We started the school year later than usual, so Term 1 was only eight weeks long and felt like a crazy sprint. Term 2 was 11 weeks and felt like a gruelling ultra marathon.
A post on the Principal’s Facebook page asked if the wheels had been falling off for everyone towards the end of the term. One respondent described her staff surviving on “weapons grade coffee”, sausage rolls, and lollies. Most tumuaki also talked about getting through week 11 focussed on expressions of gratitude and celebration.
I like to see myself as a bold adventurer – a traveller, a maverick who embraces the unpredictable. But heading into week 11, I realised my teacher brain is not unique. It likes Consistent Predictable Routines (CPR) and is conditioned to work for 10 weeks and then go into partial holiday shutdown.
Apparently, this is because our brains rely heavily on ‘temporal schemas’ or cognitive blueprints that help us budget energy based on an expected finish line. When we push past that habitual week-10 mark, our teacher brain perceives the extension not just as five extra school days, but as a gross violation of its internal regulatory schedule. The prolonged activation of the sympathetic nervous system means that cortisol and adrenaline levels remain elevated, rather than tapering off into recovery mode. This triggers a physiological phenomenon known as ‘allostatic load’, where the cumulative wear and tear on the body leads to heightened cognitive fatigue, decision depletion, and an increasingly compromised immune system. Sound familiar?
Reflecting on some of the unusual responses I saw around me in the last week of Term 2, it makes sense to understand The Science of Week 11! If the auditor asks, the coffee, sausage rolls, lollies, and gratitude journals are all allostatic load reduction tools.
Consistent Predictable Routines (CPR) have been a topic of much discussion in our Senior Leadership Team over Term 2. A few weeks before the Ministry called to tell me funding for Restorative Practice had been “re-prioritised” (meaning the programme is no longer funded in 2027), our fantastic Restorative Practice Facilitator Glenys recommended a book called Help for Billy: A Beyond Consequences Approach to Helping Challenging Children in the Classroom by Heather T. Forbes.
Our SLT morning and afternoon check-ins became like a book club as we discussed the latest chapter we had read. Forbes explains that children with a history of trauma or regulatory challenges (think neurodiversity) live in a constant state of hypervigilance. For these children, any unpredictability signals danger to their survival brain. Forbes says routine and consistency create the safety required for the brain to move out of a survival state and into a learning state.
When transitions, schedules, and daily classroom patterns are consistently predictable, a child doesn’t have to waste emotional energy wondering what comes next. So Forbes advocates for clearly displayed visual schedules so tamariki can constantly self-soothe by previewing their day. This equates to a reduced cognitive load.
Forbes highlights that breaks in a structured routine, such as school holidays, having a relief teacher in, or changes to the school day, are primary triggers for a rise in defensive and challenging behaviours. When I think back to everything that was going on at the end of Term 2 in weeks 10 and 11: school reports going home; kapa haka practices for our Matariki Celebration; classes being combined; teacher absences and relievers; finishing early for Hui a-whānau; adults being tired and running on fumes; Dress as a Teacher day and a Book Fair — it is little surprise that it was all too much for some tamariki (and some adults too).
Proactively teaching our children how to regulate themselves, building in regulation breaks, and knowing what we need to do to maintain our own regulation are equally crucial to surviving week 11. Listening to Dr Bruce Perry in conversation with Oprah Winfrey in their audiobook What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing, I realised that most adults have developed tools to manage regulation of their nervous system, whether it be yoga, running, massage, or singing.
On the dancefloor at Kerikeri’s Winterless celebration at the end of week 10, I had the revelation that my self-regulation tool has always been dancing. So next time we have 11 weeks in a term, I’ll be ending every day, sausage roll in one hand and gratitude journal in the other, breaking out some moves in my office!