The end of the school year is the perfect time to notice the recurring problems in your work day, and to plan new systems to make next year easier. We’re sharing the “decide once” strategy that helps reduce the decision fatigue teachers face every day by creating simple systems for predictable classroom problems. From behavior management and unfinished work to grading and email boundaries, we talk about practical ways to stop making the same exhausting decisions over and over so next school year feels less chaotic and more manageable.

Prefer to read? Grab the episode transcript and resources in the show notes here: https://www.secondstorywindow.net/podcast/decision-fatigue-teachers-2/

Resources:

• Fast drying stone sink trays
• Murdoku
• Check out our book Structure and Spark
• Join The Teacher Approved Club
• Connect with us on Instagram @2ndstorywindow
• Shop our teacher-approved resources
• Join our Teacher Approved Facebook group
• Leave a review on Apple Podcasts!
• Leave a comment or rating on Spotify

Related Episodes to Enjoy:

• Episode 79. Avoid Back to School Decision Fatigue with These 4 Teacher Approved Strategies
• Episode 77. 3 Reasons Why a First Day of School Script Will Save Your Sanity
• Episode 197. A Teacher Summer Self Care and Recovery Plan That Doesn’t Feel Like Work
• Episode 231. What’s Not Working in Your Classroom? Time to KISS Those Problems Goodbye!

Mentioned in this episode:

Join the Teacher Approved Club, where members get seasonal morning work pages for grades K–5 this month to add fall and holiday fun without throwing off their routines: https://secondstorywindow.net/club

This is episode 259 of Teacher Approved.

You're listening to Teacher Approved, the podcast helping

educators elevate what matters and simplify the rest. I'm

Heidi.

And I'm Emily. We're the creators behind Second Story

Window, where we give research-based and teacher

approved strategies that make teaching less stressful and more

effective. You can check out the show notes and resources from

each episode at secondstorywindow.net.

We're so glad you're tuning in today. Let's get to

the show.

Hey there. Thanks for joining us today. In today's

episode, we are talking about a strategy that can make your

whole life easier, seriously, and sharing a tip for surviving

your end of year events.

Let's start with a try it tomorrow, where we share a quick

win that you can try in your classroom right away. Emily,

what is our suggestion for this week?

Okay, this week, before the year ends, say thank you to

someone who helped make this year a little easier. Think

about everyone who helped you pull this year off. Maybe it's

your teammate who covers your class when you need to run to

the bathroom, or the cafeteria worker who somehow still smiles

while serving her 300th meal of the day, and maybe she saves you

the good salads or whatever.

Yeah, yeah, the emotional job of being a lunch worker is

wild, and probably nobody ever thinks her. You know, the kids

aren't. But this doesn't even have to be someone from school.

It could be the parent who had your back during a hard moment

instead of making it worse.

Uh huh. So whoever it is, find a way to share your

gratitude. Just send a text, a note, or take a moment to talk

as you pass each other in the workroom.

And we would like to thank all of you who have left

us lovely ratings and reviews. They help us out so much, and we

read every single one.

It's true we do, and they make it a little bit easier for

us to keep doing our podcast. So thank you.

All right, everyone, let's start with a story time.

So I had a year with a ton of mid year student turnover. Now,

my school always had high turnover rates, but that year,

it was like a third of the kids that I had at the end of the

year did not start the year in my class.

Oh my gosh. That is so hard. It's rough getting so many

new kids in the middle of the year, and every new kid that

comes in means a whole long to do list that you have to do when

you already have a long to do list.

Yeah, oh, the pit your stomach when you get that

dreaded email. It means, you know, stopping everything, and I

had to go and figure out what they needed. So find a folder,

find a name tag, make a desk label, grab the parent info,

figure out where their cubby was gonna go. Oh, and then, of

course, you have to prep the class that this is gonna happen.

Be cool, guys.

Don't make us look bad.

Because nobody had ever talked to me about how to

efficiently onboard a new student, every single time it

was like starting from scratch.

Yeah. And when something is so far outside your regular

routine, it feels like just a one off task, but it can start

happening like once a month.

Yes. So you know, here I am getting ready for the third

new student of the term, and the light bulb finally turned on.

