Save Time, Save Energy: Smart End-of-Year Moves to Prevent Teacher Burnout

I’m all about keeping things simple. This is certainly important all year long, as the workload for every teacher is enormous.  But at the end of the year, when you are extra exhausted, simplifying becomes even more important. With end of year assessments looming, squeezing in last field trips, finalizing report cards, and everything else on your mind at the end of the year, it’s imperative that we keep it simple. No one wants to begin the summer break feeling drained.  Now, more than ever, it’s important to do what we can to prevent teacher burnout from overtaking us.

Here are some ways to keep it simple at the end of the school year to prevent teacher burnout.  

Lesson prep

First, something I always advocate for–don’t worry about making things pretty. Slide creation is  one of the biggest time wasters out there. The time it takes to search for the slide template you like, then modify those slides to get them how you want, then snip, copy, and paste images into your slides takes more time than you might realize.

It’s also not necessary.

Kids don’t care. In fact, it can even be detrimental to their ability to focus. The National Institute of Health warns that “too much time spent in front of a screen and multitasking with other media has been related to worse executive functioning and academic performance.” What teacher needs that??

Keeping screen use at a minimum is a very good thing! So instead of taking the time to search for and adjust a slide template, think about what you can just put under the document camera. Or create an anchor chart with your kids if needed. At this time of the year, it’s most likely you can just bring out previous anchor charts to review skills. This is even faster than sitting down to ask AI to make one!

Speaking of AI…

Save time planning by leveraging it. For example, just this week I needed to come up with a bunch of examples to teach different sentence types to incorporate The Writing Revolution across grade levels next year. For third grade,  I asked ChatGPT to create several complex sentences with subordinate clauses around the topic of early explorers. In all of two or three seconds, I had perfectly crafted examples all done. Because I was doing this for multiple grade levels and many topics within a grade level, AI tremendously cut down my workload.

Now more than ever, this is the time of year that’s hardest to keep students engaged and focused.  Lighten your load by asking AI to help you think of ways to increase engagement for a lesson you’re already doing.  Or ask it to create an engaging lesson from scratch–just give it a standard or a topic and specify your grade level.  This is a burnout prevention double-whammy:  you’re not reinventing the wheel in lesson planning, and AI is doing the work of creative engagement design!

Another idea-tell it a lesson you did earlier in the year and ask for a new twist on it.  You can even tell it details like add movement or conversation, or specific student needs, such as considerations for visual impairment, ADHD, English language learners, etc. You’ll be amazed with what AI will spit out. The more refined your prompt, the better. This isn’t a cop out, either.  Recalling  previously learned material is retrieval practice–a key element to making your teaching stick!

Grading

Many districts have requirements about how many grades need to be put into the grade book per quarter. However, grading doesn’t have to be complicated. Nor does it have to be time-consuming.

Consider writing, for example.  

Instead of collecting 25 essays to grade, just look at pieces of student writing over the course of a few days. You might, for example, just look at introductions one day.  Another day, you might look for paragraph structure or use of academic vocabulary. Looking through just one lens at a time makes very light work for the teacher. Each of these small parts could be a mini grade all by themselves, or you might put a few together.  There’s no need to wait until the end of revising and editing to look at kids’ work

More ways to prevent teacher burnout when it comes to grading  

Give students specific criteria on their work so that they can self-assess.  This will help them notice things to improve so that the final look- through that you give it will be a better product–and save you time. 

Along with this, everything doesn’t have to be graded! I repeat: not everything needs to be graded!  It’s the feedback that matters, not the score.  Consider focusing more on feedback than anything else.  Just be sure you give your students time to act on that feedback to make it truly meaningful.  

As well,  what about giving kids a bit of a mental break this time of year too, and doing more collaborative group work? Book clubs, peer feedback on writing, Socratic seminars, and small group or partner work  can play a bigger role at this time of the year.

Another teacher time saver?

Combine lessons.  I talk about this a lot.  Because they are two sides of the very same coin, combining reading and writing lessons is easy to do, makes a whole lot of sense, and yes, saves a ton of time.  This time of year is perfect for practicing how it might go to do that.  I share a lot more about it in this post, as well as the rationale for it in this post, and I even created a mini course that walks you through the process! Why not get a feel for it now so that you’re well set up to do it from the start next year…and save time right from the start?

Make the most of the time you have.

Like 1,000 paper cuts, there are so many subtle ways we lose small amounts of time all across the day, which add up big time.  Things we don’t even notice!  Grab my cheat sheet that details 12 ways we often lose time and how to avoid them all so you can make the most of the time you’re at school.

One last thing

With all of the end-of-the-year stress, don’t forget the students.  They are also feeling all sorts of things as the year winds down: anxiety, sadness, excitement, uncertainty.  Don’t lose sight of connecting with them these last few weeks.  Because at the end of the day, it’s these connections that will be their lasting memories.  Not the assignments or the grades.  Certainly not the standardized tests.  It’s you, the culture you’ve created, and the impact you’ve made that matters most.  Keeping this in mind can help in not losing sight of what’s important.  Often, just focusing on this can go a long way to prevent unnecessary teacher burnout!

Could you use a thinking partner to simplify at this stressful time of year?   I’m here for you!  Because no one can do this work alone, I’m available for virtual coaching calls.  Simply email me at [email protected] or reach out for a coaching call!  

---

Who is Coach from the Couch??  I’m Michelle, a 25-year veteran educator, currently a K-5 literacy coach.  I continue to learn alongside teachers in classrooms each and every day, and it’s my mission to support as many teachers just like you as I can.  

Or, consider joining my Facebook community–a safe, supportive environment (really–no blaming or shaming allowed!)  where you can ask questions, learn ideas, and share your thoughts among other literacy-loving educators!