What Are You Practicing This Summer?

Here's a question worth sitting with this summer: what are you actually practicing?

Not what you're planning. Not what's on your reading list. What you're doing, repeatedly, in the weeks between June and September — because that's what shows up with you on the first day of school.

Edward makes the case that summer isn't just rest and recovery. It's formation. The educator who walks back through that door in the fall is being built right now, whether you're intentional about it or not. And your students — all of them, from the first day — can feel the difference between the educator who used the summer and the one who just survived it.

This episode is for everyone in the building. Teachers, support staff, front office, custodians, cafeteria workers. If you touch the student experience, this is for you.

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Transcript

Summer Sets The Tone

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Education needs people who are truly present, not just in the building. I'm Never DeShazen, and welcome to Homeroom Attendance. Your seat is safe. Summer is not just a recovery from last year, it is a formation for next year. Beyonce fans, you hear me. I hope someone got that. Let's get information. What you do with these weeks, what you practice, what you feed, what you let go of, what you hold on to. All of it is forming the educator who walks back in that door in the fall. Education needs people who are truly present, not just in the building. I'm Neville DeShazen. And welcome to Homeroom Attendance. Your seat is safe. Summer is not just a recovery from last year. It is a formation for next year. I want to say that again. Summer is not just a recovery from last year. It is a formation for next year. Beyonce fans, you hear me. I hope someone got that. Get in formation. What you do with these weeks, what you practice, what you feed, what you let go of, what you hold on to. All of it is forming the educator who walks back in that door in the fall. Education needs people who are truly present, not just in the building. I'm Edward DeShazer, and welcome to Homeroom Attendance. Your seat is safe. What's going on, Pod? Welcome to Homeroom Attendance. I am your host, Edward DeShazer, and we are going to get started.

Practice Beats Planning

SPEAKER_00 2:00

And today I'm asking, are you present or are you absent? Let's begin. And actually, before we begin, if you haven't, subscribe, like, leave a star review on Spotify or Apple, or if you're watching on YouTube, hit the little thumbs up button down there. That helps me continue to get in front of educators like you. Now let's start. And I want to start this episode uh as we like kind of move through summer. I want to ask and start with a question that may sound simple, but it is not. What are you practicing this summer? Excuse me, not what are you planning? Not what are you reading? Not what professional development conferences are you going through. Shout out to those who are here because they heard me at a conference uh recent recently, excuse me. But what are you actually practicing? Because whatever that answer is, that is what's coming with you into your school building in September. We spend so much time in education talking about what we teach, the content, the standards, the curriculum, the testing, the skills. But the research on how kids actually learn tells us that most of us already know in our gut. And I know if you're listening to this, you're part of the tribe. I know that you understand this. Kids absorb far more from watching the adults around them than they ever will from the worksheets that you put in front of them in a classroom. They watch how you handle frustration, they watch how you respond when something doesn't go the way you plan. They watch whether you are genuinely curious about the world or if you are just performing as an educator. They watch whether you treat yourself with any kind of care. Or they watch if you run yourself into the ground as an educator and call yourself dedicated. They're watching every single bit of it all the time, even when you think they're not. You don't just teach your subject, you teach yourself

Students Learn From Adult Habits

SPEAKER_00 3:55

every single day. So let's talk about today what this actually means for your summer. Because I've had this conversation with enough teachers, counselors, support staff, administrators, superintendents to know that most people in education treat summer one of two ways. The first group treats it like it's the finish line. They drug themselves across, they survived, and now they are going to do as little as humanly possible until someone makes them do something again. In which listen, I have complete grace for that for the first weeks of summer. We cover that in a previous episode. That rest is not optional, it is part of the work. And I encourage you all to recharge and just like really sit with yourself after the year ends. But the finish line mentality, when it runs the whole summer, has a cost. And that cost shows up in September when the habits you needed aren't there because you never built them, or worse, when the habits you did form over 10 weeks of complete disengagement are the ones that walk into the building with you and you just walk back in disengaged. The second group treats summer like uh like a runway. They are not working themselves to death, but they are moving in a direction, they are building something, learning something, practicing something that makes them a fuller version of themselves. And when September ends up hitting, they don't just drag themselves back, they are arriving. And I'm not here to pass judgment, I'm not here to tell you which group you are in, because you know the answer to that. You're probably listening, like, yep, that's me. But what I am gonna tell you is that your students and your coworkers can feel the difference, they feel it in the first week. People, especially kids, are extraordinarily good at reading a room. In your classroom is a room, your hallways are the room, your main office is the room, and the person standing at the front of that is broadcasting something from day one, whether you mean to or not, the energy you bring in September is something you build in July. It doesn't just appear because your school calendar changed. And I want to make this example concrete because I don't always I don't like to just like sit in the abstract. I want you to really understand. If you want to walk into your building in September as someone who reads the room well, practice reading rooms this summer. Go to a coffee shop that you wouldn't normally go to where you don't know anyone, and just sit. Sit in there, pay attention to the dynamics, what type of energy, pay attention to who's leading the room, pay attention to who's not, how are people responding to each other? This skill doesn't just live in a classroom, it lives inside of you, and I am encouraging you to practice it. If you want to walk uh back into your school with patience, does anyone out here, by a show of hands, want to walk back into their school with patience? I know you do. Everyone does. So I feel like that's a skill that every single person wants to embrace. Practice this summer in traffic, practice it. With family, practice it. In that slow checkout line at the grocery store where the person in front of you has 19 items and you know it's a 12-item checkout. Yes, I count those items, and then they get to the end and they pull out a checkbook. Yes, people still pay with checkbooks, but that's a real practice of your test. Or a real practice or a real practice of your patience. Classroom ultimately is the test that now you can pass with patience. If you want to walk into September curious, feed that curiosity this summer, pick up a book about something that has nothing to do with your content area.