I'm not a quick learner. I was like, This is so dumb. I'm doing

the same thing over and over and over and forgetting steps every

time. So I sat down and I made a bunch of new student bags with

all of their supplies, including, I was very proud of

remembering this, the little popsicle stick that you put in

your name picker jar. And then, plus, I finally made a checklist

so all of my steps were in one place.

And I'm really lucky that you figured all this out,

because by the time I started teaching, you told me that I

needed to do this and that it should be part of my back to

school prep to make these new student packs. And oh, it was so

easy to just gather everything while I'm already setting

everything up at the beginning of the year.

But what was even easier was the time that one of my

students switched schools and landed in your class. So because

we were doing the same things, I could just hand you all his

stuff, all ready to go.

That did work out that year, although I'm not gonna

lie, I was pretty much ready to send him back after a few days.

He was a rough one. I can't say I was too sad to say

goodbye there.

Yeah, I'm still salty about that. But today's episode

isn't about preparing for a new student. We're just going to

apply that principle to other parts of your school day. This

is an idea from our favorite Kendra Adachi at the Lazy Genius

podcast. We love her stuff, and if you like us, you'll probably

like her too.

Yes, but remember, the rule is that you are not allowed

to like her more than us. Okay? Everybody got that?

Yes, absolutely, you, if you're listening to us, you

implicitly signed on the line that you wouldn't do that.

Loyalty contract.

Yep. Okay, so Kendra calls this concept Decide Once.

The idea is that there are a million tiny decisions in your

life that don't actually need to be made over and over. They just

need some thoughtfulness about what the best action is, and

that's your decision. Then the next time the situation pops up,

you just move forward, because you already know what to do.

This is an especially useful strategy for teachers,

because there are so many decisions. The whole day is

nothing but decisions. If you are in the middle of teaching a

math lesson, you have to decide if the pacing is appropriate. Do

you need to slow down because the kids are confused or speed

up because they're bored? Do you need to redirect the kid looking

out the window, or is he just processing? How do you respond

to this student's answer to encourage richer thinking, what

modifications does the assignment need?

Yeah, and that's just in 30 seconds. If you expand that

out across the day, your life is just one decision after another,

and even if it's invisible, making a decision is literally

work.

Yeah, the average teacher makes something like 1500

decisions a day, and every single one of them costs you a

little bit of energy. That's why it's called decision fatigue.

And we did a deep dive on this back in episode 79 so if

you want to go check that one out, but the short version is

that by this point of the school year, your decision making

battery is at 1%.

And while there may not be a ton that you can do right

now to charge that battery, there's a lot you can do to make

sure that it doesn't get drained as much next year. You may not

know everything that's going to happen in your classroom in the

next year, but there is so much that you can predict. You will

face student behavior challenges and overflowing inbox and sub

plans, those are guaranteed.

Yep, and deciding once how to handle just those three

situations would make your day so much easier to navigate. But

there are so many more potential decide once opportunities. So

let's look at five categories of decisions and help you identify

where you could be making fewer decisions.

And in case you're wondering, no, we have not

forgotten that this is the end of the school year. We know you

are tired, but this moment offers a chance for change that

is going to be hard to come by later, and it's because you are

tired that it works so well.

Being fed up is your signal that something needs to

change. Once you have a few weeks of summer break behind

you, that vision will be less clear. You'll forget how

frustrating managing your homework folders was until

you're two weeks into September and fighting the same battle. So

use your annoyance to make next year less annoying.

And that is the whole framework of this episode. What

made you crazy this year? If something happened more than

three times, that is a problem with your system, and system

problems can usually be solved at one time.

Okay, so our first category is the big one. Decide

your default response to predictable problems. So we're

talking about the behavior stuff. What do you say when a

student blurts out? How do you resolve arguments at recess? How

do you redirect kids who are talking during work time? This

isn't the stuff that shows up on your pacing guide, but it's what

you spend 75% of your day managing. I made up that figure,

but it feels accurate.

90% feels probably more like it. And if you aren't sure

where to start, ask yourself, what situations kept pulling me

into the same conversations over and over all year long? Maybe it

was the bathroom. Some teachers spend the whole year being

asked, Can I go to the bathroom? Can I go to the bathroom? Can I

go to the bathroom? And answering that one kid at a

time, and that drains you.

