to bring my mom here.” Many of the moms who chaperoned also have stayed in touch with the kids they were grouped with, giving these students another adult in the community to connect with.

As many people know, our school has had back-to-back tragedies. These moments of joy are what keep me going. If you have not thought about planning intentional play in your courses, even the AP/College Courses, I strongly encourage you to do this. It has made a difference in all of my classes. The students do not fight the harder writing assignments because they know that later there will be play.

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Amanda Donovan

So much joy came out of our three-day “Operation Pineapple Juice” earlier this year. My homeroom class of 7th graders and I planned a surprise pizza party to celebrate awards that were given to the other teachers in our homeroom. The students in my class took on various roles to plan and carry out our surprise operation, and it created some serious joy throughout the whole process. What was cool was that different students took on different jobs depending on what they felt confident doing. We had playlist creators, invitation makers, stealthy information-getters (who asked the teachers what their favorite kind of pizza is), poster designers, slide-show creators and presenters, and most importantly, “lookout people” who stood in the hallway and yelled “Pineapple juice!” into the classroom if any of the other teachers looked like they were about headed our way.

Kids who were usually quiet or shy were stepping up in new ways that gave us all a glimpse into who they were outside of the routines of school. Kids with extra energy were able to channel it into creative ways, and everyone had a chance to express their love and appreciation for the teachers we were celebrating. New groups of students came together to plan an aspect of the celebration that they had a shared interest in. It was honestly such a sweet experience and memory, and the joy just grew over the course of the three-day operation.

On the day of our celebration, the kids scrambled last minute to figure out one very essential piece of the whole thing: how would we come together to create the actual “surprise” effect? The strategy we landed on made me laugh. One of the lookout people told us when the teachers were only steps away from the classroom. Everyone put their heads on their desks and pretended they were sleeping and I was told to put our timer on for 10 seconds. The awkwardness of us all waiting for the timer to go off before yelling surprise is what made me laugh—we put so much effort into the planning of the event only to kick it off with a ridiculously long period of silence as we waited for the timer to go off.

Our amazing homeroom teachers were awarded the First Year Award, the Freedom Award, and the Teacher of the Year Award (the kids were so excited about this one)! Everything we created for them and shared together that day was so special and gave us all so much joy. I want to re-create collaborations like this with students at my new school, but I want the excitement and investment to occur as genuinely as it did during Operation Pineapple Juice. The joy came so naturally.

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Sarah Taggart

As a learner, I have decided to focus on my renewed sense of learning joy. Nevermind that I am writing a paper that feels inept — I am finding joy in being a student again. I knew that I wanted to do this – return to academia outside of the school year’s pressures – and it is basically everything I hoped for. Even last year’s remote experience was joyful. For a few hours a day, between my class or my writing, I was outside of my other self. Here, I am finding joy in slipping into a library carrel, in the nervous tension of beginning classroom discussions, in the never-ending essays and books I am assigned to read. Joy has instilled in me a great sense of gratitude. I am grateful for my chance to be here, surrounded by so much beauty and caring, intelligent people.

As a teacher, I have four ways to think about joy. I have a student I remember from my first year of full-time teaching. When I spoke, it was like nothing else in the world existed. The attention she would give me made me feel like I had a place, like what I was saying really mattered; I had knowledge to share and she wanted to absorb it. I don’t do a lot of traditional lecturing, but I like to remember her when I’m feeling one of those “I already have my diploma, people” moments when trying to talk with my class. I also like to remember to try to give that kind of attention to my students when they are speaking. To feel seen and heard is so important.

Next, I have the class I nicknamed my “rockstars.” The class is from something like six years ago, and I still have a copy of the roster hanging inside my file cabinet. I look at it each school day. It reminds me of teaching joy. My memory of the class has probably become rose-tinted over time, but I remember the joy I felt in teaching the class. Things just clicked. We had great conversation, lessons and projects were meaningful and fun, and they gave me a reason to come to school each day. It is dangerous to put a class on a pedestal. One runs the risk of comparing other classes to it, which does a disservice to each class and student’s uniqueness. I am conscious of that in my teaching.

I have recent memories of joy that are funny to me because they are distinct in environment. This year, I returned to using SSR in the classroom. It actually replaced my long-term novel study. I feel a little bad about it, but we were running out of time, everyone was tired, and I wanted the students to have more voice in their reading choices and a chance to get back into the joy of reading. Some of my best days were the ones where I realized that it was working. I would look up from working with someone or checking on something, and there they were…. just reading. It’s never quiet in my classroom, as we are in a giant open space with another class and 5 classrooms that have doors from my room. There is always someone going in and out. But at those SSR times, our space was an island of peace. My memory of a contrasting sort of joy from this past year is when my students were working on a mock trial, especially when joining with the other class. It was so joyful to see students getting out of their COVID shells and talking with others, working academically. That was loud joy. I know the kids felt joy with it, too, because I would hear from other teachers how engrossed they were in the project. You know you’re doing something worthwhile when it extends beyond your classroom walls (literally speaking, in my case!).

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