What’s in Your Backpack?

By Jennifer Johnson, B.Ed., M.A.

As the new school year approaches, most of us picture the backpack filled with books and supplies. But there’s another backpack we carry every day (often unconsciously) filled with our strengths and weakness, thoughts, emotions, habits, and stories. Together, they define our learning edge for the year ahead. This invisible load shapes how we show up with students, colleagues, and ourselves.

In education today, the landscape keeps shifting beneath our feet. Just when we think we might catch our breath, new demands appear.

But what if we dug into that backpack to find things that could lighten the load?
What if we could let go of the stories that have started to frame our experience of things in limited ways?
What if we could choose more intentionally what we put inside?

This is the invitation of the new school year: to unpack, repack, and travel lighter with a genuine sense of possibility. Our internal expectations and narrative are what frame what is possible. So, let’s see what is in our backpack.

Hidden Pockets

Sometimes our backpacks have hidden pockets – places we forget about until we dig deeper. The same is true of our inner lives. We may be carrying emotions we’ve pushed aside or strengths we haven’t named. Looking into those hidden pockets can reveal treasures we didn’t realize we had or weights we didn’t know we were still carrying.

Not everything in your backpack is meant to stay there forever.

Some things are resources– resilience, compassion, curiosity –they help us uncover what is possible as we move forward on our journey.
Others are baggage– outdated expectations, Type A tendencies, perfectionism, comparison – templates we have created from previous experiences. Knowing the difference is part of the Leader Within’s wisdom that keeps the full dimension of the future alive and prevents us from losing momentum as we move through the year.

The Weight of It All

Granted, educators have been carrying a lot for the last few years. But it is up to us as leaders of the school year journey to do our inner work as our own homework. What we carry impacts us and others that we bump up against in the classrooms and hallways.

A heavy backpack limits the way we move – our shoulders slump, our steps drag. The same is true of carrying invisible weight. When you unpack what no longer serves you, you walk taller. You have more energy to notice what’s around you. You can help others with their backpacks, and sometimes even share the load when it makes sense.

Meet Your Inner Travel Companions

The good news? The inner compass you need most is already in your backpack. When you access your unique Captain and Poet, you tap into a renewable source of strength, inspiration, and purpose.

Inside all of us lives the Leader Within – a partnership of two vital energies:

The Captain offers clarity, courage, and the freedom to explore.
The Poet brings openness, insight, and inspiration.

The Captain is the tools – the calculator, the agenda to organize our time, the ruler, the eraser when we make mistakes. The Poet is the inspiration – the colourful markers, the sticky notes for beautiful ideas, the doodles in the margins of that agenda. And one makes the other better.

Together, they guide us to navigate challenges with both discipline and openness, courage and vulnerability.

Captain’s Assessment

· What natural Captain quality (clarity, courage, focus, perseverance, decisiveness) that you’re packing for this year. How will it support you?

· Think of one Captain quality you want to ADD to your backpack to help you expand your impact and lean into your role more to forge a culture of growth and accountability with your students and colleagues.

· Think of one Captain quality that you want to SUBTRACT a little to allow more room for your Poet.

Poet’s Reflection

What natural Poet quality (curiosity, empathy, imagination, openness) that you’re packing for this year. How will it inspire you?
Think of one Poet quality you want to ADD to your backpack to help you expand your capacity to connect more deeply, spark creativity in your teaching, and cultivate a value-driven culture where your students and colleagues feel like they belong.
Think of one Poet quality that you want to SUBTRACT a little to allow more room for action and alignment with others.

Time to Unpack

Before moving forward, pause and look inside your backpack. What have you been carrying that no longer serves you?

What heavy stories, fears, or habits are weighing you down?
- Where has your Captain grown weary?
- Where has your Poet ignored that inner voice?
What mental or emotional clutter is holding back your Leader Within’s growth?
- Perhaps it’s an expectation that things won’t go well, an underestimation of the people around you, a feeling that you don’t belong or that your voice doesn’t matter, or an old belief that you’re not good enough. These are the stones that make your backpack heavy.

Repacking for the Journey Ahead

Each day you step out the door with your very own backpack to design and repack. No one else gets to choose what’s inside. Every morning is a new choice: Will I carry the weight of yesterday, or will I pack for possibility today?

Repacking isn’t a once-a-semester ritual; it’s an ongoing practice. Just as backpacks need tidying daily, so do we. At the end of a tough week, pause and ask:

Did I pick up something that isn’t mine to carry?
Did I forget to repack my curiosity or courage?

Now comes the choice: what do you want to carry forward? The Captain and the Poet travel best together. Not sure where to start?

Captain’s Essentials	Poet’s Essentials
Focus Courage Perseverance Adventurousness	Empathy Imagination Perceptiveness Intuition

Together, these qualities fuel the Leader Within – enabling you to respond rather than react, to lead with emotional courage and inspired action.

Emotional courage means showing up authentically, even when it feels risky.
Inspired action means aligning your steps with your deepest values, even when the path ahead is unclear.

When your Captain and Poet work in sync, you don’t just push through – you pivot, adapt, and grow. Your backpack feels more like a battery pack. You feel energized.

A Blank Page

This year like that stack of blank pages in your backpack. Inspiring? Yes, and sometimes scary, too. But here’s the gift: you have agency in what to carry with you.

Ask yourself:

What does my Leader Within want me to remember or believe as I step forward?
If there were no limits, what could I accomplish this year?
How can my Captain and Poet work together to shape this journey?
What will I carry with MORE intention – and what will I release?

Every time you pause to repack your backpack, you are choosing presence over pressure, purpose over depletion. You are saying yes to a lighter, more authentic year ahead.

When a challenge shows up, it can be daunting or energizing, depending on what’s in your backpack. What if we began to see the challenges that arise as opportunities to draw on what’s in our backpacks, maybe for the first time.

Everyone has a Captain and Poet in their backpack. What if we could unleash them together?

Jennifer Johnson, B.Ed. M.A. is the CEO and Co-Founder of Captains & Poets.