What Teachers Can Learn from Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
Mr. Alvarez taught tenth-grade biology, and by February he was running on coffee and habit. Grading piled up faster than he could return it, a few students had stopped turning in homework, and his lesson plans felt flatter each week. He told himself a good teacher does not run out of steam mid-year, that students deserved better than a burned-out version of him. Over winter break, half-heartedly reading a book his sister had left behind, he found the idea that difficult stretches are something to move through deliberately, not evidence of failure. He realized he had been treating his exhaustion as a flaw to fix, rather than a real season needing tending before he could teach well again.
The whole book, compressed
This edition works through 4 core lessons — take them one at a time, not all at once.
What's different for your conditions
Tap whichever ones sound like you. Nothing here is sent or saved — it's just for your own noticing.
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The core lessons, applied to you
Naming a hard term without treating it as a failing grade
Wintering's core move, naming a hard season honestly instead of pushing through in silence, matters for a teacher behind on grading or patience midway through a term. Admitting to a colleague that this term has been genuinely difficult is not admitting incompetence; it is accurate, and it opens real help sooner than struggling quietly alone.
In a school culture where any admission of struggle gets treated as evidence a teacher cannot manage a classroom.
Tell one trusted colleague this term has been hard, in one honest sentence.
Letting go of nonessential extras during a hard stretch
The book treats stepping back from ordinary obligations as active recovery, which a teacher can apply by trimming optional extras, an elaborate bulletin board, an extra club meeting, during a genuinely hard season. This is not lowering the bar for students; it is protecting the energy real teaching requires, so the classroom does not suffer for extras nobody will remember by spring.
When extracurricular duties are formally assigned and cannot simply be dropped without approval.
Identify one optional task this month that exists only out of habit, and let it go.
Treating a hard term as something to share, not hide
May describes cold-climate communities that build gathering and lower expectations into their darkest months, presented as her own respectful account of specific traditions, not a model every school must adopt. A teacher can take the idea that hard seasons go better shared by leaning on a department or mentor, rather than surviving a difficult term behind a closed classroom door.
Schools where staff culture is genuinely isolating, with no real forum for honesty among colleagues.
Eat lunch with one colleague this week and ask how their term is actually going.
Winter as metaphor, not a diagnosis for burnout
The book leans on winter and hibernation as a metaphor for hardship, not a scientific claim about why energy dips at certain points in the school year. Any mention connecting mood to daylight is one area of ongoing, evolving interest, not settled fact. What holds regardless of the calendar is the deeper point: a hard term passes, and does not define a teacher's competence.
These ideas compete inside a real school year. Naming a hard term honestly can invite scrutiny that makes trimming optional extras harder, since a struggling teacher may feel watched rather than supported. Leaning on colleagues takes trust a teacher stretched thin during finals may not have to spare. Most teachers manage a partial version of all three, admitting the term is hard to one person, dropping a few things quietly, and getting through the hardest weeks with help that is imperfect but real.
Name one thing, honestly
- What would it look like to name a hard term honestly to one colleague, without treating it as a failing grade? - Which optional task could you quietly let go of this month? - Who on your staff might be having a harder term than they are letting on?
Good. Now look back at the "Try this" line under whichever lesson feels most connected to what you just wrote, and treat that as this week's actual assignment — not all 4 at once.
The practices from this edition
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Run this for seven days
Eat lunch with one colleague this week and ask how their term is actually going.