Leading Without the Reset
There is a particular moment that happens every June in schools. You can feel it before you can name it: a collective exhale. Teachers close their classrooms. Students spill out into summer. The building gets quiet in a way it doesn’t at any other time of year.
I have always appreciated that moment, even as I have watched it from a different vantage point.
For directors and central office leaders, the exhale doesn’t quite come the same way. The calendar keeps moving. Summer programs begin. Hiring continues. Professional development for the new year takes shape. By the time September arrives and everyone returns with fresh energy, we have already been living in the new year for months.
This is not a complaint. It is simply the role's shape.
What Doesn’t Get Named
What I think is worth naming, especially during the season of ABC countdowns and end-of-year celebrations, is what it means to lead continuously without a built-in recovery period.
Everyone in a school community carries the weight of the year. Teachers pour themselves into students. Support staff holds countless needs at once. School leaders navigate everything from policy to personnel to unexpected crises on Tuesday afternoons. There is real exhaustion at the end of a school year, and for most people, summer provides a natural place to set that weight down for a moment.
For those of us in year-round roles, we carry it forward. We transition directly from closing one year to building the next, often while supporting the summer programs and staff that don’t stop just because the school calendar does.
What Sustained Leadership Actually Requires
I’ve been thinking about this more intentionally lately. Not because the workload is new, it has always been this way, but because the conversation about sustainability in leadership is growing, and I think it is an important one.
Leading without a reset doesn’t mean leading without intention. It means being more deliberate about finding the smaller moments of recovery that the calendar doesn’t hand you automatically. It means protecting certain boundaries even when the work doesn’t stop. It means finding meaning in each phase of the cycle, because, when understood well, the cycle is actually full of purpose.
Hiring in July shapes a school’s culture for years. Summer programming serves students who need the most continuity. The planning done quietly in August is what makes September feel possible.
What I Hope People Take Away
I’m not writing this for sympathy. I am writing it because I think there is value in making visible the work that happens behind the scenes, especially during the season when everyone else is counting down.
If you are a teacher, a parent, or a community member, know that your administrators are working this summer. Not in the same way, perhaps, but genuinely and consistently, building the year you are about to walk into.
And if you are a fellow year-round leader reading this and nodding, you are not alone in the cycle. The reset may not come the way it does for others. But the work is meaningful, and so is the decision to keep showing up for it.
