Summer Recovery Guide for Teachers

Summer break can be a beautiful gift to educators. The Summer Recovery Guide for Teachers offers an insightful, research-informed companion for educators seeking to optimize this gift for their well-being and wholeness. This guide offers a structured, soul-nourishing journey through the summer season, inviting teachers to pause, reflect, and restore in ways that are both practical and profound. Each of the 90 days includes a short, affirming truth about the renewal process, a mindfulness or self-care practice grounded in self-compassion, and a reflection question to encourage deeper insight and healing. The summer begins with reflections to help teachers leave the school year behind and come into the present moment. Next, the guide invites teachers to establish boundaries in order to find balance, to cultivate connections, and to explore their sense of personal identity. Teachers are then invited to focus on gratitude, release the things which do not serve them, and trust the process. As the summer progresses, the guide encourages teachers to deepen reflection, live in a space of renewal, nourish their creativity, and approach their time with a sense of intention. Finally, teachers spend time anchoring and looking ahead to the transition back into the school year. This book is an invaluable resource to be used as a solo daily companion, with a summer book club, or as the foundation for a personal retreat. However teachers choose to move through the reflections, the invitation is the same: come back to peace and well-being, and return to students healed and whole. May the summer months serve teachers, just as teachers serve others throughout the school year.

Dr. Rachel Meixner is a high school teacher, researcher, graduate school program director, nationwide presenter, and the author of three other books for Routledge’s Eye on Education imprint. Her first book, Loving Your Job in Special Education: 50 Tips and Tools, is designed to support special educators in loving their work, sustaining themselves, and bringing out the very best in their students. Her second book, Supporting Your Child with Special Needs: 50 Fundamental Tools for Families, is a guide for families as they navigate the special education system, connect with their child, and care for their personal health/well-being. Her third book, Why We Stay: A Teacher’s Guide to Resilience and Longevity in Education focuses on the Teacher Longevity Framework, an evidence-based structure teachers can use to sustain themselves for the long haul. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with her friends, her family, and her sweet little dog Scooter.