Three Syllabus Tweaks Inspired by a Surprise Day Off That Will Give You—and Your Students—More Space to Breathe This Fall
In this post, I describe a tradition at my undergraduate institution that taught me the power of pausing on purpose. I use this example to illustrate how you can invite a similar energy into your classroom this semester without compromising student learning or academic rigor.
As an undergraduate student, I attended Smith College—a small, liberal arts women’s college in Northampton, Massachusetts. I once read someone describe Smith as “the rest of the world, except sooner.” As I’ve grown older, I now realize what that person meant.
At Smith, innovation, embracing discomfort, and having difficult conversations were normal and expected. When I was visiting colleges, I still remember deciding I had to attend a women’s college after taking a tour with a student who I described as “ending each sentence with a period, not a question mark.” During that visit, I also experienced for the first time an environment where “women are asked what they will lead, not whether they are capable leaders.”
Clearly, I’m a fan. But this post isn’t about my love for Smith—it’s about how my time there often felt like a microcosm of society, with conversations that would later ripple through the broader U.S. happening on Smith’s campus first.
One of those conversations was about the importance of pausing and intentional rest, something embodied in one of Smith’s most beloved traditions: Mountain Day.
Photo by Sandie Clarke on Unsplash
Mountain Day as Metaphor
When you’re a student at Smith, Mountain Day is almost always a thrilling surprise. Midway through the semester, drowning in sleep deprivation, writing papers, and counting down the days until you can go home for Thanksgiving break, you wake up to the sound of bells ringing. Then, an email from the college president arrives in your inbox:
“Today is Mountain Day. All classes are cancelled.”
If Mountain Day falls on a day when you don’t have class until the afternoon and you’re sleeping in, you can expect your housemates to run down the hallways screaming, “It’s Mountain Dayyyyyyy!!!!” You’ll be jolted out of your sleep.
From there, everyone disperses in different directions. Some stay in bed for a few extra hours of sleep, while others go apple picking, row across Paradise Pond, or lounge on the grass with friends.
As a student, I never really thought about the importance of Mountain Day—I mainly just felt relief because it always seemed to fall on exactly the day I needed to pause and rest. Since my assignments were already finished, I could listen to my body and let the day unfold naturally.
I’ve thought a lot about Smith’s Mountain Day tradition since becoming a faculty member. I’ve never been at another institution—as a student, postdoc, or faculty—that had a similar tradition.
What I once saw as an obvious part of the academic calendar, I now see as a bold institutional endorsement of the value of intentional rest, connection, and community—not just for students but also for faculty. In their email, the college president encourages the Smith community to pause, recharge, and reconnect without the underlying expectation of using the time to “catch up” or “get ahead.”
Looking back, I realize that Mountain Day was never just about the day off—it was about learning to value rest as an integral part of the work itself.
Most of us teach at institutions that operate like scarcity factories—maximizing output, minimizing downtime, measuring worth by the next deliverable. The idea that an entire campus community could stop, without penalty, to breathe?
That’s rare. Unfortunately.
Creating Mountain Day Energy in Your Classroom
While many of you may be at institutions that don't observe a Mountain Day, it’s still possible to build a similar ethos in your classroom.
It may not always seem like it, but as instructors, we have much more influence over the pace and rhythm of our courses than we often realize. And if we approach designing our courses like a gardener tending a plot—planting just enough seeds to give their roots room to grow—we can create classroom conditions that promote deep learning and community.
Over the years, I’ve learned that less is often more when designing my course syllabus. By doing less, I create more space for students to contemplate the material, make unexpected connections, and ask more thoughtful questions that increase their investment in the material and spark curiosity.
Here are three syllabus design moves that channel the Mountain Day spirit.
1. The Peer Review “False Deadline”
Whether you are a faculty member at a liberal arts college or a research-intensive institution, you probably share a common pain point: grading students’ writing assignments.
The arrival of AI is only worsening a deep wound for faculty members in disciplines where the curriculum relies on students demonstrating their understanding through discussion posts, seminar papers, or other forms of academic writing. Students often begrudge these assignments, and for faculty members, the feeling is mutual.
I have limited experience with this, but I’ve heard it’s easy to become fluent in productive procrastination when grading papers is the alternative. 😉 You know, enthusiastically tackling important tasks like... cleaning your oven, doing two months of laundry in one afternoon, or cleaning your house gutters.
(I kid, maybe).
But what if, instead, you set a false deadline for students to bring a full draft of an assignment to class, and then you lead an in-class peer review day where:
Students show up with their “final” draft in hand.
You lead a short workshop on how to give constructive feedback.
Students exchange papers, mark them up, and talk through their feedback.
This exercise gives students low-stakes feedback they can use before submitting it on the official deadline you announce at the end of the class meeting. Students feel relieved (when I do this, I literally hear gasps of relief). At the same time, you can protect your peace by skipping grading students’ roughest, Red Bull-powered all-nighter drafts.
2. Catch-Up & Questions Day
Some concepts take students longer to grasp or spark generative discussions that make them want to go deeper on a topic. What if you planned for those ahead of time and created space mid-semester to:
Address common misconceptions.
Let students revisit tricky material.
Field questions they didn’t even know they had until now.
It’s like pruning in the garden: you clear space so the important ideas can get more sunlight.
3. Built-In Grace
With so much happening in the world right now, life has been “life-ing” for what feels like a decade. Instructors often experience this most acutely around course deadlines—a sudden flood of emails from students oversharing personal details and pleading for extensions.
What if, instead of handling endless extension requests, you established a grace period for submitting assignments that automatically grants an extension without requiring an explanation? If students miss this window, the assignment is considered late, and you'll follow your course late policy unless there are extenuating circumstances (which you clearly outline in your syllabus).
This method reduces inbox stress and also encourages students to self-regulate and plan ahead.
Mountain Day at Smith taught me that slowing down and pausing is a necessary part of academic work. Your syllabus can teach your students this same lesson without sacrificing rigor or learning outcomes.
If you want to take this even further, in Friday’s post for paid subscribers, I’ll share three more “syllabus rest moves” with exact language you can copy into your syllabus to set the tone for the semester.
Until next time,
Brielle aka Your Cooperative Colleague
love these ideas. thank you!
As the child of a Smith professor I absolutely remember the mixture of resignation and joy that my stepfather felt when Mountain Day was announced — resignation that his carefully planned syllabus trajectory had been upended 😉 and joy in being able to connect with his students outside the classroom in a context where his “effectiveness” wasn’t under scrutiny. Thank you for building on that structure of care for the whole person. I will carry the metaphor of Mountain Day into my pedagogy as well as my mentoring of rising academics.