Introduction: 

When I set out on this project, I had a passive approach to joy. I wondered about how it shows up in the classroom. I thought if I were to look in the right places, spy all the perfectly times smiles and hear when and why the children were laughing, I would discover how joy was made. It wasn't long after setting out on this odd quest, however, that I discovered joy is not something to be discovered by uncovering its ingredients or by accidentally moving the correct stone or by putting on your best smile and hoping for the best. Joy, in fact, is not passive at all. Joy, I found, is a way of life. Joy is a choice.

            At first my question was about how to find joy, quite simply: how does joy show up in the classroom? Once I discovered it was not something to be found, however, I needed to think of it differently. My question became: What can teachers do to assure that joy is fostered, encouraged, and prioritized in the classroom? Over the next many pages it will become clear how I went from wondering passively where joy could be found to emphatically believing in the soulful and innate nature of joy and how it doesn't need to be uncovered, but rather it needs to be attained through pathways and acts. Joy is something we give away through relationship. It is love and care, empathy and consent, autonomy and connection, pride, and an expression of beauty. Joy is magic in the sense that magic is life. Magic can be found through the faith of belief. There is a link between faith and joy, and both can be found through sanctuary, but joy is a kind of secular faith. It is the faith in oneself to stand up and choose joy in the face of misery, to choose hope in the face of hopelessness, and to choose magic in the face of the mundane. Finding Joy is not an intellectual pursuit, it is an uncovering of the self and a fluttering from a chrysalis. Finding Joy is transformative. Finding Joy is the power of choice.

Literature Review:

"Joy is the practice of loving self; caring for and helping humanity

and earth; recognizing beauty, aesthetics, art, and wonder;

and working to solve the social problems of the world."

--Gholdy Muhammad

Joy makes everything easier. Its counterparts: misery, rejection, aimlessness, hopelessness, illness, and disinterest are the anathema to the human experience and the baseline of dysphoria, isolation, immobility, depression, dis/ease, and boredom are the antitheses of a productive classroom. These infamous feelings and experiences, that could all likely be found buzzing happily inside of Pandora's box and bullying hope into submission as the story goes, are not going away. They can't be wished away, worked away, disappeared, or otherwise stifled. They are here to stay. How then, in the face of such powerful forces can we find joy in the classroom?

            When I was in high school, I began to understand who I was. I sat alone on a rock outside the school and I was hit with a sense of dread. It was as if I had entered into a new reality, one in which I was aware of something existential inside me. Maybe it was a connection to the vast universe and my insignificance within that. Maybe it was the beginnings of a realization that I was queer and atypical and an awareness of the decades it would require me to embody and mobilize that truth. Maybe it was depression, kicking in for the first time, and the knowledge it wasn't going away any time soon. Or maybe it was all of these things as my body went through puberty, my mind came online in a new way, my spirit was filled with questions, and my soul attempted to grapple with intergenerational trauma including the holocaust of WWII. Whatever it was I felt on that stone that day in 1991, a fourteen year old boy full of hormones and mysteries, it wasn't joy. That is the one thing I can be sure of. It seems I have been searching for it ever since.

            What is joy, how do we find it, and what makes it so evasive? Dr. Gholdy Muhammad associate professor of language and literacy at Georgia State University and scholar and specialist of Black historical excellence in education defines joy as more than celebration and happiness, but also as wellness, beauty, healing, and justice for oneself and across humanity. Teaching from cultural and historical realities can enhance our efforts to cultivate identity, skills, intellect, criticality, and joy for all students. The pursuit of joy uplifts beauty, aesthetics, truth, ease, wonder, wellness, solutions to the problems of the world, and personal fulfillment (17). Through this literature I have come to believe joy is made up of six pathways: enthusiasm, belonging, purpose, hope, wellness, and wonder. My aim is to consider joy through each of these lenses as I simultaneously seek joy out, attempt to uncover it, expose it, release it, unearth it, and ultimately demystify it creating access to an otherwise elusive feeling that, like hope, often seems to wait for perfect conditions to be revealed. I want to learn how to stop waiting; how to turn toward what I know is in the room; how to choose it.

            I am on a mission to find joy in the classroom. I know it is there, some might argue joy flows naturally wherever there are children. I can see it in the sparkle behind the eyes of a child who knows they are valued. I can hear it in the squeals of delight on the playground and in the playfield. I can feel it in the hearts of children making friends and discovering knew and wonderful things in their world. It is palpable in creative moments with crayons and in the imaginings bubbling over in enthusiastic retellings when a child knows they have my attention. Despite this natural exuberance and constant seeking of laughter and beauty, Muhammad asserts joy and "formal education have never been paired in many spaces. There have been no learning standards for joy, assessments for joy, curricular objectives for joy, teacher evaluations for joy, or a college course on joy in education" (69). Why is that? If joy is such a driving force in the hearts and spirits of children, why is not harnessed more? Why is enthusiasm hushed, belonging a privilege, purpose standardized, hope taken for granted, wellness assumed, and wonder an extracurricular? Why, if joy makes learning easy, is it not the foundation for the classroom? Why is it not baked into everything we do as educators?

