Teacher confession time: when I first started out, I had a lot of grand ideas about what a “perfect” teacher looked like. I thought that if I just worked harder, prepped longer, and graded more, my students would magically achieve math mastery.
Spoiler alert: I just ended up exhausted.
Over the years, I realized that some of my most time-consuming habits weren’t actually helping my students—they were just burning me out. If you are feeling the weight of the school year, here are five things I completely stopped doing as a math teacher, and what I did instead to make teaching easier.
1. Grading Every Single Assignment
- The Old Belief: If students take the time to do the work, it’s only fair that I take the time to grade it.
- The Realization: I was drowning under a never-ending mountain of paperwork. Even worse? I realized I was spending more time grading assignments than planning lessons my students would actually enjoy.
- The Pivot: I shifted to spot-checking for completion or using self-checking digital activities. This gives students the instant feedback they actually need to correct mistakes in real-time, without creating a grading bottleneck for me.
2. Making Review Days Boring
- The Old Belief: Test review needs to be a serious, quiet, multi-page packet to ensure students truly know the material before exam day.
- The Realization: Staring at a room full of glazed eyes told me everything I needed to know: zero engagement equals zero retention.
- The Pivot: I ditched the packets and started gamifying my review days. Bringing in immersive digital escape rooms completely transformed the energy in my room. Suddenly, students were highly engaged, collaborating, and actually talking about math—and looking forward to my class.
3. Reinventing the Lesson Wheel Every Year
- The Old Belief: If I wasn’t creating new activities every year, I wasn’t being a good teacher.
- The Realization: This standard was entirely unattainable and a fast track to burnout. A great, engaging lesson doesn’t have an expiration date.
- The Pivot: I gave myself permission to build a reliable toolkit of high-quality resources. Good lessons should be reused. Now, instead of starting from scratch every August, I reflect on what worked and simply tweak and polish my existing library.
4. Waiting Until October to Get Organized
- The Old Belief: I’ll just wing the first few weeks of school, get a feel for my roster, and set up my classroom organization routines once we settle into a rhythm.
- The Realization: By October, the chaos is already baked into the semester. Trying to implement systems after routines have already gone off the rails is twice as hard.
- The Pivot: I started utilizing the quieter spring and summer months to plan intentionally. By writing down critical boundaries, seating strategies, and classroom systems before the school year starts, I am ready to establish a calm, predictable environment on day one.
5. Taking Work Home Every Night
- The Old Belief: Great teachers stay late (and show up early) and work at home.
- The Realization: There will always be more work to do. It literally never ends.
- The Pivot: I started creating boundaries and protecting my evenings whenever possible.
Drop the Guilt
Stepping back from these habits didn’t make me a lazy teacher; it made me a more effective, energized one. If you are drowning in grading or staring at a boring review packet, consider this your permission slip to ditch the things that aren’t serving you or your students.
Which of these changes do you need to make in your classroom this year? Let me know in the comments!