Jennifer Connell, Ed. D.

On to the Next Step

The speech was about the next four years.

It was thoughtful. Hopeful. Brilliant, really—the kind of speech you hope every eighth grader hears before beginning high school.

But long after the applause ended, it wasn’t the speech that stayed with me.

It was the cap.

Covered in flowers and pearls, with a butterfly resting among shades of pink, four words stretched across the top in gold:

On to the Next Step.

Not the next four years.

Not the next ten.

Just the next step.

The Night Was Perfect

Blue skies fading into dusk. Students on the turf. Parents in the bleachers. The kind of evening that feels like it was designed just for this moment.

And their theme said it all: Blue skies and golden opportunities.

But here’s what I kept thinking as I watched:

Life doesn’t always give us a perfect night.

Sometimes the skies aren’t blue. Sometimes the timing is off. Sometimes the opportunity doesn’t look the way we imagined it would.

And yet, we still have to move.

Not because conditions are perfect.

But because the next step doesn’t wait for perfect conditions.

Progress, not perfection.

The Whole Path Figured Out

Because somewhere along the way, we start believing that successful people have the whole path figured out. Leaders. Parents. Teachers. Students. We imagine everyone else possesses a roadmap we somehow missed.

Yet life has a way of reminding us otherwise.

No one knows exactly what the next four years will hold.

Not the graduates.

Not their parents.

Not their teachers.

Not even those of us who have already lived through many seasons of becoming.

The truth is, growth has never required certainty.

It has only ever required the willingness to take the next step.

The People Who Grow

I’ve been in education for over two decades. I’ve watched students walk across stages, unsure of what came next. I’ve sat with teachers in the middle of hard years, wondering if they were doing enough. I’ve led through uncertainty myself, not always knowing the right answer, but knowing I had to keep moving forward anyway.

What I’ve learned is this: the people who grow aren’t always the ones with the clearest vision.

They’re the ones who refuse to be paralyzed by the unknown.

They take the next step. Then the one after that. Then the one after that.

And somewhere in the accumulation of those steps, a path appears.

Not because it was planned.

Because it was walked.

A Philosophy for Everyone

That cap wasn’t just a decoration.

It was a philosophy.

One that didn’t belong only to the student wearing it—it belonged to everyone in those bleachers. To the parents watching their children stand on the turf below. To the teachers watching quietly from the side. To the administrators holding clipboards and fighting back tears.

To anyone who has ever stood at the edge of something new and felt the weight of not knowing what comes next.

You don’t need the whole map.

You just need the next step.

The path reveals itself.

The Punch to the Face

It is not the adversity that defines us. It is what we do after.

Today was one of those days that remind you why you keep showing up.

It started with a privilege: a seat in a room full of women leading at the highest levels, being honest about what leadership actually costs and what it truly requires.

The keynote addressed the future of AI and the importance of learning and growing alongside the technology. That insight was a powerful start to the day.

Then a panel discussed the art of the calculated reset—pauses that arrived in their forties, some welcomed, some forced, and what they found on the other side. It was gorgeous and inspiring in the way that only real truth can be.

And the panel that resonated with me most throughout the day opened with a reference to Mike Tyson.

Not the championship.

Not the highlight reel.

The punch to the face.

Because here is the thing about a punch to the face: it is not the defining moment. What happens after is.

The moment after the knockdown.

The moment after the loss.

The moment after life arrives without asking permission.

That space—the one between the hit and getting back up—is where we are actually built.

I sat in that room nodding because I have lived in that space.

The Season After the Punch

Later that same day, I watched my son's lacrosse season end in a playoff game that came down to the final minutes.

My quiet, stoic boy—the one who rarely raises his voice—was on that field shouting, "Now is our time. It's now or never."

He was right.

It was, in fact, not their time.

But over dinner, something more important happened.

He reflected on the season, on the adversity the team had faced and overcome, on the moments that stretched them, and on what he expected the coach to say at the banquet next week.

He didn't use the words punch to the face.

But he might as well have.

The adversity was the season.

The resilience was the story.

And I sat across from him thinking:

"That is leadership. That is life. That is every season worth having."

What Each Decade Teaches You

In my twenties, I'm not sure I would have had the words for any of this.

Resilience was something I experienced without fully understanding it.

I was living it before I could name it.

In my thirties, I was living it in ways I had never anticipated.

I was navigating my daughter's rare disease while building an administrative career—facing an unknown chapter that arrived without warning and demanded everything of me.

There was no roadmap.

There was only the choice, made over and over again, to keep going.

To find courage in the middle of the mess.

To build something meaningful even while something else felt terribly uncertain.