And the answer is, not deal with bathroom requests

better. The answer is, decide once, what is your bathroom

system? Is it a sign out? Is it a hand signal? Is it two passes

a day? Pick one and use it until it stops working, and hopefully

it never does.

And that's the same with blurting. You can decide right

now, what is my go to response when a kid blurts out? Maybe

it's a hand signal. Maybe it's an acknowledgement and a

reminder. I can tell you have something to say, and I'm going

to come to you in two minutes.

The point is you don't have to decide what to do on the

spot, because not only is that exhausting, but it also means

your response is inconsistent, which kids pick up on so fast.

My kids pick up on that at my house, those inconsistent

systems get tested constantly.

Yeah, kids are crafty. They're always playing the odds

that if they keep pushing, this will be the moment you cave, but

if you respond the same way every time, they learn that what

you say is what you mean, and they will stop testing you so

often.

To solidify your decide once decisions. Write a script

for what to say. Maybe your decide once is that when a

student is staring off into space during work time your

prompt is, It looks like you need some help getting started.

The first step is to blank. So put it on a card or a sticky

note and keep it somewhere handy until it becomes an automatic

response that you don't even need to reference.

Most of the discipline problems you face fall into

predictable categories. The extra talking, daydreaming,

blurting out, interruptions, and because they're predictable, all

it takes is one decision to guide your response every time

they happen.

Okay, the second category of decisions involves your

boundaries around work. This is email, grading, availability,

all of the emotional labor stuff. And the question to ask

yourself for this one is, where did I feel resentful this year?

Resentment is a big clue that you're letting other

people's priorities dictate how you spend your time.

I love the book Essentialism by Greg McKeown,

and he has a quote that stuck with me, if you don't prioritize

your life, someone else will. Teaching may be the only

profession where everyone from central office administrators to

random people online feels entitled to tell you how to

spend every minute of your day. Even though most of those people

have no clue about the realities of running a classroom, they

still have opinions, and they're not shy about sharing them. So

if you let outside expectations determine your priorities,

you're going to spend every day bouncing around like a ping pong

ball in a blender.

That's visceral. And that's why deciding once can be

so useful here. If you don't determine what's reasonable for

you, other people will. Take email, for example. I just saw a

teacher on threads yesterday. She got an email from a parent

at 9pm asking what the teacher was doing to help find a lost

water bottle. That's not a situation that needs to be

handled at 9pm.

Oh my gosh. Of course, if you wait to respond, you end up

spending the whole morning before kids arrive answering

everyone else's urgent questions instead of managing your own

tasks. So what are your email rules? Maybe you decide on a two

stage email boundary where you scan the inbox for essential

information before school and only reply to what's truly

urgent, and then use 15 minutes after dismissal to reply to

everything else. That way you prevent email from consuming

your prep time.

And you can apply the same philosophy to grading. If

you don't decide for yourself, then every single paper in your

inbox becomes its own decision. Do I grade this? Do I need to

write feedback? Do I spend my prep time on this, or do I take

the stack home with me and grade on the couch?

And grading is important, but it cannot be allowed to

consume the time and energy you need for actual teaching and

living your life. So decide what gets graded and at what level.

If the purpose of grading something is to determine if the

students understand it, what's the minimum you could look at to

make that decision? Maybe you only grade the even problems on

a math page.

And are there things that you can just skip grading

altogether? When I taught, we corrected our morning work as a

class, because the discussion was actually part of the

learning, so I never bothered to grade the page.

Oh no, not ever. Do not grade morning work unless you're

required to grade every assignment. But even then, are

there some things that can be checked for completion only?

Yeah, you can just decide once that you save your best

efforts for assignments that will inform your instruction.

Now, in a perfect world, every assignment would be viewed

as a formative assessment, but until the district hires a

secretary to handle your paperwork, you do have to be

selective.

Yeah, unless they're going to offer you some better

support, you need strong boundaries to protect your

peace. Apply that to your work hours as well. What time do you

walk out of the building? What time do you stop responding to

messages? Are you on Class Dojo or, you know, whatever app on

the weekends? Because if you don't decide, you're going to be

answering those parent messages about water bottles at 9pm and

then resenting it.

