The Night Before School: Is the Spark That Called You to Lead Still Burning?

Summary for Educators

Based on Barry Kislowicz

The Night Before School

Leadership Lenses | August 31, 2026

A reflection on the mixture of anxiety, anticipation, purpose, and renewed commitment educators experience on the eve of a new school year.

🔵 THE BIG IDEA

Why do even veteran school leaders have trouble sleeping the night before students return?

Barry Kislowicz has coached school heads ranging from first-year leaders to 30-year veterans, and he observes something striking: experience doesn't necessarily eliminate those restless nights. He believes something deeper than ordinary anxiety may be at work.

The night before school begins reminds educators of the magnitude of what they have chosen to do.

During the year, that original sense of purpose can disappear beneath meetings, conflicts, emails, improvement plans, personnel problems, and the endless demands of running a school. But when students are about to return, something changes.

The purpose comes rushing back.

Kislowicz offers school leaders a compelling reinterpretation of those restless hours:

Perhaps the goal isn't to extinguish the nervous energy. Perhaps it's to listen to what it's telling us.

🔵 KEY TAKEAWAYS FOR EDUCATORS

• Remember what originally called you. Most educators entered the profession because something mattered deeply—children, learning, opportunity, justice, curiosity, or the possibility of changing lives.

• Recognize what buries the spark. Managing stakeholders, resolving conflicts, implementing initiatives, and simply keeping a school operating can gradually push purpose into the background.

• Use beginnings to reconnect. Summer provides distance for reflection and planning, but the approaching return of students makes the mission real again.

• Reframe anxiety as meaning. Some nervousness before opening day is natural. But that energy may also reflect an awareness that the work about to begin matters enormously.

• Keep students at the center. Buildings, schedules, policies, programs, and strategic plans exist for one reason: the students who eventually walk through the doors.

• Protect the spark beyond September. The challenge isn't simply beginning the year inspired. It is remaining connected to that sense of purpose in November, February, April, and June.

◻️ WHY IT MATTERS

Schools can become extraordinarily efficient while simultaneously losing touch with why the work matters.

Calendars fill.

Problems demand attention.

Meetings multiply.

Initiatives accumulate.

Leaders can spend an entire day working intensely on school without spending much time thinking about students.

That's why Kislowicz's reflection matters.

The night before school offers an unusual moment when the administrative machinery temporarily disappears and leaders confront something much more fundamental:

Tomorrow, the children come back.

And suddenly the work isn't theoretical.

There will be a nervous kindergarten student walking into school for the first time.

A teenager wondering whether this will finally be the year someone notices him.

A struggling reader hoping nobody discovers how difficult reading has become.

A new teacher wondering whether she belongs.

A student desperate for one adult who believes in him.

That is the work beneath all the other work.

🟢 LEADERSHIP ACTION STEPS

✓ Remember your beginning. Write down why you originally chose education and why you eventually chose leadership.

✓ Identify what most often separates you from that purpose during the school year.

✓ Create regular opportunities to reconnect with students—classroom visits, lunch conversations, arrival, dismissal, performances, games, and informal interactions.

✓ Protect one leadership practice that consistently renews your sense of purpose.

✓ Share your “why” with your staff—and invite them to remember theirs.

✓ Revisit the question periodically during the year: What first lit the spark for me, and what am I doing to keep it burning?

🟡 LEADER REFLECTION

Kislowicz ends with an important reversal.

For years, he viewed the sleepless night before school as something to endure. Now he wonders whether educators should pay closer attention to it.

The better question may not be:

“How can I finally get some sleep?”

It may be:

“Why does tomorrow still matter enough to keep me awake?”

Think back to the beginning of your career.

Before the budgets.

Before the evaluations.

Before the board meetings.

Before the parent complaints.

Before the mandates, dashboards, strategic plans, and overflowing inbox.

Something brought you into a school.

Someone may have inspired you.

Something about children, teaching, learning, or opportunity convinced you that this was work worth doing.

Years later, the night before school begins, that feeling may return.

Don't dismiss it as nerves.

Listen to it.

Because the real goal isn't merely to remain awake the night before school.

As Kislowicz beautifully suggests, the challenge is to remain awake to that same sense of purpose long after opening day has passed.

Original Article

“The Night Before School” by Barry Kislowicz in Leadership Lenses, August 31, 2026

------------------------------

Prepared with the assistance of AI software OpenAI. (2026). ChatGPT (5.2) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com