The quiet cost of January optimism.

One of the things I used to love most about the start of a new school year was the idea of starting with a fresh slate. Back when I was teaching, Term 4 usually had me hobbling to the finish line, so when Term 1 of the new year rolled around, it felt like a reset, an opportunity to reimagine, to do a few things differently, and to learn from the previous year.

“When we gather after a long break, there is an unmistakable feeling of hope and possibility in the room. Maybe this is the year things will stop feeling hard and disconnected. ”

I may be exposing myself here, but it was also my chance to breathe in that fresh notebook smell and use all my shiny new pens. I would write my dates in with a flourish and be convinced that this year would be different. Maybe I would even be different.

(Yes, I know, I know.)

But it’s kind of true, isn’t it? When we gather after a long break, there is an unmistakable feeling of hope and possibility in the room. We’re well rested, we’ve gotten some sun, we’ve eaten well. Maybe this is the year things will stop feeling hard and disconnected, we think. Maybe this is the year that change and innovation initiatives actually bring about improvement and ease.

That hope comes from such a real and intentional place. We don’t just hope that things will work better for ourselves; we also want our young people to recognise that there is a clear and tangible point to school attendance. If the work feels hard and confusing to us, it makes sense that our young people are asking, “What’s the point of doing this?” on repeat.

“I would ride the new year high for as long as I could and then, inevitably, the feeling would wear off. I could sense the exact moment it was happening. ”

As a school leader, I was no longer sitting with the rest of the crowd, notebook open, taking it all in. This time, I was standing on the other side of the room during the back-to-school professional learning days. I felt the pressure of expectation, alongside the hope and openness of the staff I was leading. I felt the weight of setting so much into motion in such a limited time, and the responsibility to sustain momentum and inspire others. All the while, I could see the complex expectation placed on teachers to catch every message, connect the dots, and translate it all into their classroom practice.

“At times, I felt like the triage nurse in an emergency room and not the strategic, innovative leader I had worked and trained so hard to be. ”

I would ride the new year high for as long as I could and then, inevitably, the feeling would wear off. I could sense the exact moment it was happening. Frustrations from the previous year would rise up; suddenly I was angry and annoyed about all of the same things I had been in the past. The work felt like we were pushing a boulder uphill. I was constantly putting out fires, wondering why people didn’t get it, wondering why it was so hard when it seemed so clear to me. Every corrective move felt like it just created more motion, and the pace of the treadmill I was on seemed to be getting faster and faster. At times, I felt like the triage nurse in an emergency room and not the strategic, innovative leader I had worked and trained so hard to be.

All the while, I held on, waiting for January to get here around so I could reset and refresh, only for things to unfold in the same way again. “This is just school life. It’s just chaos. You’ll get used to it,” a senior school leader advised me. But I was tired, and by this point, I too was wondering what the point of it all was.

“Over time, that cycle had a quiet cost to my energy and optimism. There was a fatigue to working hard and caring deeply and never feeling like the work stabalised. ”

The thing is, what I’m describing wasn’t a single moment of my career or even a particularly bad school year. This was a place I found myself in again and again over the years. Over time, that cycle had a quiet cost to my energy and optimism. There was an indescribable fatigue that came from working hard and caring deeply, but never feeling like I could stabilise things and achieve forward motion. To this day, I carry the memory of this in my brain and body: it’s the feeling of a box always being open or a light switch permanently on. The constant moving, changing, adapting never felt like flow, and as a result, I never felt like I could hand it over or put it down so that it, and I, could finally rest - until, of course, the next January rolled around again.