The Summer Legal Pad
A Teacher’s Ritual of Looking Back to Move Forward
I was just a few weeks into summer—barely catching my breath from the wild churn of my first year in the classroom—when I sat down with the mother of a childhood friend. Mrs. Rudman had spent her career as an elementary school teacher, and I was hoping for a word of wisdom, maybe even a shortcut. What she gave me instead was something far better: a practice.
“Every summer,” she told me, “I sit down with a legal pad. I draw a line down the middle. On one side, I write what I’d do again. On the other, what I’d do differently.” Simple. Unpolished. Real. She didn’t frame it as a formal process or a neat reflection protocol—just a habit. A rhythm. A way of listening to what the year had taught her before rushing ahead to the next one.
That conversation stayed with me. Because it wasn’t performative, and it wasn’t obligatory. It was real. Honest. Grounded in the quiet integrity of a teacher who had learned to listen to her own year.
She wasn’t trying to prove anything. She was trying to understand. And in that simple act—sitting down with a legal pad in the stillness of summer—she modeled a kind of professionalism we don’t talk about enough: not the kind you perform for others, but the kind that shapes who you are when no one is watching. I’m grateful for that lesson.
The Data We Forget to Analyze
Educators are surrounded by data—formative, summative, demographic, diagnostic—but the most powerful data we gather often goes unnamed. It lives in our memories and muscle, in the thousand little adjustments we make across a year. It’s the moment we learned how to reach a student who wouldn’t meet our eyes. The conversation that changed a parent’s mind. The instructional choice that didn’t land. The hallway we started walking more often because we sensed something was brewing there.
These are data points, too. They tell us who we were and how we grew. They help us refine the teacher, leader, or teammate we are becoming. But they require space. Silence. A willingness to look honestly and gently at our year—not to judge it, but to learn from it.
Again / Differently
So I offer the same reflection she once gave to me. No fanfare. Just a page and some time.
What would I do again? What worked? What mattered? What helped me feel more like the educator I hope to become?
What would I do differently? What didn’t land? What did I avoid? What cost too much—for me, for my students, for the people I lead?
Who were the students who taught me the most? What did they teach me—about learning, about leading, about myself?
What does next year need from me? Where is the quiet invitation to grow, to recommit, to begin again with more intention?
This isn’t about resolutions or reinvention. It’s not about fixing everything. It’s about noticing. It’s about carrying forward what you’ve learned, and letting it shape your next chapter with care.
Because the truth is: the year changed you. Whether gently or with force, it carved out something new in you. And before summer fills with trainings and tasks, I hope you’ll give yourself the gift of listening. To your own experience. To what mattered. To what you now know in your bones.
It may be the most important professional development you do all year.
I’ll Go First.
This year was my first time working with middle schoolers full time, all year long. I’ll be honest, it was a little scary. But I learned something unexpected: one of my secret weapons with this age group is my painfully-uncool-late-forties mom/grandma vibe. I don’t feel particularly old (usually—except for that one time I decided to do a little heel click to make colleagues laugh at the end of a long day and went down in my back for a week wearing Salonpas patches—but I digress). However, to middle schoolers, I am officially grandmother-aged, and surprisingly, I don’t mind that one bit.
What I found in these students is what I’ve found across every setting in my 25 years in this work: kids want to be cared for sincerely, respected as humans, loved on with compassion (they are kids, after all), and held accountable to their very best—in that order. And if they see that version of themselves reflected back to them in your eyes, they’ll rise to meet it.
Next year, I’ll start building those relationships even earlier—on day one, in the hallway, anywhere I can. I want those moments of connection to spill into every classroom I support.
And what I’ll do again—earlier this time—is talk with students about their performance data. When I started doing that with at-risk-of-failing students in January, I immediately saw a shift. When we did it schoolwide this spring, everything changed. We started hearing students talk about their own goals—to move up an achievement level, to meet a benchmark, to show what they were capable of. And then they started running back to us with news: “I did it!” “I moved up!” “I passed it!”
I was nervous about centering grades and scores too much. But what I saw was empowerment. Understanding their progress helped students see themselves differently. It gave us chance after chance to cheer them on, to build them up, to celebrate not just their growth—but their transformation.
Next year needs from me a little more “forest and the trees” thinking. Sometimes when I get too close, too in the weeds, too focused on problems that need solving, I miss the movement. I miss the progress. I let myself ruminate on what could be better—and I miss what’s already better because of our collective efforts. (A price of passion is the suffering for it.) I’m grateful to my colleagues—for my principal—for always pulling me back out of the mire, for bringing me back to the big picture. Next year needs from me more grace for the journey.
Click here to download a reflection guide you can use for your own reflection, or with colleagues as you pack up your classroom or office this year.
If you're willing, I’d love to hear one small part of your reflection in the comments.
Something you’ll do again.
Something you’ll do differently.
Someone who taught you something important.
Let this be a space where we learn from one another—not because we have to, but because we can.