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Teacher burnout is real. According to a recent study, 61% of teachers report feeling burned out, with the issue especially pronounced among newer educators. In fact, 44% of teachers leave the profession within their first five years, and early-career teachers are 2½ times more likely to quit than their tenured counterparts. This trend is deeply concerning.
Teaching at full intensity every single day is not sustainable—especially when you are a multi-prep, business education teacher. If you’ve ever felt the Sunday scaries creeping in before the week even starts, you’re not alone. After 28 years in the classroom, I learned an important lesson: teachers need intentional strategies to protect their energy if they want teaching to be sustainable.
That’s where Soft Off Days come in.
A Soft Off Day is not a day off. It’s a strategic teaching approach that allows learning to continue while reducing teacher burnout and cognitive overload.
A Soft Off Day is a planned instructional day where students are still learning, expectations remain intact, and the classroom stays productive—but the teacher’s cognitive load is intentionally lower.
On a Soft Off Day, you’re still working. You’re just working differently. Lessons require less talking, fewer decisions, and minimal setup. I kept these days a secret from my students because the benefit wasn’t for them—it was for me.
Multi-prep teaching requires constant decision-making: lesson pacing, behavior management, grading, and adjusting to student needs. Doing this at full intensity every day leads straight to burnout.
Soft Off Days helped me:
When I moved my Soft Off Day from Fridays to Mondays, it changed everything. Starting the week with a lower-intensity day created a calm ramp into the week instead of a mental sprint.
A Soft Off Day is:
A Soft Off Day is not:
Think of it as a “substitute-level” instructional day—except you’re present and guiding learning.
Over time, I built a folder of low-prep teaching strategies perfect for Soft Off Days:
These strategies kept students engaged while giving me mental breathing room.
Teaching at full intensity every day is not a badge of honor—it’s a fast track to burnout. Soft Off Days gave me something to look forward to instead of something to dread. They helped me stay in the profession longer and show up as a more patient, effective teacher.
This isn’t laziness. It’s professional self-care.
We’ve given students brain breaks for years. Teachers deserve the same consideration.
You don’t need to overhaul your entire schedule. Start small:
If we want teaching—especially multi-prep business education—to be sustainable, we have to stop pretending we can operate at full speed forever.
Put your oxygen mask on first. Your future self will thank you.
To learn more, listen to Episode 31 – My Burnout Prevention Strategy for Teachers – Soft Off Days of my podcast ‘The Art of Teaching Business’. You can stream my podcast straight from my website. My podcast is also available on all the major stream platforms including Apple Podcast and Spotify.
