The Importance of Joy at School

(For a companion video to this article, click here.)

Introduction: The Era of Broken Trust

In the age of high stakes testing and school accountability, it seems as if education conversations at the federal, state, and local level only focus on funding, test scores, and the “Culture Wars.” Most debates on capital hill are about rising spending costs and decreasing student performance; others are about the need for competition through school choice in order to hold schools “accountable.” On television and online, you are more likely to see news stories about layoffs and budget votes, or viral videos about parents irate over transgender athletes or books depicting gay couples. The world of 2026 continues to speak of a polarized and at times angry nation, and schools are a microcosm of that world. 

This lack of faith in public education has followed a broader trend. Americans are increasingly dissatisfied over a perceived lack of accountability from schools as well as harboring mistrust about the responsiveness of educators and even their competency (Brady & Kent, 2022, p. 44). This era of pessimism has had a negative impact on both teachers and students alike. For the former it has led to increased feelings of burnout and hopelessness as teachers feel less support yet increasing scrutiny and pressure to perform at a high level (Dabrowski et al., 2025). For students the risk is even greater because research suggests that teacher turnover resulting from the increased pressure caused by a lack of trust creates an unstable educational environment and lack of teacher cohesion (Ronfeldt et al., 2013).

In all of this pressure to have students perform and regain the public’s faith, it seems as if worrying about the absence of joy in the classroom seems frivolous at best and misguided at worst. After all, how can teachers worry about students’ happiness when they are feeling as if every instructional choice they are making is being scrutinized by a public waiting to pounce on them? For students, the idea of finding joy in classrooms that have been systematically de-emphasizing creativity, experiential learning, and the arts in favor of programs guided primarily by test performance seems laughable. 

Yet, that is precisely what I intend to argue in this article. Although some might dismiss worrying about student happiness or joy as trivial, countless studies not only support it for the benefit it provides to the mental health of the entire school community (faculty and staff included) but also show that student happiness leads to improved learning across the board. If schools want students to learn and grow, they must also create the right amount of joy to facilitate that. 

School Celebrations and Events

As a longtime educator, I have found school celebrations and events to be one of the largest drivers of student happiness and positive school culture in general. My first experience with their power happened when I was a third-year teacher at a Title I school in Tucson, AZ. The school was small and designed to have a community feel, yet the majority of students openly voiced a desire to transfer to a different school that would be more “fun.” Compounding this issue was the fact that this school was known for its academic rigor, resulting in a community that felt constantly under pressure to ensure that test scores were high. 

Although I loved my colleagues and students, I also recognized that this lack of joy was leading to increased student and teacher burnout as well as increasing behavioral issues. The solution I developed with a veteran colleague was simple: Let’s find a way to have the students come to campus and have fun. My hypothesis was that if we had enough events like this, students would start to feel a greater sense of belonging and ownership over the school community, and improved test scores and behaviors would follow.

This led to the birth of “Dinosaur Night.” Because our school was science-focused and had a robust Science Olympiad team, we decided that we would have a night where students could come to campus and participate in dinosaur themed games and activities. Afterwards, we would screen Jurassic Park for the middle school students and The Land Before Time for the elementary ones. We charged a small admission fee to pay for pizza and props with any remaining funds going to help fund an end of year field trip to the Catalina Island Marine Institute for our graduating 8th graders (more to come about this). 

Although largely teacher-led, we soon were able to bring our 8th graders into the process, having them help plan and run what would later be known as “Movie Nights.” We had rotating themes (“Alien Night,” “Shark Night,” etc.) and with each event we saw increasing numbers of attendees. While the first night had roughly 50 students, we were double that number by the third event. 

After launching these events, we saw some remarkable changes. Both attendance and academic proficiency increased, while misbehaviors decreased. Furthermore, there was marked increase in a sense of ownership on campus. Students and faculty alike appreciated being able to contribute to creating fun, quirky events. One teacher baked dinosaur shaped cookies for Dinosaur Night while several students brought in Halloween and Christmas lights from home to build a spaceship for Alien Night. The more events we put on, the more people wanted to be a part of them. 

A more recent example happened when I was the principal of a school in Northern Vermont. Like many small towns in America, the community was impacted by rural decay. Most students had grown up in extreme poverty and addiction ran rampant. The school culture had not rebounded from the COVID-19 shutdown with parents being disengaged and students struggling both academically and behaviorally. The time of the year I most dreaded was the January-February stretch when it was darkest and coldest. This was also, unsurprisingly, when behaviors spiked and staff morale sank.

I had learned through my Hungarian-born wife of a festival held in late February called Winterlude. Different cultures had different traditions. In Hungary people dressed up as monsters to scare off the winter and jump over a bonfire to signify the coming of spring. In Canada, people played outdoor winter sports and held festivals, and in Abenaki culture, tribal members played snow snakes and held drumming ceremonies. Although the activities differed, the sentiment was the same: winter can be a time of celebration. 

Working with the faculty as well as consultants from Starling Collaborative, an educational organization focused on supporting restorative practices and social-emotional wellness in schools, we developed our own version of Winterlude. The first event focused on learning about how different cultures celebrate winter and included sugar on snow, an Abenaki drumming ceremony, and mask making. The following year we focused on the Winter Olympics; students created team names and flags and participated in a series of winter games such as sled racing, capture the flag, and scooter curling.

