Avoid Back to School Decision Fatigue with These 4 Teacher Approved Strategies [episode 79]

Emily
Hey, there. Thanks for joining us today. In today’s episode, we’re sharing four strategies for avoiding decision fatigue at back to school time, and a teacher approved tip for taking care of yourself on the first day of school.

Heidi
We start our episodes with a morning message, just like we used to do at morning meeting in our classrooms. This week’s morning message is do you make your bed every day? Emily?

Emily
I do. But that feels like maybe I’m overstating what I actually do because I don’t have a fancy bed set at the moment. So it’s just straightening the pillows and pulling up the sheets and comforter. I can do it in about 10 seconds. But I do do that first thing every day. And it’s nice to start the day with an easy win. How about you Heidi? Do you make the bed every day?

Heidi
I do similar philosophy of just you know, trying to start the day with the win. Plus, I have to straighten my sheets before I can be comfortable in bed at night. So I might as well just make my bed. But I will admit that if I am running behind in the morning, making my bed is the first thing I do skip.

Emily
For sure. So we have some fun responses from our community. Jennifer said I pull my covers up each morning. Very rarely do I tuck things in and I can respect everything. It’s a lot of work. Angie said I make my bed each morning even when I’m running behind. Something about having the bed made just makes me feel so much more relaxed climbing into bed at the end of the long day. I get them Yes, gift to your future self.

Emily
Ashley said I do not make my bed daily. It depends on my mood. I respect it.

Heidi
I wonder if you can determine our mood by the state of our bed.

Emily
Abby said I get up earlier than my husband. So he’s in charge of making the bed. Totally fair. Dale said I do not make my bed each day. But I do hang out the bedding Japanese style each day the weather’s nice. And now I’m immediately so interested in this practice of hanging out bedding every day in Japan. That’s so cool.

Heidi
Oh, I did I asked him a follow up to that. Because like, what what do you do if it rains, he’s like, Oh, you take it in before you leave. So it’s just like a little while before you leave here. And that does make a lot of sense because every time I’m making the bed like feels like it could use an air out, you know, it gets stuffy.

Emily
I love it. Christie said I did not use to make my bed. But someone said a habit can be created in 30 days. I tried it last year and I continue to this day. Oh, Christy. And Jennifer said I get up and leave before my husband so I don’t make the bed. But I do pull up my side of the covers when I get out. Except in May. It’s all I can do to roll out of bed at the end of the school year.

Emily
Yeah, we all know that goes far enough. We’d love to hear your answer to this question and other conversations over in our teacher approved Facebook group.

Heidi
Back in the stone age when I was just a wee baby teacher. The internet was also quite young. So you couldn’t really do a quick search for a fun idea for starting the school year, you were basically limited to what another teacher might be willing to share with you.

Emily
Or if you were lucky enough, you bought a $15 book from Scholastic that you hoped would have at least one idea you could actually use.

Heidi
Oh, I spent so much money on teacher idea books that did not end up having any ideas I could use. Yep. But now of course, you kind of had the opposite problem. With $15, I could buy any number of Back to School activities. Right?

Emily
So then the question is, which of these limitless options are worthy of my $15.

Heidi
So when we’re faced with so many options, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. And this can result in decision fatigue.

Emily
If you’re not familiar with the term decision fatigue is the complete overwhelm you feel as a teacher as a result of the sheer number of decisions that we have to make daily. After making a string of decisions, our ability to make additional decisions is greatly impaired.

Heidi
So that you know by the end of the day, we are left with a decision making hangover.

Emily
Yeah, pretty much. Common symptoms of decision fatigue are brain fog, feeling tired, or other signs of physical and mental fatigue. I sound like one of those pharmaceutical commercials side effects of being a teacher may include.

Heidi
Well then you can add this to the side effect list. The symptoms can increase as you continue making decisions.

Emily
Great So, as a long day full of decision making wears on, you wind up feeling increasingly drained, great.

Heidi
Decision fatigue can also lead to poor decisions like impulse buying, I think we’ve all been there, procrastination being paralyzed by your choices, or recklessly defaulting to what’s easiest, even if it’s not the wisest option, just to have it dealt with.

Emily
Oh, I know, for me, I’m really prone to decision fatigue, and it manifests in my life. By having that analysis paralysis, where I just cannot make a decision at all. I’m doing all the research, and I just can’t commit or manifest by me just like actively avoiding making a decision at all just not going to do it. I’m going to wait until the last second. And neither of those are sustainable ways to live.

Heidi
Now, you know, in the grand scheme of things, decision fatigue Isn’t life or death. But that doesn’t mean that this is not a real problem.

Emily
Yeah, feeling drained and making poor decisions can easily take a large toll on your health, your relationships and your overall ability to function. In fact, decision fatigue has probably landed us all in a situation or two that we’ve regretted. So it’s important for all of us to be aware if we may be at risk for developing decision fatigue.