            Joy may be elusive or mysterious, but it can be defined. Professor, social worker, and acclaimed leader in understanding human emotions Brené Brown, in her book Atlas of the Heart defines joy as "the good mood of the soul" she asserts there is "definitely something soulful about joy" and there is a "relationship between joy and gratitude" (205-206). By defining joy as a positive expression of the soul linked to gratitude, I can begin to understand that joy is accessible and even sustainable. Joy, as defined by Brown, is a doorway and, if that doorway can be opened with gratitude, perhaps it can be opened in many other ways; perhaps there are multiple pathways to joy. The following six sections will explore those pathways: Enthusiasm, Belonging, Purpose, Hope, Wellness, and Wonder.

Enthusiasm

Joy is often thought of as a synonym for enthusiasm, which encompasses celebrations, happiness, pleasure, fun, and laughter. This pathway to joy is often present in classrooms due to the natural disposition of many children. Elizabeth J. Erwin, Jessica K. Bacon, and Priya Lalvani, scholars and practitioners of early childhood, elementary, and literacy education, in their article, It’s About Time! Advancing Justice Through Joyful Inquiry With Young Children, proclaim "the notion of 'child-like joy' clearly illustrates the natural ways young children become fully captivated in the here and now by a genuine, pure, and unrestrained delight" (71). Not all children express themselves with "unrestrained delight" but it is safe to say that a kind of exuberance exists in many children, that enthusiastic joy is present and sometimes even the cause of admonishment. Gholdy Muhammad reminds us "joy is fun and celebratory, yet it is not only about having fun and celebrating in schools and classrooms (although that is important). It is also the embodiment of, learning of, and practice of love of self and humanity, and care for and help of humanity and the earth." (70). Building on the idea of "unrestrained delight" we can begin to understand how joy is more than enthusiasm and has much to do with our place in the world and the feelings of being valued, fitting in, and seeing the natural beauty of our place in the universe as earthlings, as humans, and as citizens.

            Some might say that joy is happiness, but some forms of happiness are quite far away from joy. Happiness could, in fact, be viewed as heteronormative or through a lens of capitalism. Not only is there the idea of the narrative "prince gets princess" ending in fairytales resulting in happily ever after, but there is also the pursuit of happiness. Happiness in these contexts should not be conflated with joy. This happiness is a privilege and a fantasy not based in the kind of true grounding and enthusiasms of joy, but rather based in what is earned, bought and sold—a bill of goods. Professor of Literacies, Bessie P. Dernikos, did a study on happy ever after endings which she titled ‘I want my [un]happy ending!’ Queering happily ever after with/in a primary classroom. She was "taken aback by the words 'happily ever after'...these three bursts of sound pass through and around [her] body, inventing affective attachments that take many forms: joy, despair, comfort, confusion, defeat, and hope" (186). Here we see joy, comfort, and hope alongside despair, confusion, and defeat. How then, could happiness or at least happiness as viewed through the lens of heteronormativity, be a shared joy? How could the pursuit of happiness, in the context of riches and economic hierarchy, be a shared joy? Thinking about joy in this context leads me to believe joy is beyond happiness. That enthusiasm in its varied forms is only a part of joy, perhaps its foundation. But how do we find a more sustainable joy in the classroom? How do we create one? What else is joy and what are its other pathways?

Belonging

Accepting that Enthusiasm is simply the foundation of joy, we must delve deeper to find the plumbing. Everyone in a classroom wants to fit in; students want to feel included. It is vital to the human experience to feel a sense of connection with our fellow humans. Belonging is the pipework of joy; belonging, however, is more than fitting in; it is more than inclusion; it is more than feeling a sense of connection. Belonging is knowing our identities are represented in the curriculum. Belonging is a sense of justice in how history is presented. Belonging is acceptance not only of our presence, but also of our past whether that means accepting students as they are no matter their family experience or accepting the cultures to which they belong and adhere. Belonging is bringing the entire dynamic self to the classroom and being included and accepted no matter the components of that dynamic self. Gholdy Muhammad reminds us "if we are not centering children's humanity through love, there is no strategy, no professional book or instructional method in the world that can prepare the teacher to elevate the child" (15). Love can be a problematic term when it comes to children and their adult supervisors, but I believe love is a central component of joy. Whether we use the phrase unconditional positive regard or if we simply call it love, (love of children, love of teaching, love of learning, love of individuals) leading with love, and I would include kindness and empathy here, has to be the gateway to fostering belonging.

