In this episode, I step away from my normal format and simply talk about where I am right now. After more than 300 episodes, multiple podcast series, book ideas, websites, teaching, and constantly creating, I’ve reached a point where I’m mentally and physically exhausted and realizing that something has to give.

I share some of what my family has been carrying, including my brother’s recent hospitalizations, concerns about my dad’s health, and the emotional weight of returning to the same hospital floor where my mom died in 2024. At the same time, I’m trying to be present as a husband, a dad to three kids at very different stages of life, and a teacher beginning another school year.

I reflect on something my grief therapist told me: something has to give right now—not everything and not forever, but something. I’m beginning to understand that putting something down is not the same as quitting it. I still love Be a Funky Teacher, Saturday Stories, Sunday School for Teachers, the Teachers Are Not Broken series, and the projects I want to create, but they do not all have to happen right now.

I don’t know exactly what comes next, and I’m giving myself permission not to know. I want to spend a little less time producing my life and a little more time living it—being a husband, dad, brother, son, teacher, and simply myself. This isn’t goodbye. It’s me creating some space and trusting that when I’m ready to sit behind the microphone again, I will.

• Why I’m stepping back from a publishing schedule
• Reaching more than 300 podcast episodes
• Family health challenges and emotional exhaustion
• Returning to the hospital where my mom died
• Being present for my wife and children
• The difference between quitting and putting something down
• Giving myself permission not to know what comes next
• Spending less time producing life and more time living it

• Exhaustion does not always mean something is broken.
• Something important can be put down temporarily without being abandoned.
• Grief can return unexpectedly through places, memories, and experiences.
• Constant creativity and productivity can eventually become another obligation.
• Family seasons and time with the people we love do not last forever.
• Sustainability sometimes requires refusing to create another schedule.
• It is okay to say, “I don’t know what comes next.”

In this episode, I explore teaching in the age of AI through the lens of teacher sustainability. I use AI regularly to brainstorm, organize ideas, develop pacing guides, build starting points for assessments and practice, think through differentiation, and adapt materials. It can save significant time, but I don't believe that makes teachers less important. I think it makes professional judgment even more important.

I look at several ways AI can help teachers, including providing better starting points, supporting differentiation, organizing information, and identifying patterns in student data. But AI output is not professional judgment. Teachers still have to ask whether something is accurate, developmentally appropriate, aligned to curriculum, useful for their actual students, and worth using at all.

I also discuss the danger of allowing AI to replace the thinking students and teachers need to develop. AI should be a thinking partner, not a replacement for thinking. Schools need thoughtful policies around privacy, academic integrity, accuracy, environmental concerns, and appropriate use, but responding to AI with fear alone won't prepare students or teachers for the world they're entering.

Ultimately, I believe AI could make teaching more sustainable if we use it to reduce lower-value work and protect the time it saves. The goal shouldn't be making teachers produce more. It should be giving teachers greater capacity for the deeply human work technology cannot replace: relationships, judgment, empathy, creativity, leadership, trust, and helping young people believe in what they can become.

• How I currently use AI as an educator
• AI as a starting point rather than a finished product
• Differentiation and material adaptation
• Finding patterns in student data
• Why professional judgment still matters
• AI as a thinking partner, not a replacement for thinking
• Protecting the time AI saves teachers
• Why human teaching matters even more

• AI can save teachers time by giving them better starting points.
• AI-generated work still requires professional judgment and verification.
• Teachers need enough expertise to recognize when AI output is weak or wrong.
• AI should support student thinking rather than replace it.
• Schools need thoughtful AI policies instead of fear or blind enthusiasm.
• Efficiency should not automatically become permission to increase teacher workload.
• The more technology advances, the more valuable the human parts of teaching become.

In this episode, I look at one of the simplest realities behind teacher workload: there are still only 24 hours in a day. During my 24 years in education, the responsibilities surrounding teaching have expanded tremendously. Many of those responsibilities are individually reasonable, but when we continue adding them together, the total workload can become unreasonable.

I explore the invisible ways teacher time disappears through email, documentation, interventions, meetings, technology, behavior support, data collection, communication, safety responsibilities, and other expectations. Planning time is often consumed by everything except planning, but the lesson still has to be ready tomorrow. That's how work quietly migrates into mornings, evenings, lunches, weekends, and teachers' personal lives.

I also challenge the idea that every workload problem can be solved through better time management. Organization, technology, automation, routines, boundaries, and good systems can absolutely help, but they cannot make 10 hours of necessary work fit into an eight-hour day. That's why I believe addition should require subtraction. If schools add something meaningful, leaders should also ask what can be removed, simplified, automated, delegated, or stopped.

Ultimately, I believe protecting teacher time is a teacher-retention strategy. Teachers are willing to work hard, but willingness to work hard should not become permission to continuously add more. Sustainable teaching has to leave room for teachers to remain human beings outside the classroom, and protecting that life may be exactly what allows great educators to keep showing up year after year.

• How the scope of teaching has expanded
• The accumulation of “just one more thing”
• Email and other forms of invisible work
• Why planning time keeps disappearing
• Teachers quietly donating personal time
• Why productivity cannot fix an impossible workload
• Addition should require subtraction
• Protecting teacher time as a retention strategy

• Individually reasonable responsibilities can create an unreasonable total workload.
• Every additional responsibility requires actual time somewhere in a teacher's day.
• When planning time disappears, preparation often moves into teachers' personal lives.
• Better time management cannot make an impossible workload equation work.
• Adding new expectations should require conversations about what can be removed.
• Protecting teacher time is a practical teacher-retention strategy.
• A sustainable teaching career must leave room for a life outside school.