Chill Out on that Big Fall Energy
The start of school is exciting. New supplies. Clean hallways. Crisply pressed clothing for the first day of school. Fresh coats of paint. Buildings abuzz with noise after summertime silence. Optimism. And eventually, the comedown when everything is up and running. Lately I’ve been thinking of this time of year as Big Fall Energy.
Big Fall Energy
Big Fall Energy is like watching first graders run, play, jump, and tumble at recess. Their pace is fast and fierce. They put it all out there. When they are called back to class, each child is huffing and puffing, faces flush from the exertion of energy. It’s a sweet sight to see. Sweet, that is, until the post-lunch comedown. Those little ones laid it all out on the playground, leaving nothing for the rest of the day.
We adults can be like that, too. But instead of jumps and tumbles on the playground, we take all that energy and put it into August and September: how we approach our plans, our meetings, the schedule of school. All our biggest ambitions get spent in the first month or two just as we’re settling in—opening staff meetings, first-week launch, Back to School Night, family conferences, big dreams, big goals, meetings on top of meetings, meetings after meetings. By mid-October, we’re exhausted with little room to recover.
We need to chill out on this Big Fall Energy, shift it down a gear or two if we want to make it to October, much less the rest of the school year.
In fact, we to rethink fall altogether, perhaps even the school year—rethink the expending of energy in such grandiose ways.
The Comedown
Before fully throwing down the gauntlet and challenging you to rethink everything you know about the fall in schools, let’s explore why we need to rethink how we spend our energy by exploring a popular graphic (which is so dated that the images are represented in clip art).
The original intent of this graphic was to alert first-year teachers to how they might feel as they enter the teaching profession. It’s meant to be helpful, to protect new educators from the crushing impact of a tough first six months. While this graphic recounts first-year teachers’ attitudes toward teaching, we might as well be talking about the education profession as a whole. Plenty of experienced teachers, leaders, and education officials set their expectations to this same type of sequence.
Let’s look at how quickly we go from Anticipation (that Big Fall Energy) right on down the slope to Survival and then to the rock bottom of Disillusionment. It’s after that point that educators go on winter break. Spent. Depleted. Even worse: Disillusioned. So basically, we’re in existential angst before we get to take two weeks to recharge. And it’s barely halfway through the school year.
Necessary Reimagination
I can say with confidence that we—all of us in positions of power and influence across classrooms, school sites, districts, and organizations—control the pace at which the work gets done; make determinations about whose humanity we center; and influence those we lead. We have the power to do things differently. We can reimagine school years with a more sustainable pace. We can slow down to center human dignity, prioritize deeper learning, make equity a foundation rather than a disposable issue. We’ve done it before. And we can do it again.
I want to propose a radical (perhaps necessary) shift to the phases of a first-year teacher cycle, one that looks a little more like this:
I can imagine the pushback to a graphic like this one. How is it even possible to ease into the school year when there is so much to do?! What do I mean by “slow it all down”? Perhaps the very nature of this graphic is an affront to the way we’ve always done it. But the way we’ve always done it isn’t working, hasn’t worked, and continues to burn everyone out before the first day of school begins, which means we don’t have the time—or the energy—to center human dignity and school transformation. The statistics on educator turnover have only become more dismal in the last vestiges of the pandemic. We have 10% fewer teachers across the nation than we did two years ago, and folks are still leaving. That is one of many signs that things need to change.
So here comes the gauntlet: If we’re going to support those who stay in the profession for the long-term, we need to dare ourselves to be different. We need to recognize there will be moments that require more intention, so it’s important to consider how we’ll recover. Peaks and recoveries over time are more sustainable than one big push (or several big pushes for that matter).
How We Make Change—One Possible Approach
And now for the how part—and where the fun begins. What might a staff meeting look like if it were to be approached “Design Sprint” style? What if we turned the typical disillusionment/burnout trope on its head by making it our collective problem to solve?
Here’s one possible meeting plan to make some shifts in favor of a more sustainable future:
Share the dilemma: At the first staff meeting or two, share the truths about education: the unsustainable cycle, the too-muchness of it all, those we continue to harm, the barriers to entry for those on the margins.
Pose the challenge: Let’s rethink the cycle of our school year: What might our school year look like if we were to make teaching and learning more sustainable and equitable for all those involved? What will we do differently?
Get imaginative: Imagine it’s the end of next school year, and we’ve made changes that help us preserve and expend our energy more sustainably. Imagine you’re doing a turn and talk with a colleague at the final meeting of the year, and you share responses to the following questions: What happened that you’re excited to talk about? How are you feeling?
Assess current conditions: What do we need to think about now, today, that sets change in motion? What’s happening right now that’s working for all involved? What’s not working? What do we want to start, stop, continue?
Brainstorm possibilities: Get in mixed-role teams and brainstorm possibilities. Identify what’s within one’s spheres of influence and highlight what might feel doable as a first step.
Identify barriers: Consider what might get in the way and how you’ll address those barriers.
Commit to change: As a leadership team, task force, committee, or whatever other configuration works for your site/organization, gather data from staff meetings to review and plan next steps. Set dates on the calendar to meet and plan. Commit to those dates, and by the end of each meeting, establish action items to move the work forward.
Stay in communication with the community: Share reports from planning meetings about changes for the year ahead. Determine decision-making structures and processes that work for your site.
These ideas are just for starters, and there are multiple paths we can take to make change: empathy interviews, design thinking processes, SWOT analyses, co-creative imagination sessions, whatever else moves us from “I wish things were different” to making real change.