            The bigger picture of belonging is justice and freedom. These terms can be troubling in today's political climate, but on their face they remain vital components of joy. If students feel restricted or if they feel rules are unfair or inconsistently enforced they will become disconnected from the classroom, but if we can help them experience justice and freedom, they will feel they belong. Erwin et al confirm there is no "justice if children...are not free to make decisions about their own learning and teaching. Social justice in all forms, therefore, is about freedom....There has never been a more urgent time to partner with young children toward creating a more joy-filled and just world" (79-80). Feminist scholar and noted queer theorist Lauren Berlant doubles down on this when she asserts "when norms feel like laws, they constitute a social pedagogy of the rules for belonging and intelligibility whose narrowness threatens people’s capacity to invent ways to attach to the world" (182). In order to attain belonging on our quest to find joy, we have to consider the harm that normalcy, the strawman known as the average student, as well as standardized testing is doing to the classroom. By teaching to the middle, marginalized groups become further marginalized and there is no justice in that; there is no freedom. The result is the vast majority of students are detached from a curriculum and a system that doesn't see them as normal. So many students are othered by systemic white supremacy, patriarchal, hetero-normative, and ableist ideals that belonging becomes a central key to finding joy, but belonging: the free flowing pipes of joy, sadly, remains a difficult paradigm to attain.

Purpose

If belonging is the plumbing of joy, perhaps purpose is the wiring. When children feel aimless, if there is no progress in their learning, and the classroom is not set up for them to realize or at least move toward their potential, it can become a vapid experience. Dr. Geneva Gay, internationally known for her scholarship in multicultural education, in her work, Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice, believes when a student has a sense of belonging they can begin to have a sense of purpose and "as the cultural nuances...increased, so did the students’ performance. Improvements occurred in attending behaviors, time-on-task, participation in classroom dialogue, concept mastery, recall of factual information with greater accuracy, and more enthusiasm in and confidence about learning" (113). Purpose electrifies us, it puts us on a path that is well defined. When we realize our potential or find we are making progress, we find joy in our own wiring.

            Purpose, too, can be clearly linked to academics. When we are finding purpose through study, we are making that progress, realizing that potential, and working toward our goals. How can this kind of purpose be a pathway to joy? Educator and social critic, bell hooks, in her book Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, massages out this idea of purpose and joy when she proclaims the "restrictive, repressive classroom ritual insists that emotional responses have no place. Whenever emotional responses erupt, many of us believe our academic purpose has been diminished....This is really a distorted notion of intellectual practice, since the underlying assumption is that to be truly intellectual we must be cut off from our emotions" (155). Joy has a place in the classroom and, moreover, it does not take away from the academic agenda, but rather enhances it, connects us to it, and sustains out interest in it.

Hope

Purpose doesn't hold a child's wiring on its own, however. Purpose shares this with hope. If purpose is about goals and progress, hope is about dreams; hope is finding what we are passionate about; hope is finding meaning. Hope is the furnace of joy. Hope builds out this metaphorical building of joy. If enthusiasm is the foundation, belonging the plumbing, purpose the wiring, then hope must be the central air because it is hope that we live and breathe to temper and ignite our dreams. Ross Gay, poet, educator, and scholar of joy, in his lyrical collection of essays, Inciting Joy, puts forward the idea that dreams "remind us of our collective weirdness" and "sharing what we find beautiful is dangerous, it is vulnerable, it is like baring your neck, or your belly, and it reveals that, in some ways, we are all commonly tender" (163). Hope, then, or dreams and beauty and sharing in it is part of being vulnerable. It is easy to slip into hopelessness and despair, especially for students who experience trauma, but if we can focus on beauty and dreams, help to assure a kind of safety in hope, then optimism can win the day and fostering dreams in the classroom can be another entry point into joy. Early 20th century Spanish radical and educationalist who went on to inspire Maria Montessori, Francisco Ferrer, who was ultimately executed, purportedly for daring to dream that a classroom should value joy, argued "there is no good 'neutral instruction,' because all good teaching presupposes force...the generous soul of the child needs an atmosphere of conviction and enthusiasm....We should not...hide the fact that we want to develop in the children such an eagerness to live, such a confidence in life, such an interest in terrestrial realities, that there would soon remain no place for dreams about the beyond" (56). Ferrer understood that dreams were a key source for joy and encouraging passions and soliciting hope and optimism from children was a vital part of what classroom culture needed to remain joyous.

            Public school teacher and enthusiast for holistic education, Ian Altman, in his article Misdirection, speaks of hope from the perspective of what may be missing from schools. He sees such things as standards and mandated curriculum as disconnected from the ability to make connections between subjects and wonders why Raisin in the Sun shouldn't be taught alongside the history of redlining or The Bluest Eye associated more closely with the cultural phenomenon of the white gaze. Too often, hope is erased from the classroom and Altman asserts it should not "be surprising that students often view school with wariness. We don't give them enough credit: they know something is missing even if they can't fully articulate it. They don't need a reason to learn that is in not extrinsic, not merely tied to employability and being productive citizen and reliable consumer" (209). Hope, as defined here, is in finding connections and, if hope is a pathway to joy, so must be connections: connecting literature to history; connecting math to dance; connecting empathy to consent. Hopelessness is always waiting in the wings and it shows up most easily when folks are isolated. Forming connections between subjects and between people is the very formation of hope. Connection to humanity, in any classroom, for any child, is what keeps the furnace burning.