And that trains people that they have unlimited access

to you, which means they'll keep expecting it. So decide when

you're off duty. Maybe it's, I do not respond to messages after

five, and I do not respond on weekends. Whatever your number

is, decide once and stick with it, and maybe make sure your

email is not on your phone.

Yes, very wise. Okay. Number three is to decide your

flow of stuff.

Stuff. Piles. Unfinished tasks, ugh. The papers on the

counter that you've forgotten exist. And the question for this

one is, what kept piling up literally on your desk or in

your brain all year?

I saw a quote once that has haunted me ever since,

clutter is the physical manifestation of unmade

decisions.

Oh my gosh, it's so true.

As someone who struggles to make those decisions and

therefore deals with a lot of clutter, that just felt a little

too personal. So I promise that I'm not being judgmental when I

say that the stack of papers on your desk is not paper. It's the

decisions you've not made yet. Do I need to save this file,

grade this, send this home, or throw it away? Until you decide,

it stays like an open loop in your brain.

Oh, it's so hard. I feel like I hit my decision fatigue

early. So I feel like I I'm burned out on decisions very

early in the day. And so there's always so many, so many

decisions piling up around my house. Okay, but one of the

easiest wins then in this whole episode is to decide how you are

going to handle the papers that come in frequently. If you don't

have a specific turn in system for student work start there.

But also consider how you handle unfinished work. Now, I

never did get a good system down for this, so it meant I had to

make a decision every single time it came up. Save yourself

that hassle. Decide, do you have a basket for all unfinished

work? Maybe your kids have a folder in their desks.

And then also decide when it comes back out, because part

of the problem is having a system for stuff going in and no

system for stuff coming out, and then it just becomes a paper

graveyard.

Yeah, so decide once unfinished work goes in this

folder. Every Friday we do a finish up Friday for 30 minutes,

or whatever the rhythm is, but the cycle is decided.

Yes. Another strategy that can help is deciding once

to adopt the One Minute Rule, which is something we picked up

from Gretchen Rubin.

Yes, and we love Gretchen Rubin as much as we love Kendra.

Again, you will probably love her podcast if you have not

discovered her already. But remember the rule, you cannot

like her and her sister more than you like me and my sister.

Yes, correct. We have strict rules here, but the one

minute rule just says that if something takes less than a

minute, just do it now. Don't let a 30 second task haunt you

for weeks when you could have just done it and been done with

it. You will be amazed at what a difference just that tiny switch

makes. And I try to keep that going for myself at home. And

the other one is the one touch rule, where, if I'm holding the

mail, for example, I deal with it right then. I try to, okay, I

try to deal with it right then. I tell myself, one touch rule,

one touch rule, don't set it down, deal with it now. So those

can go hand in hand, one minute and one touch.

It's just too much stuff all the time. Okay, our fourth

decide once category is to decide your repeatable routines

for the situations that come up over and over again. These are

your SOPs, your standard operating procedures. And the

reflection question here is, what situations left me

scrambling to remember what I did last time?

Like the new student bag situation that we were talking

about earlier. That is a perfect example. Getting a new student

isn't a hard situation, is just interruptive, because you have

to stop everything and switch gears so you can make a whole

bunch of decisions.

Your new student protocol is a great place to add an SOP,

like we said, but consider your system for helping absent

students who come back and need to catch up. Maybe there's a

folder on the absent students desk, and you assign a buddy to

add any missing work to it, done. I

t's also helpful to decide your SOP for making sub

plans and events like picture day and field trips. These are

things you only do once or twice a year, but it takes real effort

to manage them if you start from scratch every time.

You will be so happy to have these done. Once you see

how many decisions you're saving, you're going to wonder

how you ever manage without these.

Okay, our last decide once category is to decide how

you collaborate with other adults, and the question to ask

yourself is, where did working with other adults feel unclear

or frustrating this year?

Honestly, the kid part of teaching is hard, but it's still

so much easier than dealing with other adults. It's the co-worker

drama that just tips me over the edge.

