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Vacate on vacation
When I accepted the job of teaching fifth graders in Helsinki, I was ecstatic. But
I was also tentative. I had a million questions about how to teach well in Finland.
My Finnish principal must have guessed that I’d be brimming over with
queries, because she told me that she’d be away on something called a summer
holiday until late July. The principal’s unavailability surprised me slightly,
because the principals I’d known in America seemed to work throughout the
entire summer. The Finnish principal graciously suggested that I contact a
Finnish colleague with my questions.
So I e-mailed this fellow teacher and asked to speak with her the following
week on the phone, and then another curious thing happened: I didn’t hear from
this colleague until July, and when she e-mailed me, she politely suggested that
we chat after the holiday, saying something about her summer cottage. A pattern
was emerging. It seemed that my Helsinki coworkers were literally vacating
during the summer.
Initially I was skeptical of this approach. The American educators I had
grown to respect never seemed to stop working just because school was out for
the summer. I used to do the same thing. In the United States, I’d often spend a
large portion of the summer attending teaching seminars, reading professional
literature, and conducting home visits where I’d meet with parents and students.
I loved the summer holiday, because I had more free time to do work. However,

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in Finland, where teachers are often depicted in the international media as top-
notch, I found scores of educators who disconnected for the majority of the
summer. Today, I’ve grown to appreciate this popular practice among the Finns.
For years, setting aside a significant period of time for rest and relaxation
each summer wasn’t a priority of mine, but these days I’ve found that I thrive
from having longer stretches of time to recharge. It’s what helps me to prepare
for another school year. In my experience, I’ve found that Finland’s educators do
very little school-related work during their summer holidays, generally speaking,
but even after a few years of living in this Nordic country, I confess that this
approach feels too extreme for me. I’m in favor of a hybrid approach, in which
there’s a healthy chunk of time for disconnecting and a healthy chunk of time for
professional development during the long break. As a teacher, I’ve found that
there’s no better time than summer months to reflect on my work and encounter
new inspiring ideas I can incorporate into my classroom.
The problem I’ve detected among American educators is that we sometimes
neglect to leave sufficient time for recharging during the summer. Catching up
on sleep and reading interesting books are good basic things, but so too is this
Finland-inspired strategy of setting aside sufficient time to vacate on vacation.
As I hinted before, I’m not proposing that teaching-related work go completely
untouched for the entire summer. Rather, I’m suggesting that we teachers
prioritize designated stretches of putting work aside.
In her book Overwhelmed, Brigid Schulte (2014) described a compelling
study, conducted by Harvard Business School, which seems to bolster the case
for taking adequate time off:
[The researchers] compared two groups of workers at a Boston
consulting firm. One group worked fifty or more hours a week, didn’t use
all their vacation time, and were constantly tethered to the office with
electronics. The other group worked forty hours, took full vacations, and
coordinated time off and after-hours on-call time so clients’ needs could
be covered but people could regularly, predictably, and without guilt
totally unplug from the office. Which group produced better work? The
team with time off, not surprisingly, reported higher job satisfaction and
better work-life balance. But they also increased learning, improved
communication with their team, worked more efficiently, and were
ultimately more productive than their ideal worker colleagues. Other
studies have found that employees who take full vacations are not only
more likely to stay with the firm but also receive higher performance
reviews, and that workers are not only more creative but that turning off

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the constant barrage of e-mails and the ideal worker requirement to
respond to them immediately enables people to concentrate and get more
done with less stress. (p. 91)
I think it’s wise, if you can afford it, to physically vacate with your family,
with friends, or on your own during the summer, fleeing to the hills for a day
trip, going on a cruise, relaxing on the beach for a few days, and so forth. That
being said, I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary to get away to reap the benefits
of a vacation. What matters most is our mind-set. In other words, it’s possible to
“go on a vacation” but not actually vacate, because you’ve brought your work
along with you. (I know this, because I’ve tried it before; those “vacations”
weren’t refreshing.)
What’s helpful, I’ve found, is when I embrace that summer holiday mind-set
(the one I’ve seen so often applied in Finland) and set aside a few days, or
weeks, to stay off e-mail and social media, especially during the summer. It’s
something that has encouraged me to be more physically active, more
appreciative of nature, more rested, and more present with my family and
friends.