#17 Have a Momentous School Year
Have a great start to the school year, no matter who you are!
Steve Steele
8/24/20266 min read
The First Day
There is something about the first day of school that never fully loses its charge.
I have been on both sides of it more times than I can count now in many different roles. As a student, as a teacher, as a coach, as an after-school provider and most recently as a parent watching my own kids walk through the door into a new room. The first day of school is one of the most underrated momentous moments on the calendar. Not because of what is in and of itself, but because of what it represents: a clean page. A fresh start. Nine months of experiences, relationships, and choices that are all yet to be made.
As a leader, that is one of the most powerful things you can ever stand in front of.
The Blank Roster
Every August, I sit down with a roster at some point. New names, some familiar, some not. Players I've coached for three years down to freshmen I haven't met yet. Kids who had great summers, kids who had hard ones, and kids I haven't seen. All of them about to walk into the same program bringing entirely different versions of themselves.
The roster represents a list of possibilities. A list of people who don't yet know what this year is going to ask of them, or what they're going to find out about themselves on the journey. Teachers around the country also receive their rosters and feel the same way as they prepare to teach all the students that fill their classrooms.
I have learned over years of coaching and teaching that what happens in the first few days of a school year matters more than almost anything that comes after. Not because of the content, the scheme, or the syllabus, but because of the tone that is set. The first impression a kid gets of a teacher or a coach travels with them for a long time. It becomes the lens through which they interpret everything that follows. A student who walks into a classroom on day one and feels genuinely seen is far more likely to take a risk, ask a question, and stay invested when the year gets hard. A kid who just feels like a number on a roster in week one will spend the rest of the season looking for the exit.
The first day is a moment. And like every moment, it can be momentously designed or just left to chance.
What Simon Taught Me
Watching my son Simon start a new school year is one of my favorite things. He is addicted to learning in a genuinely wonderful way. He is the kid who reads everything, asks questions about everything, and approaches a new school year the way most people approach a vacation. Pure, uncomplicated excitement.
Gianna is different. She is social and brave, but new situations carry a little more weight for her. She is a great learner as well, but probably a bit more excited about socializing with friends than the learning. Then this year, adding Shay to the school brought even more excitement in seeing a little girl so proud and excited to go to Kindergarten, learn new songs to sing, and make new friends.
Watching each of them navigate that morning (with lots of help from Mom) from the backpacks, the new shoes, the lunchboxes, and the first day picture reminded me of something I think leaders often forget: the people walking through your door on the first day of school are carrying things you cannot see. Some of them are excited. Some of them are terrified. Some of them had a wonderful summer, and some had a very hard one. They are all wearing the same face because that's what you do on the first day: show up and perform normalcy even when normalcy is not what you feel.
A leader's job on day one is not to deliver a speech, run a program, or establish dominance. It is to pay close enough attention to actually see the people in the room. From the Simon-excited ones to the Gianna-nervous ones alike, and to make each of them feel, by the time the first bell rings, that they are in the right place.
For the Teachers Reading This
I want to take a moment here specifically for the teachers, and the coaches who are teachers, and the administrators who were teachers, and anyone who spends their days in a building full of kids.
What you do is hard in ways that are almost impossible to explain to someone who hasn't done it. There's the emotional labor of being fully present for 25 to 150 young people every single day. Then there's reading the room, adjusting on the fly, holding the kid who is struggling while keeping the class moving. It's staying invested in the ones who aren't making it easy to stay invested. It is all genuinely exhausting and the world does not always tell you that it notices.
So let me say it here: it notices. The kids notice, even when they don't show it. The parents notice, even when they don't say it. The coaches and teachers who shaped the people in your building were shaped themselves by someone who showed up one August/September morning and decided to be present. That chain is unbroken. You are a link in the chain.
The first day of school is also a first day for you. You walked in with something new this year too. New kids, maybe a new classroom, maybe a new chapter in your own life running alongside the professional one. You had a summer that was complicated, restorative, or both. You are carrying things nobody in the building can see either.
Take care of yourself the way you're trying to take care of them. On the hard days, remember that you are building moments you won't be able to see the impact of for years, if ever. Some of those moments are happening right now, today, in the most ordinary exchanges imaginable.
A New Page
Here is what I keep coming back to every August: the first day of school is one of the few genuine clean slates life gives us on a predictable schedule.
Last year is over. However the season ended, however the school year went, whatever you built, lost, or regretted, is behind the door. The new year has not been written yet. The roster is blank. The notebook is empty. The kids in your room have no idea what's coming, and really, neither do you.
That is not a source of anxiety. That is an extraordinary gift.
Every person who walks through your door this fall is walking in with hope, even the ones working hard to hide it. The returning senior who has been here before and knows how hard it gets. The freshman who has been nervous about this day since May. The player who had a great camp and can't wait to show what he's learned. The player who had a rough summer and is hoping nobody noticed.
All of them, on some level, are hoping this year is the one. The one where something clicks, where they find their place, where the work pays off in a way they can feel.
Our job is to make sure that hope doesn't walk out the same door it came in.
Pay attention this week. The moments are already in the room.
PARTING THOUGHTS
Think about the teacher or coach from your own education who made the biggest impact on you. What did they do that made you feel seen in those early days? Are you doing that for the people in your room right now?
The first day sets a tone that travels through the entire year. What tone did you set (or what tone do you want to set) and is the way you're showing up in week one consistent with the culture you're trying to build by week twelve?
In every classroom, there is someone carrying a capacity that the system hasn't recognized yet. Who in your program or building this year might be waiting for someone to finally pay enough attention to see what they're actually capable of?
Your kids, your players, your students walked in on the first day carrying things you couldn't see. What would it look like to slow down enough this week to actually ask, and actually listen to the answer?
