These are seeds: short enough to read while the coffee brews, meant to be printed and left where staff actually sit. And below them, three fill-in notes, because the families of this library send praise upstream on a schedule, and the habit deserves to spread inside the building too. A note takes four minutes. Its half-life is measured in years.

Seed one, for September: a teacher who is fed in September is an ally in March. The families of this library intend to do some of the feeding. This page counts as some of it. Somebody thought of you before anything was needed.

Seed two, for the hard week: the meltdown in your room today happened because your room was safe enough to melt down in. That is not the evidence of failure it felt like at 1:40. Falling apart requires somewhere safe to fall.

Seed three, for meeting season: nobody remembers the meeting that ran on time. Everybody remembers the meeting where somebody said, out loud, one true good thing about the kid. Be the somebody. It costs forty seconds.

Seed four, for the quiet season: December and January ask less of the year on purpose. The fallow stretch is part of the design, for students, for families, and for you. Rest is not the pause in the work. It is the part of the work that makes the rest of it possible.

The note to a colleague’s principal (the one nobody ever writes): Dear , I work beside and I want their work named where naming matters. This week they . You have a good one on your team, and I thought you should hear it from the next room over. Signed,

The note to a para’s supervisor: Dear , shares a classroom with me, and this week they . The chair closest to the child is doing some of the finest work in this building, and it should be on the record. Signed,

The two-line note to a colleague, left in their box: I saw what you did for this week. It worked, and somebody besides the kid noticed. That is the whole note, and it is enough. Print this page, cut where the scissors want to go, and leave the seeds where the coffee is. The table will do the rest.