Heidi
Good thing I’ve got a list of risk factors here. A person is more at risk of experiencing decision fatigue, if they make many decisions throughout the day, feel greatly affected by the decisions they make, make very stressful decisions, make very complex decisions, and make decisions that affect other people in a significant way.

Emily
So basically, teachers. Teachers have all the risk factors for developing decision fatigue. I guarantee no teacher is shocked to hear that.

Heidi
Yeah, it’s definitely not surprising, when you consider that teachers make something like 1500 educational decisions in a day, oh, gosh, that works out to be about four decisions per minute.

Emily
I bet that number is even higher when you’re starting the school year, the sheer volume of decisions that have to be made can be paralyzing. We’ve been talking a lot recently about procedures and all the details that go into a successful one. And we came up with 17 decisions you need to make just to plan your procedure for walking in the hall. That one procedure.

Heidi
Yeah, that’s not an exaggeration, we really did think of that many. And we probably could have come up with more questions, but we ran out of room on the page.

Emily
And then we have to follow up those decisions about procedures with all of the planning about how to teach that procedure. And then all the decisions you make while teaching the procedure. A teacher’s brain is constantly thinking five steps ahead.

Heidi
Yeah, well, when a half of your brain is teaching a lesson about your procedure, the other half was pointing out things like hmm, that kid isn’t paying attention. Is making eye contact enough to get his attention? Should I call his name? Or should I go stand next to his desk while I’m talking? Does the rest of the class understand what I’m saying? Do those kids look confused? What’s another way I can explain this? Are my expectations too high? Or do we just need more practice?

Emily
And that is all for a single procedure. No wonder teachers are so exhausted all the time. Okay, so what can we do to reduce the decision fatigue that comes with back to school?

Heidi
Well, I’m sorry, but there’s just nothing you can do? You’re out of luck.

Emily
Oh no.

Heidi
Just kidding! We’d never leave you hanging like that. It is our mission to help you simplify your teaching. So we have got four tried and true strategies to help lighten the decision making load as you head into back to school season. And the first strategy is to manage your energy. Emily, can you tell us more about that?

Emily
Of course. Because I have to admit this is a reminder, I need too, I think we all do. When you’re thinking about decisions, it can be helpful to think of your decision making ability has a limited resource, kind of like a battery. Each decision you make uses some of the battery’s charge and decreases the number of decisions you can make later on.

Heidi
And since each decision is depleting your energy, you need to be strategic about how you manage and use that energy. A good idea might be making your biggest decisions first thing in the morning.

Heidi
I came across an interview with Dr. Lisa McLean from the American Medical Association. And she had this to say, “Research shows that the best time to make decisions is in the morning. That’s when we make the most accurate and thoughtful decisions. And we tend to be more cautious and meticulous. We hit a plateau in the afternoon.” I think we’ve all felt that. “And by the evening our decisions may be more impulsive.”

Emily
Yeah, that makes so much sense. I know I’m so much fresher in the morning.

Heidi
So that means that we need to be well rested If we want to be making our best morning decisions, and that is why prioritizing sleep is key to managing your energy. Now, somewhere out there, a listener just rolled their eyes at me. And I felt that because everyone says to prioritize sleep, and no one ever does, but we need to be better. And I’m saying we because I am definitely in the not prioritizing sleep camp.

Emily
Yeah. And while we’re at it, we should probably make sure we’re drinking enough water and eating at regular times. Just gonna mention that here too.

Heidi
So basically, we just need to treat ourselves like houseplants.

Emily
Or toddlers. But unfortunately, there isn’t a more grown up grown up making sure we have our sippy cup and a little snack. So when signs of decision fatigue show up, that should alert us that we need to switch gears or take a little break to manage our precious energy. Maybe some goldfish crackers would help too. Goldfish crackers are never a bad idea.

Heidi
Goldfish crackers are never a bad idea. But you know, we wouldn’t have to manage our decision fatigue. If we didn’t have to make so many dang decisions in the first place.

Emily
I for one would like to take a long vacation for making any decisions at all. But since it’s not realistic to get rid of all of our decisions, especially back to school time, maybe we can make less of them. So our second strategy for managing decision fatigue is to make fewer decisions.

Heidi
If we had to decide what to do, every second of every day, we would just go crazy. Fortunately, a lot of our lives are automated by schedule and habit. You know, I don’t wake up on a Tuesday and wonder if I’m going to work that day, the decision has already been made.

Heidi
And as much as we might wish the question of work was up for debate, it does make life simpler to have already decided. So how can we apply that idea to smaller decisions?

