The end of the school year has a pace all its own—testing, celebrations, checklists, retirements, and a countdown that seems to gain speed with every passing day. It’s tempting to treat May like a race to the finish line. But before summer sweeps everything away, there’s a critical moment that can’t be missed:

Now is the time to identify the problems you don’t want to carry into another school year.

It’s easy to say, “We’ll deal with it in August,” but we all know how that goes. August arrives like a freight train—with new students, new hires, new policies—and suddenly, the memory of what really needed to change gets buried beneath survival mode. That’s how the Game of School survives year after year: outdated practices, misplaced priorities, and frustrating systems get passed down simply because no one took the time to stop, think, and identify what needed to change.

That’s the challenge Game of School puts in front of us: slow down long enough to ask the right questions—and to stop protecting the status quo. Too often, we preserve systems simply because they’re familiar, not because they’re effective. Game of School exposes how the status quo keeps us spinning our wheels: outdated practices, misplaced priorities, and frustrating systems get passed down year after year because no one took the time to stop, think, and identify what truly needs to change.

• What’s not working, even if we’ve always done it that way?
• Where are students getting stuck—and why?
• What are we pretending is fine, when it’s clearly not?
• Which practices are serving adults more than they serve kids?

This is the sweet spot—right now, when the school year is still fresh and real. Take stock. Get honest. Identify the pain points and bad habits before the noise of next year starts up again.

And once you’ve identified those areas?

That’s where Game of School comes in. It’s not just a book—it’s a blueprint for confronting the comfortable dysfunction in our schools and making practical, culture-shifting change. It doesn’t start with answers. It starts with the courage to ask the hard questions.

So yes—finish strong. Celebrate your people. Check off the lists.

But don’t skip this part.

Stop. Think. Identify.

Your future school year will thank you for it.