Wellness

Wellness, then, must be the rooftop of joy; it provides the shelter. In this quest for finding and sustaining joy, wellness has been here throughout, but it may be the most challenging to find in the classroom. How can we, as educators, assure students feel safe, secure, and stable? How can we assure they can trust us to retain some kind of ease in the classroom. Ferrer begs us to remember "our first care should be to prepare for life healthy and robust beings, beings conscious and clear-minded, endowed with a critical spirit, capable of discerning and deciding for themselves; and that it is thus that the school will labor most surely for human emancipation" (57). It is a clear reminder that finding a balance of ease and rigor is the joyful approach to education. Too much ease could result in a lack of robustness, but too much rigor could result in a turning away. Finding joy through the pathway of wellness, then, needs to be a challenge while also providing safety. Returning to this century, Gholdy Muhammad reminds us that when "teachers and children returned to the classroom as the pandemic numbers declined, they had changed, but curriculum hadn't, for the most part. Many schools simply continued what they were doing before the pandemic. There were few to no...wellness or healing spaces" (69). Joy doesn't exist in a vacuum. It doesn't have to wait for its counterparts to leave the room in order to make an entrance, but it does require a kind of ushering, it needs to be cajoled, fostered, and cared for. We can't ignore the trauma of this pandemic and expect everything to return to how it was, nor should we want that. The pandemic was and still is an awful experience for the entire collective, but we can utilize it as an opportunity to encourage wellness and healing in our classrooms. We can utilize it as an agent for change.

            There is so much to deal with in our classrooms, but it pales in comparison to what is outside the classroom. Ross Gay refers to this as the unwellness of our capitalist system and how we are literally living in ruins (146). The system is crumbling and many people are doing all they can to make whatever profits they can amidst the remains. Meanwhile, our students are aware of this. They are aware of climate change, mass shootings, and the pandemic, they are aware of the cultures of racism, sexism, homophobia, and ableism. They are even aware of what some people are doing to censor their education. How, in the face of these existential and real threats to our society, can we continue to find joy? Muhammad would have us face them, include them in our curriculum in order to better understand how to contribute to the society. This contribution is its own source of joy. By attending to the worst elements of our world, we can find joy. By attending to the unwellness in ourselves, our society, and our world, we can find joy through healing and belonging. By focusing on healing, safety, security, and trust, we can begin to find joy through wellness.

Wonder

Wonder is the blueprint of our stucture of joy and if students can be well, they can be curious. Wonder transcends the past, present, and future. It is sensations, it is art, it is the environment, it is aesthetics. It is curiosity, imagination, and magic. Wonder is the acknowledgement of the beautiful. Wonder is a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly. Muhammad says, "All I want to do is listen to the rain and watch the flowers grow" (25). One of Gholdy Muhammad's central metaphors for unearthing joy in the classroom is tending to a flower garden, that each child is a precious and beautiful flower and it is the role of the teacher to make sure those flowers are protected and nourished so they can flourish. One way to accomplish this is through art; through imagination and creativity.

            Fostering art in the classroom is one major entry point into joy and it is through wonder that we can find it. Ross Gay says to think of art as "something you wonder about, or listen to, or get lost in the making of, as something that might be trying to show you something you do not yet know how to understand, something that...unfixes us" (162). Gay believes it is in the unfixing that we can accomplish learning. He goes on to proclaim "we wanna note the wonders of what we make, and we wanna wonder about them. What is this thing? How is it working? What is it showing us? How do we listen to it, and learn from it? How does this thing show us how we might try to make a next thing? Wondering together again and again and again like this, an endeavor of unfixing, of dismastery, of community-supported bewilderment, is the practice" (167). Is it possible? Is it in the unmaking, the dismastery, and the chaos of the unknown that we find joy? Is it through curiosity?

