Teacher Energy, The Budget Approach

You’re standing in front of your class trying to explain a concept for the third time today, and you can feel it—that specific kind of emptiness that comes from being completely drained.

Not just tired. Empty.

Your students are glazed over. You’re glazed over. Someone asks a question, and you have to ask them to repeat it because you genuinely couldn’t process the words the first time.

You still have 73 minutes left in the school day. Then a staff meeting. Then grading. Then tomorrow, when you’ll do it all again.

You’re not failing. You’re just out of energy. And it’s only February.

Here’s what works.

The Challenge: Everyone Is Running on Empty

February is the month when energy scarcity becomes undeniable.

In September, you had reserves. In October, you were still running on new-year momentum. November and December had cultural energy—holidays, breaks, countdowns. January offered fresh-start energy even when you were tired.

But February? February has nothing. No built-in momentum. No cultural narrative pushing you forward. No finish line in sight. Just teaching. Day after day. In the cold. In the dark. With students who are just as depleted as you are.

And here’s what most teacher wellness advice gets wrong: It treats energy like it’s unlimited. Like, if you just had better time management or a better morning routine or a more positive mindset, you’d have enough energy for everything.

That’s not how energy works. Energy is a finite resource. You have a certain amount each day. Every activity costs some. And when you’re out, you’re out.

Your body doesn’t care how important the task is. It doesn’t care that you “should” have energy for afternoon classes. It doesn’t care that there’s a staff meeting tonight. When your energy account is at zero, you can’t withdraw more.

The biological reality is this: Your nervous system has been in high-alert mode since August. Add months of reduced daylight (affecting your circadian rhythm), colder temperatures (requiring more energy for basic thermoregulation), and the fact that you’re six months into a nine-month marathon, and your baseline energy capacity is lower than it was in the fall.

You’re not weak. You’re human. And humans have limits.

Most teachers respond to this in one of two ways, both of which make it worse:

Response #1: Ignore it and push through. Keep the same pace you had in January. Don’t adjust for the reality that you’re running on fumes. Tell yourself you’ll “rest later” (you won’t). Arrive at March completely depleted and wonder why everything feels impossible.

Response #2: Feel guilty about being tired. Believe that if you were a better teacher, a stronger person, more dedicated to your students, you wouldn’t be this exhausted. Spend energy berating yourself for not having energy. This obviously doesn’t create more energy—it just drains what little you have left.

There’s a third way. Treat energy like the finite resource it is and budget accordingly.

The Strategy: The Energy Budget

Stop treating energy like it’s unlimited. Start treating it like money.

You have a budget. Every day, you get a certain amount of energy. Some days you get more (you slept well, it’s sunny, you’re not fighting a cold). Most days in February, you get less.

Every activity costs energy. Some activities cost more than others. Teaching a new concept to 28 restless middle schoolers costs significantly more energy than supervising silent reading. A difficult parent conversation costs more than responding to a routine email.

Here’s the shift: Instead of trying to have energy for everything, you start asking: What’s the minimum amount of energy I need to teach effectively today? What can I eliminate or simplify to stay within budget?

Step 1: Track Your Energy for One Week

For five school days, check in with yourself at three points: morning (before students arrive), midday (around lunch), and end of day (after students leave). Rate your energy on a 1-10 scale.

Also, note what you were doing during your lowest energy moments. Not just “I was teaching”—what specifically? What subject, what time of day, what type of activity?

By Friday, you’ll see patterns. Maybe you’re consistently depleted by 11 am. Maybe afternoon energy crashes hard. Maybe Wednesdays are worse than other days. Maybe certain types of lessons drain you more than others.

This is data. Not a moral judgment about your stamina. Just information about when you have energy and when you don’t.

Step 2: Identify Your High-Energy and Low-Energy Windows

Based on your tracking, identify:

• When you have the most energy (your peak capacity window)
• When you start to fade (your declining capacity window)
• When you’re running on fumes (your survival window)

For most teachers in February, this looks something like:

• Peak: First 90 minutes of the school day
• Declining: Mid-morning through lunch
• Survival: Afternoon, especially after 2 pm

Your pattern might be different. That’s fine. What matters is knowing YOUR pattern.

Step 3: Match Tasks to Energy

Now restructure your day to put high-energy tasks in high-energy windows and low-energy tasks in low-energy windows.

High-energy tasks (require focus, emotional regulation, complex thinking):

• Teaching new concepts
• Difficult conversations (with students, parents, colleagues)
• Behavior management that requires patience
• Planning or creating new materials
• Grading that requires detailed feedback

Low-energy tasks (can run on autopilot):

• Established routines
• Independent student work you’re supervising
• Administrative tasks that don’t require decision-making
• Review activities that students can manage with minimal input
• Simple grading (completion checks, multiple choice)
• Do Now Activities give you a breather at the beginning of class

Front-load high-energy tasks when you have capacity. Protect low-energy times with sustainable activities.

Step 4: Build in Energy Recovery Points

You can’t just spend energy all day. You need micro-recoveries. Two-minute resets that interrupt the constant drain.