Emily
If you follow Kendra at the lazy genius, you know, she has a principle called decide once. And it’s just like it sounds like you pick a question and decide the answer once. The next time that situation crops up, you already know exactly what you’ll do.

Heidi
A very unexciting example of this is when I moved into my house, and I was moving from my house with shower curtains to one with a glass shower. And I knew myself well enough to know that squeegeeing the glass after shower was going to be a daily battle. Some days I’d be good at it. And some days, I wouldn’t want to do it. And that would just eventually make cleaning my shower more difficult.

Heidi
So I made the decision. I always squeegee after a shower. And at first there were times I really wanted to skip it. But I reminded myself that I had already decided I wanted to live a pro squeegeeing life. And after a few weeks, I didn’t even think about it anymore. And now almost nine years later, I’m still a squeegeeing machine.

Emily
And see I said I was going to do the same thing when I moved into my house. But I did not decide once. And so I’ve had to waffle about it every time. So we’ve got both sides of the scenario playing out here and we didn’t even realize it.

Heidi
Oh talk about dramatic tension. That’s what you’re here for. But if you are looking to reduce decisions, maybe making your bed every day can be your decide once situation.

Emily
Or maybe you’re decide once is that you give yourself permission to skip making your bed every day and you’re not going to feel guilty about it.

Heidi
Yeah, an unmade bed or even an squeegeed shower is not a moral failing. And it doesn’t mean you’re a better person if you do do it. It’s about what choices best serve your situation.

Emily
Now I’m going to guess that no one has a shower or a bed in their classroom. So how does this apply to teaching and especially at back to school?

Heidi
Well, I actually think teachers do some version of deciding once pretty naturally. We decide once what we’re doing for class birthdays, and we just do it all year, or we decide that for our class parties, we will always do stations, and one of the stations will always be a bingo game. It just makes planning so much simpler.

Emily
It really does. So we should be on the lookout for other opportunities to make fewer decisions at back to school time. Maybe you’re going to decide once that at open house, you’re always going to have a checklist for students to do when they arrive and a sucker to take with them when they leave. Now you still have to do some work to get ready for open house, but you’ve reduced the decisions that need to be made.

Emily
Or you might want to decide once that on the first day of school, you’re always going to order takeout from your favorite restaurant for dinner. So you don’t even have to think about it. On that day. No decision will have to be made.

Heidi
I did do that one year and got food poisoning, which made the second day a little rough. Oh no. At back to school time a good way to decide once is to use a first day script. You will probably have to tweak your script from year to year. But once you’ve decided how you want your first day to flow and you’ve written it clearly in the script, a lot of your first days, forever on your first days, the planning is already done.

Emily
Be sure to go back to Episode 77 if you want all the details on back to school scripts, we just deep dived into that.

Heidi
And when you do find you need to change or adjust your decisions, you can rely on your back to school goals to help guide your decision, which is our third tip for reducing decision fatigue. Know your criteria.

Emily
If you’re making fewer decisions overall, and you’re managing your energy, you’re in a good position to address the decisions that still have to be made. So start by asking yourself, What is my purpose or goal for this?

Heidi
If I’ve got a 20 minute chunk of time on the first day of school, how I fill that time will vary depending on whether I want my students to get to know one another or if I want 20 minutes of independent work time so I can catch my breath on a crazy day.

Emily
Yeah, so knowing your criteria before you begin planning is so important. How else will you know if you’ve found the right activity to fill that time?

Heidi
And because there are so many options out there. One suggestion is to use your criteria to make lists before you even start browsing for resources. So for example, you might have a list like I need three different 30 minute activities for the first week. And my goal is for them to help with community building. That way you know what to search for. And you know when you found it.

Emily
If you don’t know what you’re looking for, you’re just wasting time looking for a needle in a haystack made of needle. Sounds miserable.

Heidi
Nobody has time for that, especially at back to school. So save yourself from wasting a lot of time by choosing criteria for what you’re looking for before you start looking.

Emily
And to our perfectionists out there, you might need to lower your expectations, there is no perfect activity. Once you found an activity that works for your needs, don’t spend another two hours scrolling TPT just in case you come across something better.

Heidi
Yeah, if it meets your criteria, it is good enough, and good enough is good enough. Which is why our fourth tip for reducing decision fatigue is to limit your options.

Emily
There are so many options out there, you could literally search forever. So limit the options you have to choose from. That might mean setting a timer and only looking for 30 minutes. Or maybe you limit yourself to a few trusted sellers whose resources align with your philosophy of teaching and you know you can trust them.

Heidi
Remind yourself that you do not have to have all the information to make a choice. If you’re clear on your criteria, and you’ve got enough energy then limiting your options is still leading you to make a thoughtful choice that won’t push you into decision fatigue.