Conclusion

What makes joy so elusive when it is right at our fingertips? How, in our classrooms, is joy not the first order of business? Gholdy Muhammad knows that with "all that was happening in the world...teachers and children need joy more than ever, like the ancestors needed joy when their worlds were in chaos and turmoil" (62). Joy begins with enthusiasm, the foundation of our structure of joy. Students walk into a classroom and must be met with enthusiasm if they are expected to arrive with it. Joy is sustained through the healthy pipes of belonging. Through a culturally sustaining pedagogy and a sense of the dynamic individuals that make up a classroom, the representation of those individuals, and inclusion of historical relevance to all cultures, joy can be sustained in the classroom. A sense of purpose, knowing the classroom is a place to explore potential, gives joy its power. If we can step into the classroom with a sense of purpose, that will bring us joy and we must breathe in tempered air of hope as a part of that classroom. Without hope, purpose is flat and lifeless. Hope fires up the furnace of our embodied joy and through this optimism we can experience the rooftop of joy, the shelter of wellness. Wellness is a sense of safety and security, of ease and trust. Students know in their guts when they feel safe. With all of these secure, we can actively experience our joy through wonder, the blueprint of joy. We can imagine other worlds and feel inspired, filled with life, as we step into the joy that we deserve.

            But why joy? Is the classroom the place for it? So much is written in our pedagogical studies about assessments, standards, skills, criticality, rigor, academic success, graduation, and classroom management. I don't claim to have the key that unlocks it all, but wouldn't it be nice if joy were the focus instead of the exception? Muhammad asserts "It is our joy that fuels it all" (80). This is what I want in my classroom. A sacred and beautiful experience of sancturary; a community of curious explorers; an imaginative bunch of weirdos. And I want it all to be fueled by joy. This is how I plan to sustain joy, by simply introducing it through love, connection, kindness, empathy, care, and magic.

Methods:

Through the literature review I discovered Joy has pathways. Those pathways are Enthusiasm, Belonging, Purpose, Hope, Wellness, and Wonder and, after investigating and defining joy through thinkers and pedagogists before me, I realized finding joy is not an intellectual process. Yes, defining joy helped me come to that, but if enthusiasm is the embodiment of joy, belonging is justice in action, purpose sustains our interest, hope is finding connections, wellness is attending to the antitheses of joy, and wonder is fostering curiosity, then I am predominantly interested in teacher moves that usher, unearth, incite, encourage, and enhance the joy of the students as well as the teacher themselves. I believe joy is reciprocal and can exist alongside its antitheses.

            My method of finding joy beyond the intellectual practice of defining it was conducting a series of interviews of three second grade teachers. I asked eight questions in my interviews. One to get a sense of how the interviewee defined joy, one question about each of the six pathways, and an eighth question about how to find joy in the classroom. This structure proved fruitful as the interviewees were able to discuss joy in myriad ways and it allowed me to consider joy beyond what I had previously considered. Through my method of approaching joy through the pathways I discovered in the literature review, I was able to understand joy beyond definition. I began to understand it in a deeper way, perhaps not dissimilar to how Brené Brown was thinking of it: as an expression of the soul.

            The interviews were lengthy and I found it to be soulful work. I got into this research imagining I could find joy through breaking it apart and putting it back together, much like a puzzle, but speaking with experienced and soulful teachers opened my eyes and my heart and a transformation began to take place. A cocoon, which I had spun over the many years of finding my way to teaching, began to unravel and soon the butterfly, a natural symbol of joy, began to take shape.

            It may be, however, a bit too easy, especially as a white man, to proclaim that I have been transformed through my own methodology. It is important to realize along the way my apparent race, gender, and class allows me to enter privileged spaces and even if I focus my study in order to challenge my own biases and advantages, I am aware of my own positioning as a white, middleclass, able bodied, straight, male. While this is not my actual positionality, I am aware it is my appearance. I am atypical, queer, feminist and devoted to antiracism and equity and have begun referring to myself as a sheep in wolves clothing, but my intentions and point of view can't erase how I seem. This apparent position offers me vast privileges in spaces that others cannot attain. All three interviewees were women, two of color. In order to counter my privilege, I remained open about my identity. By admitting and acting as a queer, atypical, feminist, and stating my point of view as somebody devoted to antiracism and equity, I was able to assure my interviewees and subjects that I was to be trusted. I remain aware, however, of my biases and privileges and how they may have interfered with and altered my research. I am also aware that being openly queer and atypical can create hesitation among some people and this positionality may also have tainted my results. 

Findings and a Discussion on Finding Joy:

Joy is ever present, it is accessible. In the classroom, in schools, much has been done to punish, discipline, and force a type of conformity and compliance that can easily be identified as the antithesis to joy and is often in response to joy. Enthusiasm, after all, a major dimension and pathway to joy, is often viewed as problematic, distracting, noisy, off task, or many other detracting sentiments. Fortunately, if enthusiasm is to be vilified, there are other pathways to joy. I have found, through my soul searching quest and research on joy, that belonging, purpose, hope, wellness, and wonder are enthusiasm's equals and, even if some may define it as such, joy is not always expressed through jubilation.

