The summer you can't actually take · Preschool & Pre-K Teacher Hub

The summer you can't actually take

It's that time of year again. The end of the year is supposed to feel like an exhale after 10 months of pouring everything into your classroom and students. Instead it's the season where everything gets uncertain. You might get shuffled to a new room, a new grade, a whole new building. You might lose your position altogether. And it doesn't seem to matter that you've given that district twenty years. Apparently that carries no weight against a budget line.

I've been hearing from so many of you lately. And it's breaking my heart.💔

Everyone keeps telling you to rest this summer. Fill your cup. You earned it. And you want to. But every time you try to settle, something underneath won't let you. Where you'll be placed. Whether your room is still yours. Nothing has been decided, but nothing has been ruled out either. So you finally sit down in a quiet house and still can't exhale.

And the truth underneath it? You are not bad at rest, it's just that you're not feeling safe enough to rest.

Rest needs safety. Your body won't power all the way down while it's still scanning for a threat it can't see yet. Being told to relax while your whole next year is up in the air is like being told to nap in a house where the smoke alarm might go off any second. The stress didn't leave when school let out. It just got a deadline of "we'll let you know in July."

So if summer doesn't feel like the reset everyone promised, you are not doing it wrong. You're carrying something real, and your body knows it, even when no one around you is naming it.

You don't have to pretend it's fine here. That's what this space and community is for. 🫶🏼

Are you sitting in that limbo right now? Or have you lived through a summer like this and made it to the other side? Drop it below. Sometimes the first relief is just knowing you're not the only one holding it.

Always in your corner,

Cathy

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The summer you can't actually take