When New School Year Excitement Turns to Stress, Nature Can Guide Us Forward
What can an octopus teach us about navigating the newness that comes with the start of a school year? What can a honeybee teach us about avoiding an unsustainable workload? More than you think!
We are writing to you as two experienced educational leaders, colleagues, and friends who have spent a lot of time together talking through difficulties we’ve faced in our profession. Through those discussions, we found a lot of joy and comfort when we incorporated lessons found in nature into our solutions for those difficulties. It may sound a little unusual, but working in education is quite an adventure. Sometimes, a little creativity was all it took to help us move forward, and we want to share a couple of those lessons with you.
Going back to school can be deceptively consistent:
Hold a meet-the-teacher event.
Establish routines and procedures.
Teach the first unit of content.
Grade the first assignments.
It almost feels like laundry, doesn’t it? Wash, fold, repeat. Then the change starts sneaking in. Lesson plans you’ve had for years leave your students bored or confused. Your approach to leadership suddenly feels ineffective. New colleagues turn once productive planning periods into arguments and awkward silence.
If you have found yourself in one of those situations or similar, it is important to pause and remember that there is nothing wrong with you. Your environment has changed! This is where we can look to the octopus for some advice. Many species of octopus can camouflage so accurately that they can hardly be spotted among colorful coral, dense rock, or just lying on the sand. They can move from one texture and color to another and blend right in.
Think of your educator toolbox that you have built through school, training, and experience as your camouflage. When your environment changes, you can change with it. A teacher may incorporate more technology into the classroom this year. A principal may adjust their leadership approach to include more stakeholder buy-in. This does not mean these individuals are losing something of themselves because their philosophy or approach shifts. Remember, an octopus is still an octopus even when its camouflage must change.
Starting a new school year can also seem full of frenetic energy and excitement over all that must be done to be ready for Day 1 with the students, as well as all that follows throughout the entire school year. You may feel like a workaholic trying to get it all done, just like the honeybee or the ant. Did you know that honeybees work six ten-hour days to produce 2.5 mL of honey, and the queen bee lays more than 1,000 eggs a day? That is a serious amount of work. You can probably relate to working six ten-hour days at this point in the school year. Many teachers and leaders carry the burden of working beyond the school day and on weekends to make sure they meet the needs of others who depend on them.
The benefit of embodying the work ethic of an ant or honeybee is that you will feel ready to meet the students, parents, and teachers on that first day of school. The downside is that if you continue to work long days and weekends for too long, then you can weaken your immune system as well as your usually cheerful spirit. At some point, it is important to stop running around like an ant doing everything for everyone, and look closer at the honeybee, which delegates and collaborates. This is the beehive effect. Consider looking for collaborators to share the load with you. People who share your goals and ideals. They might be children at school, or your own children at home. They might be high-performing colleagues who are happy to chip in if you let them know what you need. Instead of being exhausting and frustrating, the work overload can be joyful and fun when working with others.
If you found yourself relating to the octopus or honeybee, we would love to tell you what we’ve learned from other animals like wolves, elephants, capybaras, and even the peaceful manatee. Our book, Be the Manatee: Affirming Advice for Your Leadership Journey offers advice on a tough day, gives you space to reflect, and will hopefully make you smile. You can find paperback or digital copies of our book on Amazon, or if you prefer, you can download our audiobook through Audible or Apple Books. We hope you have an amazing school year!
Written by:
Sarah Lukas, Ed.D. Dean of Florida Programs
Carla Sparks, Ed.D. Associate Professor of Practice, Program Director Educational Leadership