Enthusiasm

Children want to have fun. They want to laugh, play, and explore. The need to encourage and incite this innate aspect of childhood rather than, in one case I am aware of through my research, beat it out of them, is paramount to finding joy. Joy makes things easier and approaching curriculum and tasks with enthusiasm actually makes the learning not only more fun in the process, but also more lasting in the product. When education happens with an enthusiastic approach, with a focus on fun, laughter, pleasure, happiness, and celebrations, students will look forward to learning and accept schooling, the classroom, the teacher, and the institution. Certain antitheses of joy such as dread and lethargy can be diminished when a child approaches their education with enthusiasm. It doesn't produce a free for all. There are still structures and standards, values and safety to consider, but to actively stifle enthusiasm is a detriment.

Belonging

Without belonging, joy may not be possible. It is a vital dimension and, perhaps, the most important pathway to focus on. Representation, inclusion, acceptance, justice, and connection are all ways to help students feel they belong in the classroom community. When we talk about representation it is easy to assume this means making sure certain underrepresented demographics are represented in the materials, but representation in the classroom is much deeper than that. Children should be allowed and encouraged to represent themselves. With an understanding that identity is a broad and intersectional concept, a child can explore who they are as individuals, in family systems, in the classroom ecosystem, as a citizen, and in the greater global community. It is joyous to know that no matter who you are, you belong. When you show up as your whole self, it benefits others to know you. In order to feel safe to show up in this full way, however, inclusion and acceptance must be primary values. It is through inclusion and making students feel they matter and are wanted, that justice shows up. Fairness is a type of acceptance and, though we are led to believe, at times, that life is not fair, it does not mean that attempts can't be made to make the classroom a place where fairness and equality matter. Lastly, belonging is important because it leaves children feeling connected: to themselves; to their close friends; to their classmates; to their teacher; to their school. When children feel connected, engaged, visible, and wanted, this is finding joy.

Purpose

Potential, goals, solutions and resolutions, progress, and success create the parameters within which joy can be productive. Without purpose, the pathway to joy has no aim and, in a classroom, it is important to know where we are headed and why. Enthusiastic fun and games as well as inclusion and fairness are important building blocks, but without purpose it could be all for not. A classroom is not a commune, it is not a place for chaos to rule supreme. It is purpose that contains joy and keeps it safe and sustainable. Setting expectations, following a schedule, being transparent, and addressing conflicts with empathy and vision, are all structures that allow for joy to flourish. Purpose is the elevator to joy and, as we rise, as we progress in the classroom, we find joy in realizing our potential. Purpose gives us momentum and this is finding joy.

Hope

The primary antithesis to joy is hopelessness, which is why hope is such an important pathway to joy. My research did not begin with hope on the radar and finding hope was a major breakthrough in the design of Finding Joy. Hope is optimism, it is positivity, visibility, the ability to dream, find meaning, and have choices. Hope is a pathway to joy because it is, in itself, a choice. Horrible things happen all the time, every day, all around us and it is easy to slip into hopelessness and despair, but when we choose hope, even when it is hard, that choice is a pathway to joy. By naming hope and broadcasting it, joy can be found in the classroom, especially if that classroom is designed with hope at the front of mind. Hope is to be brought to the classroom. Without it, the entire project of education is meaningless. Hope goes beyond its prior pathways because it is a choice. When we choose to dream, we choose to live, we choose to have joy despite our hardships, not instead of them. Choosing hope is finding joy.

Wellness

Some might argue that wellness is the precursor to joy, that joy is not possible without it, that Maslow's hierarchy of needs shows us we need nourishment, sleep, shelter, water, and other basics to just survive and if we are not having our basic needs met, joy is unattainable and a pointless pursuit. I agree with this, but I also think safety, security, stability, trust, and ease are aspects of joy that can be attained and must be nurtured in order for joy to be sustained. As addressed in Hope, the world is a scary and sometimes awful place to be. We are destroying our planet through unsustainable capitalism and power grabbing. We are allowing guns and gun violence to run rampant in our society and, most heartbreakingly, in our schools. Beyond these macro-sociopolitical issues, there are systems of injustice that permeate our every moment. Racism, sexism, ableism, heterosexism, and other harmful isms create an environment of oppression and marginalization that is hard to ignore. How, in the face of all of this, can we find joy and, some might ask: why should we even bother? It is a huge question that can't be easily answered, but I have found in this quest that the answer is actually simpler than I would have ever imagined. In the micro-community of the classroom, teachers can bring and build a space that is a sanctuary. By building trust, valuing ease, creating safety, security, and stability through structures of unconditional positive regard, fairness, and kindness, a classroom can be a laboratory of joy; a classroom can be a secular temple; a sanctuary from a harsh world, a world is  outright awful at times and often hard to be enthusiastic about it. It is nearly impossible to feel that we belong when we are systematically oppressed and ignored or erased. It is pointless to bother without some purpose and clear aim for a more just world and a place to fit in. We must choose hope, and in order to do that, we must feel safe in an environment built for that cause. By creating a classroom as a sanctuary, we can be well because the classroom culture becomes the place to go to observe the world and be curious about it rather than be crushed by it.

