The toll isn’t the incident. It’s the residue. The accumulation. The small autonomic taxes that stack up invisibly.
This is the compound interest of school.
It asks adults to metabolize children’s nervous systems without distributing the load.
It rewards stillness, punishes movement, and misunderstands play.
It speaks of productivity without understanding biology.
And yet, within all of that, regulation can be found.
In breath.
In posture.
In presence.
In a conversation that almost didn’t happen yesterday.
In a program that might or might not work, but signals willingness.
Today reminded me that institutional change rarely arrives as a new policy.
It arrives as a five-minute hallway conversation you didn’t walk away from.
Awareness is cumulative.
So is avoidance.
Compound interest cuts both ways.
This is the work beneath the work.