You know that first morning back. You walk into your office in August, or in my case unfortunately July, and you sit down at your desk and something feels off. Something about you feels off. It’s strange because you’ve technically been gone for weeks, maybe months, and yet somehow it feels like you never really left at all.

You check your email. You say hello in the hallway. You straighten a stack of papers on your desk and try to settle back into routine. On the outside, you look like someone starting fresh for a new school year. You may even have new shoes. But underneath all of that, there’s something waiting for you that summer never actually touched.

The administrator situation you replayed in your head all vacation long. The coworker dynamic you hoped would magically feel different by August. The confidence hit that started around February and quietly followed you all the way through May. It’s all still there. Sitting exactly where you left it.

That’s why I’m talking about August in May… because your August doesn’t actually start in August. It starts now.

The emotional and professional headspace you walk back into next school year is usually the same one you leave with this year. The unresolved resentment, the unanswered questions, the role confusion, the relationships you kept avoiding because you were too exhausted to deal with them. Those things don’t disappear over summer break. They just go quiet for a while. Then the moment you walk back into the building, they wake right back up again.

So instead of spending May simply trying to survive it, I want you to think about three decisions that could genuinely change the way next school year begins for you. Not by working harder. Not by becoming a “better” counselor. Just by thinking more clearly before the year ends.

Decision #1: Are You Defining Your Role Before Someone Else Does?

One of the most dangerous assumptions school counselors make is this: “I’ve been here long enough. People already know what I do.”

Unfortunately, schools don’t stay static. Administrators leave. New administrators arrive. Teachers come in with their own assumptions about school counseling. District priorities shift. Leadership changes direction. And every single one of those changes creates an opening for your role to slowly drift without you realizing it.

Sometimes nobody explicitly tells you your role has changed. It just starts happening. You suddenly become the default testing coordinator… or the hallway de-escalation person… or the schedule fixer… or the catch-all problem solver for anything difficult happening in the building. And because school counselors are helpers by nature, we often adapt first and question later.

The problem is that role drift almost never corrects itself. If anything, it accelerates when nobody pushes back.

One of the conversations I’ve been having on my own campus lately revolves around behavior response. Specifically, where school counselors should actually fit into behavior intervention systems. What I’ve been advocating for is more front-end consultation and less reactive crisis management. More collaboration with teachers and administrators before situations escalate. Less being called to “handle” dysregulated students in hallways after the situation has already exploded.

That shift didn’t happen because I hoped August would somehow look different. It happened because I started having those conversations in May while people were still planning for next year. That timing matters. Your contract may end in May, but administrators often continue planning for the next school year long after you leave campus… and if you are not part of those conversations, decisions about your role will still get made- just without you.

So here’s the question: What is one thing about your role next year that you already know needs to change? Maybe it’s testing duties or how referrals are routed. Maybe it’s your office interruption policy or having protected time for actual counseling work. Whatever it is, write it down now, then identify who needs to be part of that conversation.

Start it before summer begins, because if you don’t define your role intentionally, there’s a good chance you’ll spend August defending decisions you never even got to help make.

Decision #2: Which Professional Relationship Needs Your Attention Before Summer?

You already know who this is: the administrator, the teammate, the colleague, the professional relationship that drained more energy from you this year than almost anything else on your campus.

Right now, you probably want nothing more than to walk away from it and let summer “reset” things naturally, but summer rarely fixes unresolved dynamics. It just pauses them.

A few years ago, I had an administrator change on my campus. Nobody directly told me I was doing anything wrong, but little comments started showing up. Suggestions. Sideways remarks. Subtle implications that maybe I wasn’t approaching my role correctly. Even as an experienced school counselor, I started questioning myself. Maybe they’re right. Maybe I’ve been doing this wrong the whole time.

Or maybe you swing the opposite direction: “I’ve done this successfully for years. Why do I suddenly feel like I have to prove myself again?” Either way, most of us handle those situations the same way. We replay them. We rehearse conversations in our heads. We revisit comments over and over trying to figure out what we should’ve said. The problem is that rumination feels productive while accomplishing absolutely nothing.

Research from psychologist Susan Nolen-Hoeksema consistently showed that rumination prolongs emotional distress and interferes with problem solving. In other words, replaying something endlessly in your mind is not processing. It’s spinning. What actually helps is separating the event itself from the meaning you assigned to it.

That idea comes from Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, developed by Albert Ellis. The framework suggests that emotional distress is often driven less by the event and more by what we decide the event says about us. That distinction matters enormously, because maybe the comment says more about the other person’s leadership style than your competence.

Maybe the tension is real, but the story you’re telling yourself about what it means is what’s crushing you. So before summer begins, identify the one professional relationship that cost you the most emotional energy this year and ask yourself:

• What actually happened?
• What did I make it mean?
• Is that interpretation fully accurate?
• Is carrying this helping me move forward?

Then make one intentional decision. Have the conversation. Set the boundary. Say the thing out loud. Or… genuinely let it go. What doesn’t work is avoiding it and calling that “moving on.”

Decision #3: What Are You Protecting This Summer?

Let’s start here: Rest is not laziness. Rest is not something you earn only after being productive enough. Rest is a clinically necessary part of functioning in a high-demand profession.

Christina Maslach’s foundational research on burnout in helping professions is incredibly clear about this. Recovery from chronic occupational stress requires genuine disengagement. Not fake rest. Not “relaxing” while mentally planning next year’s small groups. Actual disengagement. Sleeping late. Reading something silly. Ignoring your email. Sitting on the couch without guilt.

That is not failure. That is recovery. And honestly? Some of you are so depleted right now that your body is going to force that decision the second school lets out.

But there’s another side to this too. Complete professional disengagement all summer can make August feel brutal. Research on skill maintenance consistently shows that stepping fully away from complex professional thinking for long periods creates deterioration in fluency and confidence. You come back rusty. Your counseling instincts feel slower. Your confidence takes a hit. Everything feels harder than it should.

That’s why the healthiest approach usually lives somewhere in the middle. Real rest paired with one intentional professional anchor. Not an overwhelming course. Not twelve professional books. Not pressure.

Just one meaningful thing that keeps your counseling brain engaged enough to make the transition back smoother. Maybe that’s a book study. Maybe it’s consultation. Maybe it’s one professional book you actually finish. Maybe it’s spending time with a group of school counselors who help you think more clearly about your work. The point is not productivity. The point is intentionality. Choose one thing now instead of waiting for August panic to decide for you.

Your August Starts Right Now

The counselors who walk into August feeling steadier are not necessarily the ones who worked harder over the summer. Usually, they’re the ones who made a few deliberate decisions before May ended. They thought clearly while they still had access to the full context of the school year. They addressed what needed attention instead of carrying everything unresolved into the next cycle. That creates a completely different kind of August. Not perfect. Not magically stress-free. Just lighter. More intentional. More honest.

And maybe that’s enough.

If this episode hit close to home, you don’t have to figure all of this out alone. Inside the S4SC Hub, the Blog, and the Mastermind, school counselors are having the kinds of honest conversations that help bring clarity to the hard parts of this work. Sometimes the biggest shift heading into a new school year is simply realizing other counselors are asking the same questions you are.