And now, in this next decade, I am learning to listen differently.

To reflect more intentionally.

To choose progress over perfection—not as a consolation prize, but as the actual standard.

Because the punches come.

They always come.

For our teams.

For our families.

For our organizations.

For ourselves.

It is not the punch that writes our story.

It is our response.

The 1% That Adds Up

Strength and resilience are not dramatic.

They are not a single moment of triumph or a highlight reel worth sharing.

They are the quiet, consistent choice to get back up—1% better each time.

The season defined by adversity.

The woman on the panel who paused at forty and found herself on the other side.

The boy on the lacrosse field who learned more from a loss than any win could have taught him.

Today was a full-circle kind of day.

And full-circle days are worth writing down.

Because growth is not an event.

It is the standard.

The older I get, the less interested I am in avoiding adversity and the more interested I am in understanding what it teaches us.

The punches come for all of us.

What we build afterward becomes the story.

Every June, schools hang rainbows in windows and post declarations of support on social media. And while visibility matters, I've been thinking a lot lately about the gap between what we display and what we do.

Belonging isn't a bulletin board. It's a culture. And building it is one of the most important, and most underestimated, acts of leadership in education today.

Tolerance. Acceptance. Belonging. They Are Not the Same.

We use these words interchangeably, but they represent very different leadership commitments.

Tolerance says: You can be here. Acceptance says: I see you. Belonging says: This place is better because you're here.

The distinction matters, especially in schools, where the message students and staff receive isn't just in our words. It's in our structures, our schedules, our staffing decisions, our response when someone is excluded, and our silence when they aren't.

Real belonging requires leaders to move beyond passive affirmation into active design. It asks us: Have we actually built a place where everyone can thrive?

What Personal Experience Taught Me About Systems

I came to this work both professionally and personally. Our family founded a nonprofit rooted in a cause deeply meaningful to us, born from the experience of navigating systems that weren't built with our person in mind. Systems where the doors were technically open, but the environment inside said something different.

That experience fundamentally shaped how I lead.

When you've sat on the other side of a table — when you've felt the difference between being accommodated and being welcomed, you stop tolerating performative inclusion. You start building something different.

The Least Restrictive Environment Is a Leadership Principle

In special education, we use the term "least restrictive environment"—the idea that every student deserves to learn in a setting that removes the most barriers while supporting their fullest participation. It is both a legal standard and a moral one.

I believe it's also a leadership framework that every educator can apply.

What would it look like if we asked, for every student, every staff member, every family:

What barriers exist here that we built — and can therefore remove? What conditions would allow this person to contribute fully? Are we designing for the people already in the room, or for the people we assumed would be?

These aren't Pride month questions. They're everyday leadership questions. But Pride month is a useful mirror: a moment to ask honestly whether our cultures reflect our stated values.

Belonging Requires Courage, Not Just Compassion

Here's where I want to speak directly to leaders at every level, teachers leading classrooms, coaches leading teams, principals leading buildings, directors and superintendents leading systems.

Compassion is necessary. But it is not sufficient.

Building a culture of belonging requires courage. The courage to name what isn't working. To have the hard conversation with the colleague whose language is exclusionary. To look at your data — discipline referrals, course enrollment, staff retention, family engagement — and ask what it's actually telling you about who feels like they belong.

It requires the courage to say, publicly and consistently: Every person in this system deserves to feel that this place was made for them.

That isn't a political statement. It's a professional one. It's what we signed up for when we chose this work.

What Leaders Can Do — Starting Now

Belonging doesn't require a budget line or a task force (though both can help). It starts with intentional, consistent practice:

Listen before you launch. Before creating new initiatives, ask the people most often excluded what they actually need. Surveys, focus groups, informal conversations — the data is there if you create space for it.

Audit your environment. Walk your building, your meeting structures, and your communication practices with fresh eyes. What does this space say about who belongs here?

Name it when you see it. When belonging breaks down — when a student is isolated, when a staff member is marginalized, when a family feels unwelcome — address it directly. Silence is a message.

Model it yourself. Leaders set the cultural thermostat. When you share your own story, acknowledge your blind spots, and demonstrate genuine curiosity about others' experiences, you give everyone else permission to do the same.

Make it structural. Individual acts of inclusion matter. But systems create culture. Look at your hiring practices, your curriculum, and your family engagement model. Where are the gaps?

The Prescription

This Pride month, I want to offer every educator a simple but demanding charge:

Don't just celebrate belonging. Build it.

Not because it's June. Not because it's policy. But because every student who walks into your building — every staff member who shows up to serve them — deserves to feel that this place was made with them in mind.

That is the work. That has always been the work.

And it is never finished.