Episode Details

If you’re a multiple prep teacher, you know the pain: flipping between piles of lesson plans, juggling more courses than most planning systems were ever built for, and hearing the same tired advice in every workshop—“switch things up so students don’t get bored.” In this episode of The Secondary Teacher Podcast, host Khristen Massic breaks down exactly why endlessly chasing variety in your lesson structures is burning teachers out, not saving classrooms from boredom. If you’ve ever found yourself agonizing over whether your routine is too repetitive, or wound up with decision fatigue from reinventing the wheel daily, this conversation is for you.

The primary keyword phrase, “sustainable teacher planning for multiple courses,” comes up right away, because that’s what this whole discussion is about. Khristen pulls back the curtain on a common mistake that plagues secondary classrooms: believing the myth that every lesson needs a dazzling new twist to keep students engaged. Instead, what most teachers really need is permission to build classroom routines that repeat on purpose—saving their energy for crafting strong content, not endlessly shuffling formats or activities.

Remember those dry slide decks from your early days? Khristen shares a candid look at hers—different every time, changed up just for the sake of switching things. The result? Still boring. Turns out, the problem isn’t the structure being too predictable, but the content inside it lacking punch. When teachers scramble to fix engagement by endlessly tweaking lesson formats, students lose more than just clarity—they lose confidence, because every class feels like starting from scratch.

The better way lies in intentional, repeatable routines. Khristen highlights standout examples from sixth-grade teams, where the best classrooms weren’t the ones packed with novelty, but the ones where routines made student energy go into learning, not guessing what’s next. With sustainable teacher planning for multiple courses as her north star, she argues that what really matters in a secondary classroom is not endless to-do lists of lesson ideas but tight routines, good content, and freeing up your bandwidth for what counts.

If you’re tired of feeling like you’re running your classroom like the Cheesecake Factory—juggling an infinite menu of activities until your brain freezes—there’s a better model. Think the cozy cafe with a seasonal rotating menu: just a few carefully chosen routines, repeated without apology, letting you focus on what really fuels student curiosity and independent learning.

This approach isn’t about lowering your standards or becoming boring; it’s about work life balance and reclaiming your sanity. When your structures stay the same, planning for multiple classroom preps becomes lighter, faster, and—dare we say it—less overwhelming. No more asking which routines are best or wasting summer break wandering in a maze of resources. Instead, you build a starting point, refine as you go, and finally break the cycle of reinventing everything every day.

For middle and high school teachers, especially those in singleton departments or who keep being handed standards without curriculum, this episode is a blueprint for surviving and thriving. Khristen calls out the reality: teachers have been given advice designed for a different world, not the one where you’re curating every course from scratch. Sustainable systems aren’t just some extra on your plate—they’re the way to finally get your time back and make the secondary classroom work for you.

So if you’ve been fighting the guilt of repeating lesson routines or told to “switch it up” until you’re dizzy, here’s the new rule: you do not need a different lesson for every class, every single day. You just need a solid starting ritual, a repeatable structure, and the guts to trust it across your prep load. That’s how you get more confident, more effective, and—frankly—a hell of a lo