Take the evening off
How to take the evening off: the mind-blowing wellbeing tip for exhausted teachers
If you’re reading this with your laptop open beside you whilst you try to watch the telly, I see you.
If you’re a teacher, especially a UK computing teacher who is often the only specialist in the building, your workload stress can feel like it follows you everywhere.
Planning spills into Sunday, marking creeps into family film night, emails ping during dinner and the admin never ends.
No wonder your evenings disappear and you feel permanently tired, snappy and like you’re failing at everything at once.
I want to start a movement called Take the evening off.
The premise is simple. One evening a week, you stop.
No planning.
No marking.
No emails.
No school WhatsApp.
Just one protected night where you get to be a person again.
This is not just a vibe. The data backs it up.
In England, the Department for Education’s own annual survey paints a pretty stark picture of teacher workload and wellbeing.
Full time teachers reported working an average of 52.4 hours per week in term time.
Only 17% agreed with the statement “I have an acceptable workload”.
75% of classroom teachers and middle leaders said they spent too much time on general admin, including communication, paperwork and work emails.
36% said they were considering leaving the state school sector in the next 12 months (excluding retirement).
Among those considering leaving, 94% said high teacher workload was an important factor.
Among those who had left, 80% cited high workload and 74% cited stress or poor teacher wellbeing as important reasons.
That is not a few people having a bad week. That is a system that is asking too much of the humans inside it.
Why one evening off reduces stress and burnout
When you are constantly working, your brain never properly switches out of problem solving mode. Even if you are technically “resting”, you are half on, half off. That is exhausting.
A protected evening does a few powerful things.
It gives your nervous system a predictable pause point.
It forces you to practice setting boundaries as a teacher in a low risk way.
It creates a weekly reminder that your worth is not measured in how late you stay up.
It helps you stay in teaching for the long haul.
It is not selfish. It is sustainability.
The “take the evening off” rule (what it is)
Choose one evening each week that is yours and stick to the same night if you can because consistency turns it into a real boundary rather than a vague intention, it helps you plan around it in advance and it trains your brain, your family and your colleagues to expect that this is your protected time.
Then treat it like a non negotiable appointment.
No laptop.
No school email.
No “just a quick look” at Teams.
No marking.
No planning.
If you want to go all in, put your phone on Do Not Disturb and tell one trusted colleague that you are unavailable that evening unless it is genuinely urgent.
How to make it realistic (6 practical steps)
This only works if we plan for it. Here are realistic ways to do that.
1. Choose the right evening
Start with the least chaotic night.
Not parents evening week.
Not the night before your heaviest day.
Ideally not the night you already dread.
If you have kids, you might choose the night with the easiest routine. If you don’t, you might choose the night you tend to lose to “I’ll just do a bit”.
2. Create a “close down” routine
Give yourself a 10 minute end of day ritual before you leave school.
Write tomorrow’s top three tasks.
Tidy your desk enough that you are not greeted by chaos.
Put a sticky note on your laptop: Not tonight.
Your brain relaxes faster when it trusts you have captured what matters.
3. Use the 80% lesson
Not every lesson needs to be a masterpiece.
The “80% lesson” is the idea that most of the impact comes from getting the fundamentals right, not from polishing every last detail. In practice it means you plan for the parts that actually move learning on, then you stop.
You can save a considerable amount of time by using the 80% lesson technique throughout the rest of your week to make taking that one evening off more manageable.
An 80% lesson has:
a clear objective and success criteria
a short explanation or model
a well chosen task that gives pupils enough practice
a quick check for understanding
The final 20% is the extra stuff that can take ages but often changes very little, like perfect slide design, extra animations, rewriting instructions three times or creating brand new resources when a solid one already exists.
Aim for lessons that are:
clear
well sequenced
purposeful
That is enough.
If you teach computing, this is your permission slip to lean on ready to use computing lessons you can trust and stop tinkering.
If you want to adapt something, set a 20 minute timer and pick one or two changes that will genuinely help your classes rather than redesigning the whole thing.
And if you are building your own lessons from scratch, remember your pupils do not need an inspirational PowerPoint. They need a clear explanation and activities that help them practise the skills and knowledge.
4. Batch the bits that drain you
If marking is your evening thief, try batching it.
One focused marking slot in school.
One short slot at home on a different day.
Then protect your chosen evening like it is sacred.
5. Make “good enough” visible
When you keep pushing for everything to look flawless, your colleges around you and SLT often cannot see the cost. They just see that you are delivering.
So the teacher workload stress stays invisible, the expectations stay high and you do not get the support, time or permission to do things in a more sustainable way.
It can show up like this:
You stay up late making a lesson look beautiful, so nobody realises you needed another hour of PPA time or a simpler approach.
You mark everything in detail, so it looks like that level of marking is realistic for everyone, every week.
You say “I’m fine” because the books are done and the data is in, even though you are running on fumes.
The point is not to do a bad job. It is to make sustainable choices on purpose. Aim for clear and effective, not perfect, decide what “done” looks like before you start and let some things be good enough so you can keep teaching without sacrificing your evenings, health and family life.
Try writing a tiny definition of what “done” looks like for recurring tasks.
Planning is done when the objective is clear, the task is prepared and the resources are either photocopied or saved in the relevant location, not when you have a neatly typed lesson plan that you will never actually look at (apart from for Ofsted or psychopathic SLT who are pretending to be Ofsted for some reason best known only to themselves).
Marking is done when it moves learning forward, not when it is colour coded.
6. Tell your classes what you are doing
This is optional but powerful.
You can say something like:
“I’m working on being a healthier adult. That means I don’t work every evening. I want you to see what good boundaries look like so I will not be answering emails or doing any marking this evening.”
You are modelling a life skill.
If you want a little help actually switching off, I have a short shutdown visualisation for computing teachers who want to take the evening off. It is a guided audio that helps you mentally “save and close” unfinished tasks so you can take the evening off without intrusive work thoughts hampering your evening off.
If you can’t manage one full evening yet
Start smaller.
Set an end time that is not too late for one evening a week such as 7pm and don’t work past that.
Take one evening off every fortnight.
Take one evening off in the next half term.
This is not about doing it perfectly. It is about moving in the right direction.
Join the movement
If you’re in, choose your evening and name it.
Write it on your calendar.
Tell a friend.
Then take it.
Because teaching needs you but it doesn't get to take all of you.
Take the evening off.
FAQs
1. How can teachers stop working in the evenings?
Pick one evening a week that is protected and treat it like a-non negotiable appointment. Do a quick close down routine at school, write tomorrow’s top three tasks then shut the laptop. No emails, no marking and no “quick look” at Teams.
2. What are realistic teacher workload boundaries in term time?
Start with one boundary you can actually keep. One evening off each week is a clear, repeatable line that stops work expanding into every night. Consistency matters more than choosing the perfect evening.
3. How do I set boundaries as a teacher without feeling guilty?
Remind yourself that boundaries are about sustainability, not selfishness. Decide what “done” looks like for planning and marking, aim for clear and effective rather than perfect then stop when you hit that definition.
4. What if my school expects fast replies to emails or messages?
Set expectations upfront and use tools to help, like an out of office style message in the evening or a line in your email signature about reply times. “Email is monitored during working hours only. If you email in the evening or at weekends I’ll reply when I’m back in school.” Or even simply “I aim to reply within two working days. Thanks for your patience.” For maintained schools in England and Wales, the STPCD sets limits around directed time for teachers. Email replies outside the school day are not usually something that can be reliably enforced as a requirement unless it is explicitly part of directed duties. Employers have a duty of care for staff wellbeing. If workload expectations are causing harm, that is something you can raise.
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