Wonder

But what is a classroom if it isn't a place to practice skills? It is through wonder, through curiosity, imagination, aesthetics, beauty, and even a little magic, that we can find joy through our studies. Wonder is the academic pathway to joy. It is interesting that this is the finding about wonder because I came to wonder assuming it was all about astonishment, awe, and a sort of passive way to adore and to relish our surroundings and our possibilities. Wonder is these things, but, when applied to joy and to the classroom, wonder is, at its heart, the curiosity to learn. I think some might assume that children are not interested in learning, that learning is something that happens a bit on accident and despite the children themselves, but I have come to understand that there is joy in learning and that very joy is found through wonder. We learn through inquiry, experimentation, persistence, and criticality. We learn through discovery. By building joy through pleasure, fairness, completion, optimism, and sanctuary, we are creating a space where students can thrive through curiosity. By finding joy through these critical pathways and building joy through them, we create a classroom that not only fosters magic (and by magic, here, I mean life), it creates citizens who are interested in the world and how to improve it. Wonder is the pathway of artists, inventors, scientists, philosophers, politicians, and so many other vital members of society. Wonder is the ability to know that unicorns exist while simultaneously understanding they do not.

Finding Joy

Joy can seem elusive. It can seem impossible. It can even seem like a frivolous or empty experience that is a roadblock to a true education. I have found in my research it is none of these things. Joy is right in front of us and ever present. Joy does not have to wait for its antitheses to leave the room in order for it to exist. If we wait for hopelessness, listlessness, anxiety, dread, despair, and misery to go away, we will wait for our entire lifetime. Joy is there, like hope in Pandora's box. When we peer inside and turn toward it, joy is there. It is fun, acceptance, potential, positivity, peace, and delight. When we open our eyes, joy is right in front of us. It is our job as teachers to embrace it, to enliven it, to bring it, to unearth it, to choose it. Finding Joy is as easy as taking a first step. All we have to do is know it's there; offer it; open it; find it.

Implications/Conclusion:

Joy is something I have been waiting for or experiencing in fleeting moments. With a baseline of depression, I spent my adult life assuming misery was the state of being all other states of being stemmed from. This research, and my path to becoming a teacher, has changed all of that. I now walk in this world with an optimistic confidence and buoyancy that in the past I may have mocked or assumed was put on if I were to see it from my old self. Joy is my new baseline, or rather in the spirit of things, Joy is my new bass line. [insert guitar riff here]

            My classroom will be built on four pillars, I have known this since I wrote my alphabet poem, A Social-Emotional Study of Justice: an A-Z for Society. The pillars this poem was founded on were identity, community, agency, and joy. Identity, community, and agency made sense to me. I understood my own identity and how the intersections of it provide me with privileges as well as certain disadvantages in dominant society. I understood, through empathy, other's identities and how they are advantaged or marginalized because of those identities. Community, too, makes pretty good sense. How can we as individuals serve our communities without falling into a destructive pattern of capitalist individualism? Agency, too, makes sense to me as autonomy and choice are imperative to a well-rounded and sound education. But now, I understand joy as well. Joy is the underbelly of life. It provides enthusiasm, is brought on with belonging, is elevated through purpose, energized with hope, sustained with wellness, and instigated through wonder.

            So, I created a boardgame. It is Finding Joy and it was inspired, deeply, by my quest to understand how to summon and sustain joy in my life as a student of the world and a teacher of second graders. In this game, players interact with one another by answering questions and prompts as they travel the rainbow path. The pathways to joy, as referenced, are Enthusiasm, Belonging, Purpose, Hope, Wellness, and Wonder. As players move about the board, they fill their Joy Buckets by being rewarded with hearts, stars, butterflies, flowers, rainbows, and unicorns. These acts of joy, gifts of joy, and pathways to joy are a real world approach to reminding students and players alike that joy, like hope, is a choice and we can't wait for the antitheses of joy to leave the room. We must choose joy even in the face of misery, hopelessness, and listlessness. We choose it through kindness, through compliments, through appreciating beauty, through care, and through a little bit of magic.

            I have called this project Finding Joy, but it is ironic that my primary discovery is in order to find joy, one must bring it. It is not something that is hiding under a rock, or behind a door, or a dark cloud. Joy is life. Joy is simple. It is there for the taking and the giving. Will embracing joy erase all ills? It will not. What embracing joy has done for me, and I hope for my classroom, and for all of the classrooms, the children, and the world around me, is made it all just a little bit brighter, that much more tolerable and, quite bluntly, more joyous.

            Children are born with this joy. It can be found on their faces, in their dances, their songs, their play. Why not find a way to enact joy on a daily basis? This game, Finding Joy, can easily be transformed into a Social Emotional daily ritual. A student could choose a pathway or be randomly assigned one. By starting the day with an attention to finding the good mood of the soul and having classmates reward one another for those findings, a precedent would be established for the day. Joy would be the foundation for all that would follow.

