As the bright optimism and high-octane energy of the back-to-school season begin to fade, many educators across the country experience a sudden and profound emotional dip. Coined the "disillusionment phase" by Ellen Moir, founder of the New Teacher Center, or more familiarly known to educators on the ground as the "October Blues," this annual phenomenon strikes only a few weeks after the school year kicks off, draining teachers of their focus and vitality.
For first-year educators, the October Blues can feel particularly jarring. Mike Anderson, an educational consultant, former teacher, and author of Rekindle Your Professional Fire: Powerful Habits for Becoming a More Well-Balanced Teacher and Hugging Porcupines, notes that many novices enter the profession completely unaware of this predictable emotional trough. This lack of preparation for the unexpected bumps in the road is a contributing factor to startling statistics from the Learning Policy Institute, which shows that new teachers are 2.5 times more likely to quit after their first year on the job.
Having weathered bouts of the October Blues himself and having coached countless educators through the slump over his career, Anderson sat down to discuss the origins of this phenomenon, how it manifests in classrooms, and what teachers and school administrators can do to keep it at bay.
Defining the ‘October Blues’ and the Science of the Slump
If you talk to any veteran teacher, they will tell you there is a predictable slump in energy that follows the first few weeks of school. When Anderson was mentoring new teachers in his district, they used a graph showing the predictable energy curve of a teacher’s first year. It always started off high with anticipation and joy, then plummeted early in the fall.
According to Anderson, this occurs for a couple of primary reasons. There is so much energy and anticipation at the start of the year, and there is only so long the human brain can stay in that high place. When people experience a real surge of joy, the brain naturally wants to return to a level playing field, often dipping below the baseline before it settles back to normal. It serves as the emotional hangover after the high.
Anderson draws a parallel to physical exertion, noting that after a hard run, an individual experiences a "runner’s high"—a surge of positive emotion following pain or discomfort. An analogous process happens with the October Blues. All the positive energy and anticipation of the first few weeks of school require educators to be "on" constantly, resulting in exhaustion. Consequently, there is a predictable crash once that wears off, causing both physical and emotional energy to drop. Fortunately, this slump is not permanent, and energy levels eventually rebound.
When asked whether this hits newer teachers harder than veterans, Anderson suggests that experience breeds recognition. One of the scariest parts of the October Blues during a teacher’s first year is that, without knowing it is a shared, known phenomenon, they begin to question whether they belong in the profession at all. Once educators have lived through it a few times, they learn to expect it, acknowledging that October is a rough month while trusting that an upswing is right around the corner. Veteran teachers are consequently more aware of the cycle and far less panicked by it.
The Ripple Effect: How Stress Impacts Both Teachers and Students
The October Blues do not happen in a vacuum; they have a tangible, multifaceted impact on both classroom management and student well-being. While writing The Well-Balanced Teacher—a book he later rewrote as Rekindle Your Professional Fire—Anderson reviewed research exploring how teachers’ emotional states directly affect their students.
While the study did not specifically target the October Blues, roughly 400 elementary students, predominantly fourth and fifth graders, had their cortisol levels measured through saliva samples. Concurrently, their teachers were surveyed regarding their health, balance, and energy. The findings revealed that teachers who reported higher workplace stress had students with elevated cortisol levels.
When teachers experience high stress, children feel it too, and the dynamic works in reverse as well. In Hugging Porcupines, a chapter titled "The Honeymoon Is Over" explores this exact dynamic. Both children and teachers work hard to present their best selves for the first few weeks of school, but that level of performance is difficult to sustain indefinitely.
Furthermore, the academic workload intensifies in October. For students who struggle with learning, this is when they begin to feel overwhelmed, mirroring the way teachers feel as the semester piles up. Anderson also notes that decreasing daylight likely plays a role, as northern hemisphere classrooms experience a shift toward more darkness than light by October, inevitably influencing moods.
Inside the classroom, the October Blues manifest in subtle yet damaging ways. A teacher’s patience wears thin more quickly with struggling students, and keeping up with the meticulous planning required for great teaching becomes harder. Educators may resort to "winging it," which ultimately generates even more stress once they are standing in front of the class.
