🌿 Your Tuesday Email: Forward with Your People

Hello Reader!

The relationships you built with colleagues this year are worth protecting through the finish.

Most end-of-year conversations focus on students, and they should!

But the sometimes the most overlooked relationship in a school in May isn't the one between teacher and student. It might be the one between educators themselves.

By May, most teams are fraying a little at the edges. The social energy that carried everyone through fall has been spent. Meetings are harder, patience is thinner, and small things that would have been forgiven in October now land just wrong. The educators who need each other most are often the ones least equipped to ask for what they need.

Why Colleague Relationships Matter Now

How you and your colleagues close this year will shape the social architecture of next year before summer even begins.

Teams that end the year depleted and disconnected carry that residue into September. Teams that end the year with a sense of genuine partnership, even amid the chaos, start next fall with something to build on.

This isn't about forced positivity or mandatory fun. It's about noticing the people who showed up alongside you and taking thirty seconds to say so.

Small Acts That Hold Teams Together

You don't need a staff appreciation committee or a formal ceremony, but you do need micro-moments of recognition and genuine connection:

• Telling a colleague specifically what you appreciated about how they handled something hard this year
• Checking in on the person on your team who always says they're fine and waiting for the real answer!
• Naming something you learned from a colleague this year, directly to them
• Choosing repair over avoidance in any relationship where something went sideways

None of these take long. All of them matter.

A Particular Note for Leaders

If you lead a team, your people are watching how you end the year. They are calibrating whether the investment they made in this community was worth it. A genuine, specific acknowledgment from a leader (not a form letter or a generic thank you), but something that says I actually saw what you did this year. This is such a powerful thing you can offer in May.

Don't let the logistics of the final stretch squeeze out the relational ones.

Podcast:

• This week: Ep 110 - Leaving Spaces Intentionally Blank with Christine and Tammy. our days are packed, your walls are packed, and even your questions can come packed with follow-ups. That “always full” feeling is common in schools, but it can quietly drain focus, creativity, and teacher wellness. We dig into a minimalist concept that sounds simple and turns out to be surprisingly hard: intentional white space. Here's the YouTube link to watch.
• Next week: Ep 111 - Making Room for Picture books with literacy specialist, Sarah Cordova
• Last week: Ep 109 - If You Add Something New, You Must Remove Something with Allison Rodman.

Listen to the pod on all the platforms like Apple, Spotify, iHeart Radio and YouTube. Now you can follow us on Instagram.

Resources:

• ASCD article: "Building Teacher Collaboration That Actually Lasts"​
• Book: Kim Scott, Radical Candor — Amazon (on the kind of honest, caring feedback that strengthens teams)
• AI Delegation Guide (sponsored)

Reflection

Which colleague (whether one you've leaned on, one you've overlooked, or one who quietly held things together) most needs a deliberate moment of acknowledgment from you this month?

What specifically would you want them to know?

Yours,

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P.S. Forward this email to colleagues who you think would enjoy the connection and resources.