Permission to Recharge
Summer is only a few days away.
For educators, there is something bittersweet about this time of year. Hallways begin to quiet. Classrooms slowly empty. Calendars that once seemed impossibly full suddenly have room to breathe.
Every June has its own rhythm. There are hugs in the hallway, yearbooks being signed, classrooms filled with one last laugh before the final bell rings. You find yourself reflecting on how much a group of students has changed over the past ten months and realizing, somewhere along the way, they changed you too.
We say goodbye to students who have left a mark on our lives in ways they may never fully realize. Some are heading off to high school. Others will return in September a little taller, a little more confident, and ready for whatever adventure next year brings. Every school year leaves its fingerprints on us, whether we realize it or not.
Every June, my classroom becomes quiet.
The conversations fade. The laughter that filled these walls all year is replaced by silence. The desks stay where they are. The prayer flags continue hanging overhead. The quiet witnesses to another year of stories, laughter, growth, and goodbyes. And for a few months, this little space gets to rest.
As I stood in the room this week, I realized something.
We spend a great deal of time taking care of our classrooms before summer. Maybe summer was never just about giving the classroom a chance to rest. Maybe it was always meant to give us that chance too.
Books are returned to shelves. Equipment is cleaned, organized, and tucked away until September. It reminds me of packing expedition gear after a season in the mountains. You don’t throw everything into a closet and forget about it. You take care of the things that carried you through the journey, so they’ll be ready when it’s time to head out again.
I’ve been wondering why we’re so good at doing that for our classrooms, our equipment, and the people we care about, but so much worse at doing it for ourselves.
Maybe it’s because somewhere along the way, many of us started believing that rest had to be earned. If we weren’t accomplishing something, we weren’t making good use of our time. Productivity quietly became a measure of our worth, and slowing down began to feel uncomfortable… even a little guilty.
The more I sat with that thought, the more I wondered if that was really what I was feeling.
Maybe somewhere along the way, I had confused rest with being unproductive… and being unproductive with being unworthy.
That’s a difficult thing to admit, and maybe that’s why summer can feel so strange at first.
The school year ends, the calendar opens up, and instead of embracing the space, we rush to fill it. Another project. Another goal. Another list of things we should accomplish before September arrives.
I’ve caught myself doing it too.
There are resources I want to create. Places I want to explore. Trails I want to hike. Projects that have been waiting patiently for my attention. It’s exciting to think about, but it also makes me wonder if I’m carrying the pace of the school year into a season that was never meant to feel that way.
Maybe summer isn’t asking us to accomplish more, but rather it’s asking something different.
I keep coming back to the idea of a basecamp.
Not because summer is an end, but because it’s a place we return to. A place where things are repaired instead of replaced. Where conversations last a little longer. Where mornings don’t always begin with a clock. Where we remember the parts of ourselves that quietly disappear when life becomes busy.
The mountains will still be there. The work will still be waiting. September will arrive, just as it always does.
But before another school year begins, before another season asks us to give so much of ourselves to others, perhaps we need to remember that we deserve the same care we so willingly give away.
Maybe that’s what summer has been all along.
Not simply a break or a vacation. But a quiet reminder that we don’t have to earn our rest.
Sometimes, we simply need permission to recharge.