Oh yes, it's so hard. It shouldn't be this hard. We're

all grown ups. But the tricky part about using decide once

here is that you likely don't have complete control over every

situation, so it is important to be clear with what you can

control.

A great place to start is deciding in advance things like,

what will I volunteer for and what will I not? Because if you

don't decide that ahead of time, you're going to get pressured

into saying yes to things that you will regret for the next six

months.

So decide once. I will run one committee, but not two,

or I'll bring food for the team breakfast, but I am not the

person organizing it, or I'll cover one duty trade per month,

and that's it.

Yeah, because somehow you're the one that's always

willing to cover for someone else, but somehow they're never

available when you need their help. And then the other piece

is, how are you going to share resources? Or are you going to,

because unclear expectations are a recipe for hurt feelings.

So decide for yourself. Maybe you decide to share your

Google Slides, but not to share materials, because those cost

you a lot of money, or whatever your version is, but you decide

once, and then you don't have to litigate it every time someone

asks.

So those are our five decide once categories. Number

one, decide your default responses to predictable

behavior problems. Number two, decide your work boundaries.

Number three, decide the flow of stuff. Number four, decide your

repeatable routines. And number five, decide how you collaborate

with other adults.

Okay, is your head spinning because we just threw a

lot at you? But let's simplify. Sometime in the next couple of

days before this year fades from your brain, open up a Notes app

on your phone or grab a piece of paper and make a list. The title

is, what drove me crazy this year, and then write down

everything that bugged you, drained you or made you cry, and

then mark anything that happened more than once. Anything you

marked is a good candidate for the decide once treatment.

And you do not have to fix all of these. The point is

not to overhaul your whole life. The point is to take a few of

those recurring frustrations off your plate. And if you are a

Teacher Approved Club member, we've got a special bonus

printable for you. We've made you a blank what drove me crazy

this year list just for this exercise. So if you remember,

you can grab it now. You can print it and handwrite on it, or

type it right in the Google Doc, whatever works for your brain.

And if you are not in the club and you want to know more

about it, you can find that link in the show notes too. The club

is where we go deeper on all the stuff we talk about here on the

show, with bonus resources, monthly trainings and challenges

to help you get where you want to be.

Decide once is such a useful strategy because it keeps

you in control of the moment. You don't have to drop

everything else you're managing to tend to this one problem,

because you already know how to manage it.

And that is such a helpful framework that we

applied it to the whole school year in our new book Structure

and Spark. So think about behavior. A lot of teachers hit

a wall in December when your usual system stopped working. It

doesn't mean that you failed. It just means that December asks

something different of you than September does.

Right. And if you have already decided that when

December rolls around, you're going to layer in a short term

behavior, reward system, you aren't scrambling on December 12

when the wheels start coming off the bus, you already know what

you're reaching for.

And the same thing in January. Suddenly, the seating

arrangement that was just fine before does not work anymore.

You know this is coming. Kids need a mid year reset. So you

can decide right now that when you get back in January, you are

going to separate kids a little more than you did at the start

of the year. You could literally pick out the new arrangement

before you leave for summer.

That is the power of decide once. It's not about the

paper or the email. This applies to the whole year. When you know

what each season is going to ask of you, you stop reacting and

you start managing proactively.

That is exactly why we wrote the book. Structure and

Spark maps every season, from back to school to the home

stretch, and it gives you the engagement tools and behavior

systems for each one. So instead of deciding every August and

every December and every January, you're just going to

decide once how to handle what you already know is coming.

The book comes out August 18, and pre orders are open now,

and they really do help us out so much. The link is in the show

notes, and we've got some fun pre-order bonuses coming your

way over the next few months. We would love to have you with us

for this.

Now for our Teacher Approved Tip of the Week, where

we share an actionable tip to help you elevate what matters

and simplify the rest. This week's teacher approved tip is

buy ice cream sandwiches. Tell us about it, Heidi.