Much like with Movie Nights at my former school, Winterlude became a campus focal point. During the long winter stretch, behaviors improved, morale increased, and there was a palpable sense of enjoyment that was not there before. Although joy was our primary goal, school events such as these, also have positive effects that go beyond student and staff morale. Studies support this:

Students' socio-emotional and educational experiences of school celebrations are positively related to their sense of school belonging…[S]tudents' learning agency was positively supported by their participation in co-curricular activities, such as school plays…school celebrations and other events are seen as important for creating a 'sense of community' within schools. (Kuusisto et al., 2015, pp. 2–11)

This explains why when campuses devote time to holding campus events and celebrations (something that unfortunately has declined in the wake of high stakes testing), educators often see a correlating increase in academic and social-emotional proficiency. Although many educators fear diverting instructional time towards events that might not have as apparent a connection to academic standards, doing so (when done mindfully) often paradoxically leads to improvement in those very same standards. 

Experiential Learning

Another primary driver of joy in classrooms has been experiential learning, most often through field trips and assemblies. Earlier in this article I discussed how Movie Nights were used to fund an 8th grade trip to the Catalina Island Marine Institute. For a group of inner city students from Tucson, AZ this event was the first time they got to even see the ocean, yet through this field trip they were able to go night time snorkeling, hiking along the coast, and canoeing, all while learning about marine biology in an authentic setting.

Although expensive (it took a full year to raise the necessary funds for students to attend) and lasting over a week, this experience also led to a marked increase in both science and overall academic scores as well as a sharp decrease in misbehavior. The same could be said about the school in Vermont that devoted six days a year to students in grades 4th and up going to a local ski resort to ski. Although neither were directly tied to any specific curriculum or state standard, the opportunity for social-emotional learning and transferable skills had a direct and positive impact on both behaviors and academics. McMillan and Smith (2023) explain:

Field trips have the potential to be intensely engaging, integrative, and transformative experiences affording opportunities for students to question power, access, privilege, and positionality…[F]ield trips engage and even entertain students, helping to make the educational experience more enjoyable and—judging from what students have told me months or years later—more memorable and more sociologically meaningful as well. (p. 238)

Whereas classroom instruction can feel removed from the real world and strictly conceptual or even artificial, field trips provide opportunities to make the concepts taught in school more concrete and grounded in the real world.

The same can be said about assemblies. Not only do they provide an alternative way to engage with academic content but they also have a profoundly positive impact on school culture. Kussito et. al. (2015) writes:

Assemblies provide a space for the school community to come together as a whole, fostering a sense of belonging and identity. They offer a unique opportunity to celebrate achievements, share values, and reinforce a common purpose…this communal experience can strengthen social bonds and contribute to a more positive and inclusive school climate. (p. 10)

School events, fieldtrips, and assemblies are not new. In fact, these have been in place since our grandparents and great grandparents have been students. The ideas presented here are not revolutionary, but rather mark a return to the notion of the school not just being an institution for learning, but also for building community and shaping future citizens of the world.

Finding That Happiness

Like many things in education, finding ways to increase joy in K-12 education has both a simple and complex answer. At its simplest it means schools being willing to devote instructional time to school events, fieldtrips, and assemblies that are both academic and experiential in nature. Doing so is an investment that teaching the whole child will yield positive dividends academically and social-emotionally. 

This, however, is easier said than done because it also means that all key stakeholders (students, teachers, staff, parents, and community members) must accept a paradigm shift that moves them away from the narrow view of educational success that has become so prominent since the advent of No Child Left Behind and its successive legislation. It means understanding that not every dollar needs to go towards direct instruction in reading and math. Furthermore, it means understanding that there is no 1:1 correlation in education where every minute spent on direct instruction automatically yields positive test results (nor that positive test results are a primary indicator of learning).

Perhaps the real question needs to be, “Is America ready to let its kids be kids in the classroom again?” If so, then the data suggests that we can see corresponding growth to go along with it. Furthermore, educators can expect to see an increase in teacher retention and community buy-in making everyone winners. 

References

Brady, H. E., & Kent, T. B. (2022). Fifty years of declining confidence & increasing polarization in trust in American institutions. Daedalus, 151(4), 43–66. https://doi.org/10.1162/daed_a_01943

Dabrowski, A., Hsien, M., Van Der Zant, T., & Ahmed, S. K. (2025). “We are left to fend for ourselves”: understanding why teachers struggle to support students’ mental health. Frontiers in Education, 9. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2024.1505077 

Kuusisto, E., Gholami, K., & Tirri, K. (2015). Enhancing students' sense of belonging through school celebrations: A study in Finnish lower-secondary schools. International Journal of Learning, Teaching and Educational Research, 11(2), 1–15. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/278379061 

McMillan, C., & Smith, A. (2023). Help or hindrance – the value of field trips as a form of experiential learning for social work students. The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 14(2). https://doi.org/10.5206/cjsotlrcacea.2023.2.13659

Ronfeldt, M., Loeb, S., & Wyckoff, J. (2013). How teacher turnover harms student achievement. American Educational Research Journal, 50(1), 4–36. https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831212463813