Teaching at any educational level can be both rewarding and draining, but teacher sabbaticals are one way to restore the energy and enthusiasm these special people feel for their work and their students. A need for such breaks from the rigors of routine has become increasingly apparent, especially for those teaching at the post-secondary level and beyond. Below, we’ll explore five of the benefits of sabbaticals and why the educational community is embracing them.
1. The Power of a Pattern Shift
For those who study the teaching community, one of their findings was that a change in routine had enormous mental, physical, and emotional benefits. It permits teachers to restore their reserves of physical and emotional energy. Sabbaticals offer the opportunity to mentally relax, reflect on priorities or projects, and begin to plan for the future. Breaking a behavioral and intellectual pattern can provide teachers with a bit of much-needed distance from routine, and help to reinvigorate their enthusiasm for their profession.
2. Publish or Perish
Many institutions require post-secondary professors to create new research or publish articles that contribute new evidence to their field of expertise. This has become a common feature of many tenured and non-tenured professors’ lives, and constitutes a constant balancing act with focus on educating students. Teacher sabbaticals are essential, because they offer researchers the time and space to conduct more focused inquiry, compose, travel to seek primary source data, or engage in a deeper examination of that data.
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3. Playing Catch-Up
The best teachers never stop learning, but in many fields, the sheer volume of new research or published discourse on topics of interest can be overwhelming. Many can only afford to devote time to a single journal of research during the typical round of teaching duties. Sabbatical leave offers teachers an opportunity to explore what they’ve missed and to become familiar with current topics of study in their field. It also provides an intellectual breathing space, which can be vital for forming new connection between topics, disciplines, and empirical evidence. In the highly pressurized routine of an educator, the brain reverts to a type of energy-saving mode, in which it adheres to familiar patterns. This is prohibitive to absorbing new ideas or making connections with novel information.
4. The Social Set
Sabbaticals also provide a window for social and professional networking. Conferences are often inconvenient for those caught in the round of academic duties and attendance deemed a luxury. While these gatherings provide much-needed opportunities to share ideas and continue personal educational development, many teachers let them fall from their routine, because there simply isn’t time, money, or energy enough to do it all. However, during such focused leaves, teachers have both time and resources to attend. New connections of intellectual and social value are created.
5. Enhancing Enthusiasm
When teachers pursue a regimen of constant, active teaching, their perspectives can become stale or rote. Sabbatical leave provides time and space for them to rediscover why they love teaching. This leads to a reinvigorated, enthusiastic educational experience for both teachers and students. Educators focus on what new approaches and information they can bring to their students, and often experience a corresponding resurgence in student enthusiasm, which benefits everyone.
It’s important to remember that these leaves of absence are often highly focused on continuing education, professional enrichment, and additional development of scholastic approaches. In the past, many institutions viewed them as a luxury afforded to self-indulgent, privileged professors. However, new research has indicated that teacher sabbaticals benefit everyone within the academic community, from new students to the institutions in which educators work and grow.
