Somewhere around the last week of July, something strange begins happening to teachers.

The pool floats are still inflated.

The tomatoes in the garden are finally doing their thing.

You still have sunscreen in your beach bag.

And yet…

Your brain has quietly wandered back into the school building.

It’s arranging desks and reading class lists.

It’s wondering how your teaching assignment has changed.

It’s mentally attending professional development.

It’s pairing that student with that parent.

It’s trying to remember if your bulletin board paper is still up.

And just like that, you’re exhausted…before you’ve even located your classroom keys.

Welcome to what I affectionately call pre-worrying.

Your Brain Thinks It’s Being Helpful

If you’re already feeling the weight of the coming school year, let me reassure you of something.

Your brain isn’t broken.

It’s doing exactly what human brains have done for thousands of years.

Brains love certainty.

When certainty isn’t available, they start writing stories.

“What if my schedule is terrible?”

“What if my administrator isn’t supportive?”

“What if this group of students is harder than last year’s?”

“What if they pile three new initiatives on us?”

“What if I never catch up?”

Somewhere deep inside us lives the mistaken belief that if we think about every possible problem long enough…

…we’ll somehow keep it from happening or solve it ahead of time.

Unfortunately, that’s not how worry works.

Worry doesn’t solve tomorrow’s problems.

It simply borrows tomorrow’s stress and charges interest today.

Pre-Worry Isn’t Preparation

This is where our brains play a sneaky little trick.

Pre-worry feels productive.

After all, we’re thinking. Planning. Analyzing.

Running every possible scenario.

Surely that counts as preparing, right?

Not necessarily.

Preparation is gathering supplies, organizing lessons, reviewing curriculum, or setting up routines.

Pre-worry is mentally rehearsing disasters that haven’t happened.

One builds confidence.

The other drains it.

They’re not the same thing.

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

Here’s something fascinating.

Many of the things we’re worried about might not even happen.

That student whose parents made your stomach drop when you saw the roster?

They may move before school starts. They might change schedules.

They may surprise you completely.

The colleague who spent last year competing for the World Cup in complaining?

Maybe you learned enough over the summer to kindly step away from conversations that leave you emotionally depleted.

That new initiative you’re convinced will be a complete train wreck?

Perhaps it won’t be.

Or perhaps it will…

…and you’ll discover you’re far more capable of handling it than you’re giving yourself credit for today.

I’m not suggesting your concerns are imaginary.

I’m saying the story you’re telling yourself about those concerns is what creates most of the suffering.

Those stories don’t just stay in your head. They shape how you feel in the last weeks of summer, and these feelings influence what you do with the precious time you still have. 

That’s the Think-Feel-Do cycle quietly doing its work – before the school year has even begun.

Here’s the Funny Part…

Teachers give children remarkably good advice.

When a nervous fifth grader worries about starting middle school, we don’t say,

“You’re right. Let’s spend the next three weeks imagining every possible social catastrophe.”

We don’t tell kindergartners,

“Statistically speaking, someone is going to take your favorite crayon.”

Instead we say things like,

“Let’s wait and see.”

“You don’t have to solve the whole year today.”

“Just show up.”

“Do your best.”

We offer calm because we know anxious brains don’t make better predictions.

They make scarier ones.

But then we start peeling off the days in the summer calendar…

…and somehow we forget every bit of wisdom we’ve spent entire careers teaching children.

The Problem With “Just Think Positive”

Now before someone accuses me of suggesting positive thinking cures everything…

Let’s clear something up.

Forced positivity isn’t the answer either.

When someone says,

“Everything will be fine!”

your brain often responds with,

“Really? Because I’d like to present several pieces of evidence suggesting otherwise.”

That’s negativity bias doing exactly what it was designed to do.

Our brains are wired to notice potential problems more quickly than potential blessings.

So trying to argue your way into blind optimism usually backfires.

The brain doesn’t want a pep talk.

It wants safety.

A Better Question

Instead of asking,

“What if everything goes wrong?”

Try asking,

“What do I actually know today?”

Today…

You know you’re still on summer break.

You know you have successfully started every previous school year.

You know you’ve handled difficult students before.

You know you’ve survived initiatives that arrived with colorful binders and disappeared before Halloween.

You know you don’t need to solve problems that haven’t introduced themselves yet.

Those are facts.

And facts calm the brain much more effectively than fantasy.

Borrow Your Own Advice

The next time your brain starts living in September while you’re still eating watermelon in July, pause for a moment.

Imagine one of your most anxious students sitting in front of you.

What would you honestly say?

Not something sugary or dismissive.

You’d offer something grounded. Something kind. Something true.

Perhaps…

“You don’t have to figure out the whole year today.”

“We’ll handle the first day when the first day gets here.”

“Let’s work with what we know instead of what we’re imagining.”

It turns out the advice we give kids often works remarkably well for grown-ups, too.

Especially the grown-ups who spend their lives taking care of everyone else.

So enjoy the rest of July and August.

Drink the margaritas while they’re cold.

Read the novel.

Go to the lake.

Take the nap.

Your classroom will be there when it’s time. So will the bulletin boards, the lesson plans, and your teacher besties. You’ll be there, too, coffee in hand, making everything feel like home again.

The only one who doesn’t need to show up early? Your stress.

Between now and then, enjoy what’s still yours. September will come soon enough.