Your brain carries every period change into the next one. It's called attention residue — and it's why 2pm feels impossible. Here's a 60-second micro-transition practice backed by neuroscience.
These aren't signs of weakness. They're signs of February.
Here's what most teachers get wrong about mid-year routine breakdown: They assume students are choosing to be sloppy. That they're testing boundaries or being deliberately difficult.
Your classroom feels transactional. You give directions, they follow them (or don't). You assign work, they complete it (or don't). Everyone is just going through the motions until the bell rings. What do you do?
You're still showing up every day. That matters more than you know.
Your brain doesn't shift between tasks as fast as your schedule demands. Here's a 60-second micro-transition practice that can change your whole afternoon.
The AI for STRONG Teachers Course is alive and growing in the STRONG Teachers Lounge. Here's an update on the newest addition.
Let's talk about the five real causes of teacher burnout—not the ones people want to talk about, but the ones that are actually burning you out.
You look at the calendar. Spring break is 6 weeks away. That might as well be 6 years. There’s nothing to work toward. No holidays. No breaks. No "classroom community" energy.
You’re standing there trying to decide—do you address this as a behavior problem or something else? And you’re exhausted, and February has already been hard, and you just need the class to function for the next 37 minutes.
Teacher burnout doesn’t need dramatic overhauls. It needs Kaizen: one 30-second classroom improvement, repeated. Here’s how small changes save careers.
You don’t need a teaching overhaul. Kaizen—the Japanese practice of continuous small improvement—can save your career one tiny change at a time.