Some Things Don't Get to Come to September With You

This is Week 3 of Steady for Summer — a four-week series for school leaders who are ready to rest, reflect, and reset with intention.

I want to talk about something that doesn't come up enough in school leadership conversations.

Not the habits that need improving. Not the goals that need setting. Not the action plans or the professional growth targets or the competency frameworks.

I want to talk about the things we carry.

Not the good things — the strengths, the lessons, the relationships that grew us. Those are worth carrying. I wrote about those last week.

I want to talk about the other things. The ones that have been riding along so quietly, for so long, that we have stopped noticing they are there. The beliefs that drive us past our limits. The patterns that protect us from something we are afraid of. The version of leadership we perform when we are too depleted to lead from who we actually are.

Those things don't get to come to September.

Not because they made you weak. They didn't. In many cases, they made you effective. They got you through years of hard seasons and impossible asks and moments when the only option was to hold it together and keep moving.

But effectiveness is not the same as health. And the cost of carrying things that no longer serve you shows up — in your nervous system, in your relationships, in the culture of your building — whether you name it or not.

Summer is the season to name it.

The thing about patterns.

Here is what I have learned after 34 years in school buildings and years of coaching the leaders inside them: the patterns that are hardest to release are almost never the ones we are ashamed of.

They are the ones we are proud of.

The leader who is always available — who answers emails at 10pm and shows up on weekends and never lets a staff member's call go to voicemail — is proud of that availability. It feels like devotion. It feels like the thing that separates a good leader from a great one.

It is also a pattern that slowly erodes the nervous system, models unsustainable behavior for every adult in the building, and quietly communicates to staff that their own boundaries are negotiable.

The leader who absorbs everyone else's anxiety so the building feels calmer — who walks into a charged room and turns down the temperature through sheer force of composed presence — is proud of that capacity. It feels like steadiness. It feels like strength.

It is also a pattern that, over years, produces a particular kind of internal exhaustion that is very hard to name and even harder to recover from. Because you have been holding everyone else's feelings for so long that you have lost track of where theirs end and yours begin.

The leader who never asks for help — who figures it out alone, who stays late instead of delegating, who believes at some level that the ask itself is an admission of inadequacy — is proud of their self-sufficiency. It feels like competence. It feels like not being a burden.

It is also a pattern that keeps you isolated at the exact moments you most need connection. And it models for your staff that needing support is something to hide.

These are not character flaws. They are adaptations. They developed in real circumstances, in response to real pressures, and they served a purpose. But purpose and cost exist simultaneously. And summer is the time to ask honestly: what is this costing me? What is it costing my building?

The Boundary Culture domain.

The fifth domain of the Heartbeat Framework is Boundary Culture — and it is the one that generates the most discomfort when I introduce it to school leaders. Because the word boundary, in school leadership culture, carries baggage.

Boundaries feel selfish. They feel like caring less. They feel like the thing that less committed leaders hide behind.

Here is what I actually mean when I talk about Boundary Culture in a school:

A boundary is a decision about what you will sustain. It is not a wall. It is not a refusal to care. It is an honest assessment of what you can offer at full quality — and a commitment to not offering more than that, because what exceeds your capacity doesn't come from your best self. It comes from your depleted one.

When a leader has no boundaries around their time, their energy, or their emotional availability, they do not give more. They give worse — from a place of resentment or exhaustion or the particular flatness that comes from never having enough left for yourself.

And their staff mirrors that. Not because they are told to, but because that is how culture works. The leader sets the temperature. When the leader models boundarylessness, the building learns that boundaries are not safe here. And everyone suffers for it — including the students.

Boundary Culture is not about doing less. It is about doing what you do from a place that can actually sustain it.

What leaving something behind actually looks like.

I want to be honest: this is not a one-summer project. Patterns that have been in place for years do not dissolve because you named them in June.

But naming them in June is where it starts.

So here is what I am going to ask you to do. Not a workbook exercise. Not a lengthy process. Just this:

Pick one thing. One pattern, one belief, one habit that you are committing to leave behind this summer. Not because it was wrong to have it. Because you have decided it does not get to come to September.

Write it down. Be specific. Not "I need better boundaries" — that is too vague to act on. Instead: I am leaving behind the habit of answering emails after 8pm. Or: I am leaving behind the belief that asking for help means I am not enough. Or: I am leaving behind the pattern of absorbing my staff's anxiety instead of helping them process it.

One thing. Named specifically. Written down somewhere you will find it in August.

That is the work.

A word about courage.

I want to close with something that I mean very sincerely.

What I am asking you to do in this post is harder than it looks. Because the things worth leaving behind are almost always the things we have used to define ourselves. And releasing them — even partially, even imperfectly — requires a kind of courage that does not get celebrated in school leadership culture.

Nobody is going to give you an award for deciding not to answer emails after 8pm. Nobody is going to recognize you at a staff meeting for choosing to ask for help.

But the version of you that walks back into that building in September — a little lighter, a little more boundaried, a little more honest about what you can sustain — that version of you will lead differently. Your staff will feel it. Your students will feel it.

And somewhere in the building, someone who needed permission to do the same thing will give it to themselves because they watched you do it first.

That is the work of a Heartbeat Educator. It starts with you.

Pulse Check Reflection:

What is one pattern, belief, or habit you are committing to leave behind this summer? Name it specifically — and write it somewhere you will find it in August.