This week, Jasmine invited you to slow down and listen more closely to a word we hear constantly in schools: overwhelmed.
When teachers say they’re overwhelmed, they’re rarely describing a single issue. They’re naming a lived experience. One that is shaped by pace, clarity, expectations, support, and systems interacting all at once. The leadership challenge isn’t to eliminate overwhelm entirely, but to translate what you’re hearing into something you can realistically act on.
This resource helps you move from broad, heavy language toward a problem that is small enough to design for and meaningful enough to matter.
Translate the Signal
Purpose: Practice turning vague or emotionally loaded concerns into clear concerns that are designable scenarios for solutions you could prototype within 30 days.
Try This:
- Start with the language you’re hearing.
Choose one statement you’ve heard recently (or often):
- “We’re overwhelmed.”
- “There’s just too much.”
- “Everything feels urgent.”
- Notice the difference between too big and designable.
Too Big/Too Vague | Designable |
Teachers are overwhelmed | Teachers are overwhelmed by the number of last minute requests during the week |
The pace is unrealistic | The pacing guide doesn’t allow any time for reteaching |
There’s no support | New teachers don’t know where to get help for classroom management |
- Use AI to help you translate the concern.
Edit and refer to the suggested prompt (or use your own) with your AI tool of choice:
“Rewrite this concern so it becomes a designable problem I could realistically prototype within 30 days at my school: [insert concern] Then suggest 2-3 small ways a school leader could test a response without adding more work for teachers.” *
*Note that this prompt is a condensed snippet and is building off previous prompts talking with the same GPT where we have identified our persona and details of our school. Please refer to the Anatomy of a Prompt if this is your first time using a Resource prompt for instructions on building out a fully detailed prompt.
Review, Refine, and Choose One Problem to Work on.
Ask yourself:
- Is this specific enough to act on?
- Could I explain this clearly to my staff?
- Does this feel like something we could test, not permanently solve?
Share:
Post the original phrase you started with, the designable problem you landed on, and one small experiment you’re considering. What shifted when you reframed the issue this way?
Deeper Dive:
The goal of the last few and the next few upcoming posts has been to move from a fuzzy problem to a clearer one. We’ve explored this by going directly to the source - the teachers. As I was looking at articles to accompany this resource, I came across this one which is a few years old, but very clearly in an educator’s voice. The title of the article starts at the Too Big/Too Vague but ends up with some clear designable problems suggested by the teacher themselves. Do you see them? What do your teachers think?
Read America’s Teachers Aren’t Burned Out. We Are Demoralized.