Between high-energy activities, build in 60-90 seconds where you’re not “on”:

• Students are doing independent work, and you’re sitting (actually sitting, not circulating)
• Students are at lunch/recess/special, and you’re sitting in silence (not planning, not grading, just sitting)
• Students are working in groups, and you step outside your classroom door for 60 seconds of air

These aren’t luxuries. They’re necessary. Your nervous system needs periodic recovery, or it stays in high-alert mode all day, which drains you faster.

Step 5: Adjust Instruction to Your Energy Reality

This is the part that feels hard because it challenges the “good teachers are always high-energy” myth.

On low-energy days (or during low-energy windows), you don’t try to perform like you have high energy. You adjust what teaching looks like.

Low-energy teaching isn’t bad teaching. It’s sustainable teaching. More student-led discussion. More collaborative work where students are carrying the cognitive load. More review and practice of concepts already taught. More routines that run themselves.

You’re still teaching. You’re still present. You’re just working within your actual capacity instead of pretending you have reserves you don’t.

Why This Works

The Research:

Decision fatigue is real. Research from Roy Baumeister and others shows that self-regulation and decision-making deplete a limited resource. Teachers make approximately 1,500 decisions per day—more than surgeons, air traffic controllers, or executives.

Every decision you make draws from the same energy pool. By the afternoon, your capacity for complex decision-making is genuinely diminished. This isn’t a character flaw—it’s cognitive science.

Circadian rhythm research shows that human energy fluctuates predictably throughout the day, with most people experiencing peak cognitive performance in mid-to-late morning and a significant dip in the early-to-mid afternoon. My slump begins about 1:30 pm. Fighting against your biology doesn’t work. Working with it does.

Recovery science—particularly work on ultradian rhythms by researchers like K. Anders Ericsson—demonstrates that humans can sustain high-focus work for approximately 90 minutes before needing recovery. Teachers routinely go 3-4 hours (or entire school days) without meaningful recovery breaks. This creates cumulative depletion that compounds over time.

The Philosophy:

This approach is pure Stoicism: focus on what you can control, accept what you can’t.

You can’t control that you have limited energy. You can’t control that February is hard. You can’t control that your afternoon classes exist.

But you can control how you spend your energy. You can control whether you front-load demanding tasks or scatter them randomly throughout your day. You can control whether you build in recovery or run yourself into the ground.

The Stoic practice of premeditatio malorum—negative visualization—applies here. If you know you’ll be low-energy in the afternoon (because you have data proving this), you can plan for it. You can structure your afternoon so it doesn’t require energy you won’t have.

This isn’t pessimism. It’s realism. And realism is what keeps you teaching until June.

How It Looks in Practice

Ms. Richardson, 1st Grade

Ms. Richardson tracked her energy for a week and noticed a clear pattern: She had strong energy until about 10:30 am, then a sharp decline. By 1 pm (right when her students returned from lunch), she was running on fumes.

Her original schedule had math (her most demanding subject to teach) from 1:00 to 2:00 pm. Writing workshop (also cognitively demanding) was 10:00-11:00 am.

She switched them.

Now she teaches a writing workshop from 1:00 to 2:00 pm. Students are doing independent or partner writing for most of this time. She’s conferring with individual students, which requires attention but not the constant high-energy performance required in whole-group math instruction.

Math moved to 10:00-11:00 am when she has peak energy. She can teach new concepts, manage the manipulatives chaos, and handle the constant questions without feeling depleted.

The content didn’t change. The quality didn’t decrease. But her energy expenditure became sustainable.

She also built in three micro-recovery points:

• 60 seconds of breathing in her car before entering the building
• 2 minutes of sitting (actually sitting, not working) while students are at lunch
• 90 seconds outside her classroom door during afternoon independent reading

By the end of February, she wasn’t less tired—but she was functional. She had enough energy left at 3 pm to drive home without crying. That’s a win.

Mr. Hassan, 7th Grade English

Mr. Hassan realized his biggest energy drain was behavior management in his 5th-period class (1:45-2:45 pm). He was trying to use the same strategies he used in the 2nd period (8:30-9:30 am), but his capacity for patience and emotional regulation was completely different.

He adjusted by changing the structure of 5th period entirely.

Instead of whole-class discussion (which required constant redirection and energy), he moved to a station rotation model. Students rotated through four stations in small groups: independent reading, vocabulary practice (digital), collaborative writing task, and one station where he worked with a small group.

This structure required less moment-to-moment behavior management from him. Students knew what to do at each station. Transitions were clear. His role shifted from constant monitoring to facilitating one small group at a time.

Same learning objectives. Less energy expenditure.

He also stopped trying to give detailed feedback on every piece of writing. Instead, he identified the three highest-energy tasks in his week (planning a new unit, grading major essays, parent conferences) and scheduled them strategically: Tuesday morning (planning), Thursday morning (major essays), Wednesday after school when he was fresh (parent conferences).

Everything else got simplified. Quick completion checks instead of detailed grading. Reusing successful lesson plans instead of creating new ones. Batch-responding to emails twice a day instead of constantly.

By March, his energy budget was sustainable. Not perfect. Not easy. But sustainable.