            I am still in the process of becoming an educator and through this research I have discovered much about myself and about classrooms. I feel that in finding joy and discovering it is a choice and that I can bring it rather than look for it. I have set a standard for myself that I intend to follow. The four pillars of my classroom were three solid pillars and one somewhat translucent one until this research concluded. Now I can clearly see all four. Identity stands strong and, made of solid concrete, it is diverse and intersectional and beams come out from it to connect to community, agency, and joy. From the pillar of identity one comes quickly to community where empathy, consent, and kindness take form as dynamic individuals create relationships. Agency, too, in all the autonomy, self-respect, passions, and ability to choose hope, joy and so much more, stands tall and proud, holding up its corner of the classroom. Joy, elusive and mysterious at the start of this process, is a tempered steel filled with rainbows, flowers, hearts, stars, butterflies, and unicorns. Love pours from its veins, excellence sparks from its head, connection and relatability embrace its ribs, excitement and transformations float to its surface, and I am proud, so proud of the work I have done. This soul work, that I set out thinking was an intellectual process, leaves me riding my unicorn into the night as this transormative magic has found a way to cleanse me of toxicity and left me vulnerable, exposed, and filled with hope; brimming from the intersections of my identity with unfettered joy. I have found it.

Works Cited:

Altman, I. (2022). Misdirectives. Lapham’s Quarterly, 14(4).

Berlant, L. G. -., & Prosser, J. (2011). Life Writing and Intimate Publics: A Conversation with Lauren Berlant. Biography, 34(1), 180-187. Retrieved from https://rave.ohiolink.edu/ejournals/article/342371265

Brown, B. (2021). Atlas of the heart: Mapping meaningful connection and the language of human experience. Random House.

Dernikos, B. P. (2022). ‘I want my [un]happy ending!’ queering happily ever after with/in a primary classroom. Sex Education, 23(2), 184–193. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681811.2022.2082399

Erwin, E. J., Bacon, J. K., & Lalvani, P. (2021). It’s about time! advancing justice through joyful inquiry with young children. Topics in Early Childhood Special Education, 43(1), 71–82. https://doi.org/10.1177/0271121420988890

Ferrer, F. (2022). Monstrous errors. Lapham’s Quarterly, 14(4).

Gay, G. (2018). Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice. Teachers College Press.

Gay, R. (2023). Dispatch from the Ruins (School: The Eleventh Incitement). In Inciting joy: Essays. essay, Algonquin of Chapel Hill.

Hooks, bell. (1996). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. Routledge.

Muhammad, G., & Williams, P. (2023). Unearthing joy: A guide to culturally and historically responsive teaching and learning. Scholastic Inc.  

Appendix:

Interview Questions/Pathways to Joy:

Defining Joy

People define joy in different ways. What do you think joy is? How would you define it? How do you understand joy?

Enthusiasm

·      happiness

·      laughter

·      pleasure

·      fun

·      celebrations

What place does laughter, happiness, pleasure, and fun have in the classroom and how do celebrations and traditions contribute to the wellbeing of the classroom community?

Belonging

·      acceptance

·      representation

·      inclusion

·      justice

·      connection

We know that representation is vital for students to feel a sense of belonging. What steps can be taken to assure representation so that all students feel included, accepted, and connected to the materials? Are we doing students an injustice by steering away from accurate histories in the guise of protecting their feelings and security?

Purpose

·      goals

·      (re)solutions

·      success

·      progress

·      potential

How do we define success in students and how do completion, solutions, and resolutions play into that? How vital are rewards as we consider how students are progressing and meeting their goals or living up to their potential?

Hope

·      dreams

·      meaning

·      positivity

·      agency

·      visibility

How, as teachers, can we infuse our own dreams into a classroom as we encourage our students to do the same and how does this help students feel seen, find meaning, and remain positive? How can agency encourage hope?

Wellness

·      safety

·      security

·      stability

·      trust

·      ease

Everyone has basics needs and many of us experience trauma, dis/abilities, adverse childhood experiences, or inequities based on our identities. In the face of this and other baseline issues such as climate change, school shootings, and the recent pandemic, how can we assure that students feel safe, secure, at ease and stable while we also hope to instill a sense of trust in us as well as the system and also encourage rigor in academia and personal responsibility in social skills?

Wonder

·      curiosity

·      aesthetics

·      beauty

·      magic

·      imagination

It seems important to keep art, imagination, and creativity at the forefront of the classroom experience. How can we create an environment that is pleasing to the senses while also fostering a sense of beauty and magic in our students and in the classroom?

Finding Joy

If we are able to find and foster joy in our classrooms, in ourselves, and in our students, what effect might this have on the overall experience of learning, teaching, and sustainability?