Time off from
work is a great way to grow personally and enhance life skills that benefit the
whole world.
As an English teacher and journalism
teacher for much of my working life, I always had summers off to do whatever I
wanted. Some teachers used to say that June, July and August were the best
months of the year.
And there is something to that. It
gives teachers time to recharge and prepare for a new school year. During the
summers off, I’ve taken courses for a master’s degree, attended a writing
workshop and combined it with a vacation, hooked up a travel trailer and taken
my family on a 30-day trip around the country to tour national parks, visit
friends and do whatever else of interest that came up along the way.
I even taught history in summer
school one year. Another summer I strapped on a backpack, tent, sleeping bag
and canteen and hitchhiked on a 30-day trip from Illinois to Washington, D.C.,
down to Florida, across the South and Southwest to Southern California, up to
San Francisco, and back to the Chicago suburbs. I camped sometimes, stayed with
friends or people I met along the road and occasionally stayed in a motel. I
turned down rides just like people turned me down when I stuck out my thumb.
But I met some people on that trip years ago who are still good friends to this
day.
Another summer, I went to Australia
for two weeks for the filming of The Thin
Red Line movie of the James Jones novel about the Guadalcanal campaign in
World War II. During other summers, I’ve taken students for eight-day tours throughout
historical sites in Europe with the American Council for International Studies or
taken them and my own kids camping on my father’s farm in Southern Illinois.
Those summers were fun, memorable
and probably made me a better teacher. I always came back to the classroom
refreshed, had a new perspective about life and looked forward to meeting my
new students each year. I always told them the first day that I was glad to be
back for one of the second most important jobs a person could have. A student
would often say he or she thought teachers believed their jobs were the most
important. I would answer that parenting was the most important job in the
world because if the parents did their job, my job was much easier. Those were
the parents who always came to conferences to see how their student was doing
and how they might help.
A parent who apparently wasn’t doing
the best job once came to a conference, and I was telling him about the
progress of his student and how he might help.
“You mean you want me to do your
job?” the man asked.
“No,” I said. “I want you to do your
job.”
But I digress.
When one of my daughters was quite young,
she was surprised after talking to one of her friends about a trip we’d taken
that not everybody’s parents had summers off. She thought they should. I
understand her perspective. And while I don’t think it would work out for
everybody to have summers off, I’ve always thought vacations most people have
are a little skimpy and the country would benefit if everybody had a little
more time off to do what they wanted, although I hadn’t thought through how
that might work with most American companies’ profit motives.
Then the first of this year, my
college sophomore daughter participated in an improvisational workshop at The Second
City Theatre in Chicago. So the rest of the family went along for a few days
vacation in the city for a little improv of our own. It was my turn to be
surprised when Caitlin came back to the hotel after the first day.
“There are two women in my improv workshop
who work for a reinsurance company headquartered in Switzerland,” she told us at
dinner that evening. “Most everybody else is my age, in their ’20s. I really
like these two women. They aren’t really old, probably in their ’40s, but I
just didn’t think there’d be anyone that age here. One of them has kids that
are 6 and older.”
I thought it was an interesting way for
the women to spend a week of vacation.
“It’s not vacation,” Caitlin said.
“Their company gives employees a week off each year to do an activity of their
choosing for personal development, whatever they want to do. They said people have
gone skydiving, traveled to Italy to learn to make pasta, or done whatever else
they want to do for a week.
“One of them lives in Indiana, and
the other lives in Connecticut. They met each other through work and
work-related trips and decided to come here. I know one of them is keeping a
journal and is recording different improv exercises and warm ups to show or maybe
try with her coworkers.”
I’d never heard of any companies
doing that. It’s not the summers off that teachers have, but what a great idea.
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