Dr. Martinez, High School Science

Dr. Martinez teaches AP Biology and two sections of general biology. She tracked her energy and discovered that teaching the same lesson three times in one day (she has three sections of general bio) was more draining than she realized.

The first time she taught the lesson (2nd period), she had energy. By the third time (6th period), she was on autopilot and resenting her students for not being engaged—when really, she was the one who was disengaged because she was depleted.

She made two changes:

First, she stopped re-teaching the same lesson identically three times. Instead:

• 2nd period (high energy): She taught the new concept with full instruction
• 4th period (medium energy): Students taught each other in small groups using materials from 2nd period
• 6th period (low energy): Lab work or review activity that was student-driven

Same content, different delivery based on her energy.

Second, she identified that grading lab reports was her highest-energy task (required detailed feedback, lots of decision-making). She stopped grading them randomly throughout the week and instead blocked out Thursday afternoons from 3:30-5:30 pm. That’s it. Two hours, once a week, when she had mental energy for it.

The rest of the week, lab reports didn’t exist. She didn’t think about them, didn’t feel guilty about them, didn’t let them drain her energy. Thursday afternoon, she graded them all. Done.

She also started leaving campus for lunch twice a week. Not to run errands. Just to sit in her car and eat lunch without anyone asking her anything. Twenty minutes of no decisions, no performance, no students.

February is still hard. But she’s not breaking.

Troubleshooting

“I don’t have control over my schedule. I can’t just move subjects around.”

You probably have more flexibility than you think. Can you change the order of activities within a subject? Can you adjust whether you’re doing whole-group instruction, small-group, or independent work? Can you move which task gets your full attention and which gets a lighter touch?

If your schedule is truly locked, focus on Step 5: Adjust instruction to your energy reality. You may not be able to change when you teach math, but you can change whether math looks like high-energy direct instruction or lower-energy student-led practice.

“My students need me to be high-energy all day. I can’t just be ‘low-energy’ with them.”

Low-energy teaching isn’t disengaged teaching. It’s sustainable teaching. Students don’t need you bouncing off the walls to learn. They need you to be present, clear, and functional.

In fact, when you stop trying to perform high energy when you don’t have it, you’re often more authentic and more effective. Students can tell when you’re faking it.

“If I structure my afternoon for low-energy, won’t my afternoon classes get worse instruction?”

No. They’ll get instruction that matches your capacity. Which is better than high-energy instruction plans that you can’t actually execute because you’re depleted.

Right now, you’re probably planning afternoon classes as if you’ll have morning energy, then feeling like you’re failing when you can’t deliver. Instead, plan for the energy you’ll actually have. Your afternoon students will get better teaching when you stop expecting yourself to have reserves you don’t.

“This feels like I’m admitting defeat.”

You’re not admitting defeat. You’re acknowledging reality. You have limits. Every human does. Working within your limits is what keeps you teaching until June. Pretending you don’t have limits is what leads to burnout.

“What if I track my energy and realize I never have high energy anymore?”

That’s important information. It might mean you need to look at recovery outside of school (sleep, nutrition, movement, boundaries). It might mean you need to talk to a doctor about whether something else is going on (thyroid issues, vitamin deficiencies, depression, chronic stress).

But it doesn’t mean the energy budget approach won’t work. It means you’re working with a smaller budget, so you need to be even more strategic about how you spend it.

Try It This Week

Here’s your starting point:

Monday: Track your energy three times today (morning, midday, end of day). Rate it 1-10 and note what you were doing.

Tuesday-Friday: Keep tracking. By Friday, look for patterns.

Next Monday: Based on your patterns, make ONE adjustment. Move one high-energy task to a high-energy window. Or add one 60-second recovery break. Just one change.

Next Tuesday: Notice what happened. Did it help? Keep it. Did it not work? Try something different.

This isn’t about overhauling your entire day in one week. It’s about making one small adjustment based on actual data about your energy. That’s Kaizen. That’s sustainable.

Start there.

You Don’t Need More Energy. You Need Better Energy Management.

The system tells you that good teachers have boundless energy. That you should be able to maintain the same intensity from 7:30 am to 4:00 pm. That if you’re tired in February, you’re not trying hard enough.

The system is lying.

You have limited energy. You’re teaching in the hardest month of the year. And pretending you have infinite capacity doesn’t create more capacity—it just breaks you faster.

The energy budget approach isn’t about doing less. It’s about being strategic about what you do when. It’s about matching tasks to capacity. It’s about working with your biology instead of fighting it.

You’re not failing because you’re tired in February. You’re human. And humans need to budget their energy if they’re going to make it to June.

The Energy Budget is one of dozens of practical strategies inside The STRONG Teacher’s Lounge. Each month, you’ll get frameworks, practices, and resources designed for sustainable teaching—not just surviving, but teaching well without destroying yourself.

Inside the Lounge, you’ll find:

• The complete STRONG Year with month-by-month support
• Philosophical frameworks (Stoicism, Kaizen, Ikigai) applied to real teaching challenges
• Monthly challenges with tracking tools
• A community of teachers who get it

The system is broken. But you’re not. And you don’t have to figure out sustainability alone.

Join The STRONG Teachers Lounge