When You Can’t Change the Schedule

Using the Neuro Informed principles where you are.

 

Theodore Roosevelt once said, “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

That line has been sitting with me this week.

A district educator wrote me after my last post. The message was thoughtful. Honest. You could feel the lived experience behind it.

“I struggle with the schedule part. We know the science. We know movement helps. We know energy dips. But we can’t put all kids in Fine and Applied Arts in the afternoon. Our 8th grade core teachers don’t even get their students until 11:16. And by then we’re seeing lower cognitive stamina and more behaviors.”

I read it and thought, that is exactly what Roosevelt was talking about.

Because sometimes you can’t change the master schedule. You can’t redesign the bell times. You can’t move heavy cognitive work to the morning.

You are where you are.

And that is where the work begins.

And if you are not a teacher, stay with me. This is not really about 8th grade science at 11:16. It is about energy and demand. It is about walking into any space where the structure is fixed but the humans inside it are running on different fuel levels.

That might be your staff meeting at 4:30.
Your clinic schedule that stacks high intensity clients back to back.
Your nonprofit board that tackles the hardest agenda item at the very end.
Your own family at 8:45 on a Tuesday night.

Different setting. Same nervous system.

The principle travels.

So let’s talk about it.

What you are seeing is exactly what a predicting brain would do.

By 11:16, an 8th grader has already spent social energy, regulatory energy, hallway energy, maybe bus energy. Their nervous system has been updating all morning. When heavy precision learning finally begins, fuel is lower. Tolerance for uncertainty shrinks. Noise rises. Adults call it behavior.

The brain calls it protection.

Now I want to own something. I might have jumped the gun with the Energy First Schedule.

Not because it is wrong. But because it sits more naturally inside the REGULATE conversation than the PREDICT principle. Managing fuel makes a lot more sense once you understand how regulation actually works in a nervous system.

I will launch The REGULATE Principle next month.

So, if the schedule strategy hits you like “that sounds nice, but it’s not realistic,” that might be on me.

Energy First was never about ‘arts in the afternoon’.

It is about aligning demand with fuel.

If you can’t change the master schedule, you can still change the metabolic cost of the classroom period. And that is not just a clever way to say it. That is the work.

Let’s imagine you are that 8th grade science teacher who starts at 11:16.

Option one is to launch straight into brand new content that requires working memory, flexibility, and error tolerance.

Option two is to treat the first ten minutes like a cognitive warm up.

• Retrieval practice.
• Low stakes review.
• Quick wins.
• Partner talk before whole class.

You are not lowering standards. You are warming up the engine before asking it to climb.

Instead of forty-five straight minutes of heavy lift thinking, try shorter cycles.

1. Ten minutes of new learning.
2. Two minutes of processing.
3. A brief reset or brain break.
4. Back in.

Rigor stays. Energy cost gets distributed.

Now ask yourself this. “What is the single most demanding thing students will do in this period?”

Writing an argument. Solving multi-step equations. Analyzing a primary source.

Protect that moment. Move it as early in the period as possible. Do not save the hardest lift for when everyone is already sliding downhill.

And please hear this loud and clear.

Movement does not belong only to electives.

Core classrooms can stand up. Rotate positions in the room. Do gallery walks. Solve problems on the walls. Think on their feet.

You are not changing the schedule. You are changing the energy profile.

There is also a biological reality we rarely call out.

Middle schoolers are not wired like adults. Researchers like Mary Carskadon have shown that adolescent circadian rhythms shift later. Their alertness window is different.

So, when you see that 11:16 slump, you are not witnessing laziness.

You are watching biology meet structure.

That is not an excuse. It is information. And information gives us leverage.

If we can’t rebuild the master schedule, maybe we rotate heavy subjects across quarters. Maybe we coach teachers to build regulation rituals into transitions. Maybe we treat the first minutes of class as settling time instead of instructional loss.

What does this time of day actually cost the nervous system?

When we answer that question clearly, we stop blaming kids for conserving fuel.

So, if you read the first post and thought, “Nice idea, Rick, but you haven’t seen my bell schedule,” this one is for you.

You do not need total control of the forecast to shift the weather.

You can change the terrain inside your own classroom. You can protect the heaviest lift. You can reduce the cost of being wrong. You can break the work into shorter stretches instead of one long grind.

And yes, this will all make even more sense once we talk explicitly about regulation.

That conversation is coming.

For now, we are not chasing perfect schedules.

We are learning how to manage fuel.

If this resonated with you, there is a good chance it is not just you.

There is probably a teacher down the hall who feels stuck with the bell schedule. A supervisor who keeps running into the late afternoon wall. A parent who wonders why everything falls apart at 8:47 pm. A leader who keeps asking for peak performance from people running on fumes.

Send this to them.

Not as a critique. Not as a subtle hint. Just as a different lens.

Sometimes the most generous thing we can offer someone is language for what they are already living.

If this helped you see the fuel differently, pass it on. Let it travel.