I don't think there's ever a bad time to buy ice cream

sandwiches, but this can be such a lifesaver at the end of the

school year. If one of your upcoming celebrations involves

an ice cream bar, you know kids love an ice cream bar, do

yourself a favor and buy ice cream sandwiches instead of tubs

of ice cream. They're so much easier to manage. You don't have

to find room in the faculty room freezer for a giant tub of ice

cream, usually around everyone else's tub of ice cream. You

don't have to have a line of 25 kids waiting while you try to

scoop bowls, and they're getting impatient, and the ice cream is

rock hard because it just came out of the freezer.

I think you still have ice cream PTSD.

I do.

But with this, you can still have the ice cream bar

fun. Just unwrap the sandwiches and put them in a bowl and then

let the kids smother them in sprinkles and chocolate sauce

and whipped cream and all the things. And now they have a

little ice cream sandwich sundae situation.

And the kids will still think this is magical. So save

yourself the hassle, save yourself the shoulder pain from

scooping for 20 minutes straight, and grab a couple of

boxes of ice cream sandwiches.

To wrap up the show we are sharing what we're giving extra

credit to this week. Emily, what gets your extra credit?

I'm giving extra credit to murdoku. So maybe people have

seen the murdle activity books that are for like kids and

adults. There's different versions. It's a fun puzzle book

for solving a pretend murder, and not in a gruesome way. But

murdoku is a really unique twist on it, because it's a logic

puzzle. So you kind of have a grid you're working from that

has some things on the grid, like furniture, and then you're

given a set of clues. And those clues help you narrow down from

the list, like, who could possibly be the murderer. And

it's so fun, and I like that they're quick to do, like, I can

just decide to do one, and it will take me, like, five

minutes. So it's not a big time commitment, either. And it kind

of reminds me of playing clue.

That's what it sounds like.

Yeah. So anyway, I highly recommend this book if you want

to do some more analog activities. This one's really

fun.

I'll have to check that out. I can add it to my analog

bag.

Yes. Okay, what are you giving extra credit to, Heidi?

Well, this is less fun, but my extra credit goes to fast

drying stone sink trays. I was tired of getting that dried up

puddle under the soap dispenser. You know, where it gets, like,

gritty, like, I hate that. And I thought there had to be a

solution.

There has to be a better way!

I could do a commercial. And that's when I found these.

They're just little stone trays that you set your soap

dispensers on, and they absorb water crazy fast. And plus,

they're really affordable. I think I got a set of three for

$12. And I will have a cheap problem solver. We need more of

those in life.

Yeah. And the funny thing that I'm laughing about is that

I just recently got one too, but not, not exactly the same. The

one I got is like two long pieces that have, like a half

circle cut out at the end. So you put it around your your

faucet.

Oh, oh, okay.

And so then it goes, like, because I have a problem

where my back splash, like the grout right along my counter,

and the backsplash is always like chipping, because water

gets up there. And so I just barely got those. But I also

have, I have a drying rack for dishes that's the same kind of

thing. And I have a bath mat in my bathroom, outside my shower

that's like this.

I didn't even think of a bath mat.

Yeah, so and I thought I would hate it but I've had it

for years. It's not cold. You know, since it's a stone, it

seems like it would be cold on your feet, but it's not at all.

And I just like that it's not a mat that's getting moldy.

Oh, well I'll have to check that out.

Yep, all of the diato, I think it's diatomaceous earth

stuff. It's all the rage now, and it's, and there's so many

affordable places selling it too where, when I first got my bath

mat, there was like, one high end company that was doing this,

and nobody else was, but now you can get them cheap anywhere.

That's good. I'm gonna have to look for something. So

my sink doesn't have a backsplash, but the grout

between, like the sink and the counter, or the latex, what is

it, silicone, I'm always having trouble leaking there. I wonder

if I can get something like, goes over the edge. I'm gonna

have to investigate now.

Yeah.

Got me on a quest.

Well, that is it for today's episode. Decide once while this

year is still fresh, and start next year off with a whole new

bag of tools.

And if you're a club member, if you want the

printable version of the what drove me crazy this year list,

head on over to your dashboard on the club and look for it

there.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Teacher Approved. I'm

Heidi.

And I'm Emily. Thank you for listening. Be sure to follow

or subscribe in your podcast app so that you never miss an

episode.

You can connect with us and other teachers in the

Teacher Approved Facebook group. We'll see you here next week.

Bye for now.

Bye.