Finish Line Versus Runway Summer

SPEAKER_00 8:02

Everything doesn't have to be professional development. Pick up a book about photography or astronomy or the history of whatever city you're living in. Watch a documentary about something that you know absolutely nothing about. Let yourself be the same lifelong learner that we are encouraging our students to be because the best thing that we can model for our students is what it actually looks like to be genuinely interested in the world that we live in. And you cannot model what you don't practice. You cannot model what you don't practice. And summer is the longest practice window that you get all year. Now I want to speak to the support staff for a second because you guys are so important. The paraprofessionals, the office staff, uh the custodians, the cafeteria workers, uh, the janitors, whatever it is, this podcast is for everyone that is in the building, not just the people with the classroom titles. You are not on the sideline of the student experience. You are in it often more than you realize. The way the front office staff greets a parent on the first day of school sets a tone for whether that parent is going to trust the building that their kids are in. The way a custodian acknowledges a student and a kid in the hallway by name with a smile, like that kid matters, is gonna be the difference between a child feeling seen or feeling invisible. The way that cafeteria worker knows that the kid doesn't like broccoli or whatever it is, and quietly shifts it off to the side instead of making it a big deal for that student. That is a relationship, that is culture, and those things count. And everything I've said about habits applies to you too. What you are practicing this summer is what you are bringing to those interactions in September. If you spend the summer disconnected, disengaged, running on fumes, that is going to show up in how you greet the first kid. That is going to show up in how you greet that first staff member that walks through the door. And that kid doesn't know it's because you had a hard summer. They just know how it felt to walk in. You matter to this. Your job is critical more than any job description will ever say. There is a version of the summer conversation education that goes like this, and I've been saying it myself: rest, recharge, and get ready to do it again. And I don't think that's a wrong conversation to have, but I'm starting to think that it undersells what this time actually is. Summer is not just a recovery from last year, it is a formation for next year. I want to say that again. Summer is not just a recovery from last year. It is a formation for next year. Beyonce fans, you hear me. I hope someone got that. Get in formation. What you do with these weeks, what you practice, what you feed, what you let go of, what you hold on to, all of it is forming the educator who walks back in that door in the fall. And here is the thing about formation: it is always happening whether you like it or not. You don't get to opt out about formation. The only question is whether you are intentional about it or whether you're just letting it happen to you. Your students, your staff, they need the version of you that chose this work, that practiced this, that spent some portion of the summer becoming someone who had something real to bring back. They need the full version, and that full version doesn't show up by accident. What you do with your summer is an act of professional responsibility. Not to your district, but to the kids who are going to walk into your room and need you to be ready. To the staff that are gonna walk through that front door and need you to be ready to serve and lead. So I'm gonna leave you with this. I want you to and I challenge you to think about the educator you want to be on that first day of school. Not the version that survived 25-26, not the version that skated, that just kind of coasted through the summer, but the one who used it. What does that version look like?

Practicing Room Reading And Patience

SPEAKER_00 12:28

What did they practice? What did they feed? What did you protect? What did you let go of? What did you nurture? Now go be that person starting today. If this episode hit home for you, as I always ask, just you know, leave a review on whatever podcast you're listening to. If you're watching on YouTube, go check out some of the other videos. They'll probably pop up down here somewhere. Uh subscribe, leave a review. Always an honor to do this work. Shout out to those who this is one of the first episodes they've heard. Uh because we connected in Las Vegas at Innovative School Summit, had the opportunity to pour into hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of school leaders, uh, teachers, educators, counselors, all kinds of people. Absolutely love this work, and I am so honored uh for all the conversations that I had with different people. But you have been present for homeroom attendance. Class is dismissed.