Following our community’s commitment to providing global insights for educators, we are thrilled to share the highlights from our most recent international panel. This month, our discussion centered on Educator Well-Being. Often, conversations around well-being focus on individual self-care tasks that feel like another addition to a teacher's never-ending to-do list. In this session, we shifted the narrative to look at well-being as a system—focusing on how strategic technology shifts can combat administrative burnout and protect our time for what matters most.
Missed the live session? Watch the full webinar recording below to learn directly from these systems-of-care strategies.
Meet the GEG Utah Team
We were thrilled to host five incredible leaders from GEG Utah who are at the absolute forefront of educational innovation, mentoring thousands of educators on striking the perfect balance between high-tech and high well-being:
- Kelli Cannon: A Digital Learning Specialist with 12 years of classroom experience and a master's in EdTech, focusing on the synergy between STEM and instructional coaching.
- Deanna Taylor: A 30-year veteran of early childhood and elementary education, serving as a Google Certified Coach and Trainer specializing in sustainable blended learning.
- Emma Moss: An ISTE Generation AI Fellow who led Utah's AI for K-12 program, supporting over 7,500 educators with practical, time-saving tech applications.
- Kristine (Christy) Marriott: An instructional technology expert with 20 years of classroom experience who focuses on using tech to elevate learning rigor while maintaining sanity.
- Julie Kaster: A high school English teacher, Digital Teaching and Learning Mentor, and Google AI + Edu Fellow dedicated to ethical AI integration and student accommodations.
Session Highlights: Reclaiming Time & Boundaries
1. The Efficiency Pivot
The panel began by sharing personal "breaking points" where administrative workloads became unsustainable, and the specific Google tools that saved them:
- Google Vids for Emergency Absences: Kristine shared how she guided a stressed colleague who needed to be out of the classroom but didn't have the energy to write grueling sub plans. They used Google Vids to build a lesson where an AI voice spoke the instructions. The teacher didn't have to be on camera, the sub acted as a pure facilitator, and the students loved it.
- NotebookLM for Professional Reading: Emma highlighted the exhaustion of being assigned 40-page research articles for professional development. By dropping papers into NotebookLM and using the Audio Overview feature, teachers can listen to a 10-to-15-minute podcast summary on their commute home, arriving fully prepared without draining their evenings.
- Ditching Paper Stickies: Kelli discussed moving away from a desk cluttered with lost sticky notes to Google Keep, Google Calendar, and Google Tasks, allowing her to access her professional and personal notes seamlessly across devices.
2. AI as a Thought Partner
Deanna and Julie re-centered the role of artificial intelligence, describing it not as a tool that replaces teacher intelligence, but as an administrative assistant. Deanna utilizes AI to level complex texts for differentiated reading groups, manage high volumes of professional email drafts, and outline initial lesson plan structures, dramatically reducing "blank page fatigue."
3. The "C.A.R.E." Framework for Tech Delegation
Emma shared a highly practical system she keeps printed on her office wall to decide what tasks to delegate to technology versus what requires human presence:
- C – Compute: Pure hand-off tasks like transcriptions, summarization, or formatting that require zero human collaboration.
- A – Assist: Tasks like drafting, brainstorming design layouts, or initial visualization where AI does the heavy lifting but the teacher filters and modifies.
- R – Relate: Coaching and collaborative learning moments where tech runs silently in the background while human-to-human interaction takes center stage.
- E – Empathize: Deep, one-on-one student support and mentorship where technology is completely removed to protect the emotional safety of the connection.
4. Boundary Architecture with Google Workspace
To truly "leave work at work," Kelli and the panel recommended leveraging built-in Workspace settings:
- Gmail Schedule Send: Drafting a late-night response but scheduling it to hit an inbox at 8:00 AM to establish healthy communication boundaries.
- Calendar Working Hours: Configuring exact availability parameters within Google Calendar so colleagues know when you are off the clock.
- Do Not Disturb Schedules: Using the integrated notification schedule across Gmail and Google Chat to automatically mute all work-related alerts after 5:00 PM.
5. Next-Level Automation via Workspace Studio
Julie blew the community away by sharing how she uses Workspace Studio to survive a split role where she coaches across 8 different school buildings. She established automated workflows that comb through shared Google Docs and flag urgent emails, automatically delivering an aggregated briefing to her Google Chat at 8:00 AM every morning. Additionally, her team sets up a workflow that reads their running meeting agendas and sends a summarized preview to Chat exactly 10 minutes before a meeting begins so she is always prepared.
Related Google Resources
Bring these wellness strategies into your own professional routine using these core platforms:
This content was created by a human and refined by Gemini.