Anderson recalls trying to hold reading and writing conferences with students in the late morning and feeling blurry, almost as if he were hungover, where everything felt fuzzy. Staying sharp, maintaining patience, and keeping energy high for engaging lessons becomes a daily battle against fatigue.
For Anderson early in his career, the autumn fatigue was compounded by extracurriculars. Alongside his teaching duties, he coached age-group and high school swim teams, committing to three or four hours of practice after school every day on top of daily lesson planning. That extra load invariably hit right when the initial "easy" weeks of the school year gave way to a mountain of committee meetings and administrative responsibilities.
Navigating Modern Pressures, Disregulation, and AI
The educational landscape has shifted over the past decade, raising questions about whether the October Blues have intensified. Anderson points to a broader societal shift, noting that people in general are more on edge, dysregulated, and fatigued than they were ten or fifteen years ago. Political chaos, turbulent online environments, and a general lack of societal rest mean that children are entering schools more dysregulated than in the past. This rise in the number and severity of behavior problems places an immense physical and emotional toll on teachers, far beyond the routine challenges of the profession.
As for whether artificial intelligence is adding to this strain, Anderson sees AI as yet another new hurdle for educators to navigate. Teachers are forced to learn, manage, and figure out AI—both in terms of what is permissible for their own lesson planning and how to manage student use.
This accelerates a trend where teachers constantly feel they are on the steep end of a learning curve. A sense of competence is critical to wellness and happiness at work in any profession; if individuals do not believe they are good at what they do, staying positive and energized becomes extraordinarily difficult. Because teachers rarely get a chance to feel like they have finally mastered the craft, AI represents just another demanding learning curve stacked on top of an already heavy load.
Strategies for Survival and the Role of Administrators
While the October Blues cannot be entirely avoided—just as a runner cannot complete a marathon without feeling tired—recognizing them as a normal, shared experience rather than a personal flaw makes a significant difference.
Anderson emphasizes that the remedies are straightforward: prioritizing sleep, eating nutritious food, and maintaining a healthy exercise routine. Even simple habits, such as putting on sneakers for a brisk 20-minute walk as soon as the final school bell rings, build the long-term resilience needed to sustain energy. Rather than looking for major, unsustainable lifestyle overhauls, teachers should look for small ways to incorporate sleep, movement, and better nutrition into their daily routines.
School administrators and principals also play a critical role in mitigating the October Blues. Acknowledging the reality of the slump with faculty helps immensely, particularly for new teachers who might otherwise remain blind to it. School leaders can also provide tangible support by offering healthy snacks at faculty meetings—such as fresh fruit, cheese, and crackers instead of easily accessible processed junk food—ensuring hydration stations are readily available, and actively monitoring workloads.
In almost every school, certain teachers take on disproportionate burdens by running committees, leading unions, and managing extracurriculars. Finding ways to take a few things off those specific plates represents a powerful method of leadership support.
Mentoring programs can also serve as a vital lifeline, provided mentors are specifically trained to understand the energy cycles new teachers undergo. However, many novices remain consumed by the day-to-day survival of running a classroom, leaving them without the mental bandwidth to monitor their own emotional reserves.
Anderson points to a close family friend—a smart, well-prepared first-year fourth-grade teacher in San Francisco whose parents are both educators—who found herself overwhelmed just weeks into the semester despite having a head start. The sheer volume of new information to process leaves little room to contemplate emotional energy.
If the slump persists past a couple of weeks, Anderson advises teachers to reach out to a colleague, mentor, or administrator to ask for help, stressing that the fatigue cannot be allowed to dictate the entire school year.
Ultimately, the October Blues are closely tied to feelings of competence. Anderson recalls working with a group of teachers who hit a deep emotional trough during their first October, only to return the following year with noticeably brighter energy and more frequent laughter. When asked if their classes were simply easier, the teachers replied that their classes were actually harder, but this time they possessed practical strategies for classroom management and student engagement. Knowing what to do transformed their experience, proving that having the right tools can keep the October Blues at bay.