I’m retiring again.
Kelli and I have been coaching swimming and diving since 1987. That’s a long time to measure winters by practice schedules, bus rides, and the echo of whistles off tiled walls. This is our final season. Truly final this time.
Every year, just before the state meet, we take the kids out for lunch. It’s lighthearted. Loud. A little chaotic in the best way. There’s laughter, inside jokes, nervous energy about the meet ahead.
But beneath the fun, there’s always a quiet awareness.
The season is ending.
This year, that awareness carries more weight. It isn’t just the close of a schedule that began back in mid-November. It’s the close of a chapter that has shaped decades of our lives.
And if I’m honest, we’re ready.
Ready for the rhythm to change.
Ready for the long stretch of winter practices to give way to something new.
Ready for full retirement to settle in.
There’s no bitterness in that readiness. Just a deep exhale.
Coaching season always feels long by this point. The early enthusiasm of November has worn off. The holidays have come and gone. The daily discipline, the emotional investment, the constant presence — it accumulates.
Standing in that awareness this week brought back vivid memories of late February and early March when I was still teaching.
That same corridor of time.
The year not new anymore.
The finish line not yet in sight.
Energy steady, but thinner at the edges.
And I remember how easy it was to interpret that feeling as something personal — as if the weariness meant I was slipping, or losing heart.
It didn’t.
It meant the year was long.
The Emotional Dip Is Predictable
Psychology has something steadying to offer us here.
Researchers at the University of Chicago have explored what’s often called the “middle slump.” Across long projects, motivation tends to dip in the middle phase. The beginning carries novelty. The end carries urgency. But the middle? The middle asks for endurance.
Similarly, the “goal-gradient effect,” first studied by Clark L. Hull, shows that effort increases as we approach a visible finish line. When the end is distant, our energy naturally levels off.
That pattern isn’t weakness.
It’s human.
By late winter, teachers have invested months of emotional regulation, instructional planning, conflict mediation, and relational presence. You’ve rewritten lessons. Encouraged the discouraged. Redirected behavior more times than you can count. You’ve carried stories home with you.
Of course something feels different by February.
Your nervous system has been working.
Weariness Is Information
Here’s the reframe I wish someone had offered me earlier in my career:
Weariness is not weakness.
It’s information.
It tells you you’ve been giving.
It tells you you care.
It tells you the work has required something real from you.
There is wisdom in noticing fatigue instead of pushing past it with self-criticism. When you pause long enough to say, “This feels long,” you are not failing.
You are listening. And listening — especially to your own interior life — is part of becoming a seasoned educator.
In fact, much of what sustains a teacher over decades isn’t technique. It’s interior steadiness. That’s something I explore more fully in The Inner Classroom — the quiet work beneath the visible work. The habits of reflection that keep the long middle from hollowing you out. If this season feels especially extended for you, that book was written for exactly this stretch.
Because late winter is rarely about dramatic reinvention.
It’s about wise pacing.
The Season Before the Shift
In the Northeast, February can feel endless. Snowbanks linger. The light stretches a little longer each afternoon, but spring break still feels far away.
And yet beneath the frozen ground, something is already changing.
Roots are doing quiet work.
In the book of Ecclesiastes, we’re reminded that there is “a time for every matter under heaven.” There are seasons of planting and seasons of harvest. There are also seasons of tending — steady, unseen, faithful.
Late winter in a school year is a tending season.
You are not launching something brand new.
You are not yet celebrating closure.
You are holding what has already been planted.
That kind of work rarely feels dramatic.
But it is sacred.
For Early-Career Teachers (and the Rest of Us)
If you’re early in your career, this stretch can feel unsettling.
You might quietly wonder:
Is it supposed to feel this long?
Why am I this tired?
Does everyone else handle this better than I do?
Let me say this gently.
This stretch is normal.
In fact, the teachers who feel nothing by late winter concern me more than the ones who feel the weight of it. Feeling the length of the year means you are engaged. Invested. Present.
The goal isn’t to eliminate fatigue.
It’s to respond wisely.
Maybe that means simplifying one lesson instead of crafting the perfect one.
Maybe it means saying no to an extra commitment this week.
Maybe it means taking a walk before grading, or sitting in quiet for ten minutes before opening your laptop.
Small adjustments.
Not grand reinventions.
Reflection Prompts
If you have a few minutes this week, sit with one or two of these:
- When did I first notice this late-winter dip in my energy?
- What specifically feels heavy right now — logistics, emotions, expectations?
- Where have I been giving more than I realized?
- What is one small way I can lighten my own load this week?
- What evidence do I see that growth is happening, even if it feels slow?
Closing: The Long Stretch
As we sat at that team lunch this week — swimmers laughing, trays sliding across tables, nerves quietly building for the state meet — I felt that familiar late-season mixture again.
Joy.
Fatigue.
Completion hovering just ahead.
It struck me how similar it feels to late winter in a school year. The work has been honest. The investment real. The energy not quite what it was in November. And yet something solid remains.
Steadiness. Faithfulness.
When a season feels long, it is often because you have stayed.
You stayed in the conversation.
You stayed in the planning.
You stayed when it would have been easier to detach.
You stayed present to students who needed more than the lesson.
Length, in that sense, is not a verdict.
It’s evidence. (If you missed it, I wrote more about that quiet faithfulness in What It Means to Keep Showing Up in February).
As Kelli and I step away from one more season — and this time, from a career — I don’t feel fireworks. I feel gratitude for the long middle stretches. The ordinary Tuesdays in February. The practices no one saw. The steady showing up.
That’s where most of life happens.
That’s where most of teaching happens.
The year may feel long right now.
But length does not mean failure.
Sometimes it simply means you have been faithful for a long time.
And faithfulness, especially in teaching, is rarely loud.
It is steady.
And steady, in late winter, is more than enough.
