One Tired Teacher: Teaching Without Burnout

Summer break can start and somehow you still feel like you’re on duty. If your body is home but your brain is still in the classroom, I made this one for you. I keep it simple on purpose, no new system, no productivity plan, just a pause to breathe and reconnect with yourself outside of teaching. I tell the truth about what it looked like when I let the job become my whole life, starting with a brutal first year in 1997 and years of living in fight or flight. I talk about getting sick,...

Looking for a simple way to teach growth mindset, productive struggle, and the engineering design process—especially during testing season? This episode shares a real classroom STEM challenge that shows how failure becomes feedback when students feel safe to try. What if the word failure stopped feeling like a verdict and started sounding like a clue? A chaotic testing schedule pushed us to improvise, and a simple Piggy and Elephant story turned into a full-on design challenge with a big mind...

Teacher observations can trigger stress, self-doubt, and overperforming—especially during evaluation season. In this episode, we talk honestly about how to stay grounded, protect your confidence, and remember what actually matters when you’re being observed. If evaluation season ties your stomach in knots, you’re not alone—and you’re not a score. We take a clear-eyed look at how to stay grounded when someone with a clipboard walks in, and we share a toolkit that turns everyday good teaching i...

The school year restarts, the weather turns wild, and our schedules fill faster than a radar screen during a storm. We’re leaning into a smarter way to teach: integrating reading and science through a focused study on severe weather so every minute pulls double duty. From thunderstorms to hurricanes, we use clear, kid-friendly texts to teach main idea, text features, vocabulary in context, and questioning—while giving students concrete safety steps that lessen anxiety and build confidence. W...