Emily
We’re really passionate about helping teachers elevate what matters and simplify the rest. So when we created our new membership, the Teacher Approved Club for first through third grade teachers, we knew we had to come up with a model that addresses decision fatigue. We considered going the popular route of all access to each of our 700 resources we’ve ever made. But that just did not feel right to us because the truth is you don’t need everything we’ve ever made.

Heidi
So in the Teacher Approved Club members get access to what we call a core bundle, which is a set of four year long resources that we think all teachers for that grade would benefit from. Those resources are our spiral review morning work, our spiral review homework, or fluency passages and our morning messages for that specific grade.

Emily
And then we help our members get access to exactly what else they need by giving them a monthly credit to spend on any resource they want from our store.

Heidi
And to help ease any decision fatigue associated with that, we also curate a list of resources that we think will be particularly relevant to that month, so that teachers can make their decisions more easily.

Emily
Our main goal with the Teacher Approved Club is to support teachers right where they’re at with strategies that work. We’re working hard to eliminate any factors that might increase your decision fatigue.

Heidi
A membership should support your needs as a teacher and not be another source of stress. If you’re interested in learning more about the Teacher Approved Club, just head to secondstorywindow.net/club for more details.

Emily
We’d love to hear your thoughts on reducing decision fatigue. Come join the conversation in our teacher approved Facebook group, or connect with us on Instagram at @2ndstorywindow and that’s what the two.

Emily
Now let’s talk about this week’s teacher approved tip. Each week we leave you with a small actionable tip that you can apply in your classroom today. This week’s teacher approved tip is leave school when your contract time ends on the first day. Can you tell us more about that Heidi?

Heidi
Sure. So this this is actually a suggestion from our Shareka. She mentioned that her goal is to leave school on the first day of school when her contract time ends, so she can recuperate before day two. And I think this is just such a brilliant example of deciding once. So we wanted to make sure to mention it in case anyone else wants to adopt that as their practice.

Emily
It really does require a little bit of planning ahead, because unless you have a lot of paid prep time after the kids leave, you need to get everything ready for day two before school starts.

Heidi
Yeah, I know for sure. I was not thinking about day two, until after the kids left on day one. So yeah, talk about decision fatigue at that point, worst time to be made. Yeah, I was not in any shape to be making decisions at that point. But if I had worked ahead a little and made all of my day two plans and copies when I was preparing day one, I could have made that first week so much easier to manage.

Heidi
So do yourself a favor and decide once that you will leave school as soon as you can on that first day. And then do as much as you can to make that possible. Because you deserve a long evening of crashing on the couch

Emily
For sure.

Heidi
To wrap up the show we are sharing what we’re giving extra credit to this week. Emily what gets your extra credit?

Emily
I’m giving extra credit to Wolf ‘Em Sticks. So they are a recent addition to our at home firepit adventuring kit. Wolf ‘Em Sticks are a high quality roasting sticks like a really nice one that has some really cool features built in. But the real game changer is the biscuit attachment that comes with it.

Emily
So you swap out the double hot dog or marshmallow fork for a stick with a wooden cylinder at the end. And then you take a canned biscuit dough from the refrigerator section at the store and you put it around the cylinder and then you cook it up over the fire. So then you have a little cup shaped hot biscuit that you can fill with anything you want.

Emily
Their website has tons of ideas for how to fill them, but we put little Reese’s cups in there with some mini marshmallows and they were so yummy. I think it would be fun to fill them with chili or taco filling. If you want to do it like a campfire meal. You can find them at wolfem.com.

Emily
And definitely check out their tips and tricks too. I will say that they cooked very slowly over a gas fire and I wonder if they might cook up a little bit faster over a campfire.

Heidi
And they did take some attention to make sure that that you weren’t bringing the outside before the rest of the biscuit was cooked.

Emily
Getting the inside cooked after the outside’s cooked is little tricky too. But the kids really had fun with it and they enjoyed their results. What are you giving extra credit to Heidi?

Heidi
I’m giving extra credit to very different subject and giving extra credit to Les Miserables. Emily and I got to see the touring company perform a few weeks ago and it was just incredible. It was just absolutely stellar performances by the whole cast. We have seen Les Mis a few times over the years. But it’s just always so fun and interesting to see how they update the show. And it’s just such a good story.

Emily
Yeah, and I feel like this particular touring cast like took a little bit of a different vibe with it. So it was fine. It was interesting. I have still had the song stuck in my head non stop for like two weeks now.

Heidi
Yeah, my apologies to anyone that just got a song stuck in their head. Oh, sorry. I’m sorry about that.

Heidi
That’s it for today’s episode. Use our four strategies to fight decision fatigue, and try our teacher approved tip to leave school at the end of your contract time on the first day.

Heidi
And don’t forget to check out the Teacher Approved Club for first through third grade teachers at secondstorywindow.net/club.