Let July Be July

Yesterday, I was taking my son shopping when we walked into Walmart and encountered one of the surest signs that summer is already beginning to turn: the back-to-school section. It was impossible to miss. Rows of notebooks, folders, pens, pencils, binders, and other supplies had taken over a large stretch of the store, announcing that another school year is approaching whether anyone feels ready for it or not.

As a student, I always enjoyed walking those aisles. There was something hopeful about selecting new folders, opening a fresh package of pens, and imagining the possibilities of a new year. The supplies themselves seemed to promise a clean beginning. Whatever had happened the year before, these blank pages suggested another chance to become more organized, more diligent, or simply more fully oneself.

Those same aisles feel different to me as an educator. The sense of possibility is still there, but it arrives alongside a growing awareness of everything that must happen before students return. By July, our minds begin drifting toward staffing, schedules, lesson plans, budgets, buildings, professional development, family communication, and the countless details that shape the opening of a school year. Summer may not be over, but August has already begun to occupy part of our attention.

That is why I find myself returning each July to Morgan Harper Nichols’s poem “Let July Be July.” It feels less like a seasonal reflection than an annual reminder.

Let July Be July by Morgan Harper Nichols

Let July be July. Let August be August. And let yourself just be even in the uncertainty. You don’t have to fix everything. You don’t have to solve everything. And you can still find peace and grow in the wild of changing things.

The lines that stay with me most are the reminder that we do not have to fix everything or solve everything. That can be difficult advice for educators to accept because schools really have only one true launch each year. There is one opening day, one return of faculty and staff, one arrival of a new class of students, and one opportunity to establish the tone for all that follows. It is understandable, then, that July can become a month of trying to anticipate every problem and resolve every uncertainty before the first bell rings.

But schools have never worked that way. No amount of planning can prevent every scheduling conflict, staffing challenge, technology failure, student need, or unexpected turn. Preparation matters enormously, but preparation is not the same as completion. A school does not have to be finished in order to be ready, because schools, like the people within them, are always becoming.

The best educators and school leaders I have known were not those who entered August having eliminated every uncertainty. They were those who had developed the judgment, patience, adaptability, and trust necessary to respond well when uncertainty arrived. Their confidence did not come from believing that every problem had already been solved. It came from knowing that they and the people around them could meet the problems that remained.

Perhaps that is part of what July is for. It gives us time not only to organize classrooms, refine plans, and prepare materials, but also to recover the less visible resources that the year ahead will require. The shelves may be filled with notebooks, folders, pens, and pencils, but the most important supplies educators carry into a new year cannot be purchased in a store. They are empathy, perspective, curiosity, resilience, and faith in our students, our colleagues, and ourselves.

Those resources need replenishing, too. August will ask us to draw on them soon enough. For now, perhaps we can let July be July.