One Tired Teacher: Teaching Without Burnout
One Tired Teacher: Teaching Without Burnout is a podcast for tired teachers who want to keep teaching without burning out. If you’re exhausted by constant pressure, shifting expectations, and the feeling that you’re never doing enough, this show offers grounded support and a practical perspective to help you teach sustainably.
Each episode explores teaching without burnout—from navigating evaluations and testing season to simplifying instruction, setting boundaries, and choosing classroom practices that are calm, humane, and actually work. We talk honestly about what teaching feels like right now, and how to protect your energy, your values, and your students’ learning without performative extras.
This is real talk for educators who love kids but are done sacrificing themselves for the job. You’ll find encouragement, classroom-rooted insight, and permission to trust what you already know—because sustainable teaching isn’t about doing more. It’s about doing what matters.
If you’re a burned-out teacher looking for clarity, calm, and a way forward that doesn’t cost your well-being, you’re in the right place.
One Tired Teacher: Teaching Without Burnout
Super Bowl Reading Lessons: Engaging Informational Text Without Busywork
Looking for Super Bowl reading activities that actually build skills—not just hype? This episode shares practical, low-prep ways to use football culture to strengthen informational text comprehension, media literacy, and engagement for elementary readers.
Big-game buzz is already in the air, and we’re turning that energy into real reading growth. Rather than fighting for attention, we tap into what students are already hearing at home and seeing on TV—Super Bowl storylines, halftime ads, and player talk—to build relevance, stamina, and mastery of informational text skills without adding busywork.
We walk through a practical playbook for teachers who want engagement with substance. You’ll hear how a streamlined Super Bowl reader can anchor close reading, vocabulary in context, sequencing, and author’s purpose, while text features like timelines and fast-fact boxes make complex information easier to digest. We share why updating facts each year becomes a mini-lesson in source reliability and current events, and how quick wins—main idea exit tickets, sequencing card sorts, and short evidence-based responses—create momentum for reluctant readers.
From there, we bring in writing and media literacy that students actually enjoy: player profiles, team predictions backed by evidence, and halftime ad analysis focused on audience, persuasive techniques, and claims. We make space for every learner with choice-driven stations—history of the game, commercial critique, or pop culture angles—so football superfans and non-fans both find an entry point. Along the way, we connect the dots to broader teaching: once you see how to channel this cultural moment, you can replicate the strategy for award shows, local events, or space missions to keep reading instruction timely and alive.
If this approach helps, follow the show, share it with a teacher friend who needs a fresh spark, and leave a quick review telling us which activity your students would try first.
Links Mentioned in the Show:
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Welcome to One Tired Teacher episode 278. Tackle Reading with Football Fever. Why Super Bowl Content Works. Today we are talking about the Super Bowl and using the Super Bowl to spark curiosity and excitement with your students. You know, it's not just for boys, although the boys really do get excited. But now that we've got Taylor Swift in the mix with you know Travis Kelsey, we're getting some more girls to the sport. And that is very exciting. It's also a relevant topic at this time of the year because we've got the Super Bowl coming up in just a few weeks. And we've got parents talking about this, and it's an exciting time, and there's nothing better to capture the attention of children than when we are talking about things that they are already hearing about in their everyday lives. All right, let's talk about that today. Hope you stick around.
SPEAKER_01:Welcome to One Tired Teacher. And even though she may need a nap, this teacher is ready to wake up and speak her truth about the trials and treasures of teaching. Here she is, wide awake. Wait, she's not asleep right now, is she? She she is awake, right? Okay. From Trina Debori Teaching and Learning, your host, Trina Debori.
SPEAKER_00:Hey, so the Super Bowl. I know it's crazy, right? We're already back to almost having another Super Bowl. And that is, you know, it feels like it just comes so quickly. And then we're gonna have, you know, the commercials and all the exciting parts of it. And it's just a crazy, crazy, a crazy time of the year. So why do I think it's so important to use things that are a high interest? Because that's what gets kids excited about reading. That's how they feel, that's when they feel like this is relevant. They're talking about something that I care about or something that I've heard about or something that everyone's talking about because it's on commercials or on TV and we're already hyped up for football. And even if they come from a family that doesn't actually like football, I mean, is that possible? Yeah, if they're coming from a family who doesn't like football, they're still hearing about the Super Bowl because of the phenomenon that it is, even if they are just gonna watch it for where the Super Bowl commercials. All right. So, first of all, I do love football. Like I am a huge Gator fan. I went to a high school that was all about football. We won the national or state championship, I should say, not national. The state champ championship when I was a senior, my senior year, it was very exciting. We didn't even have school for a day. We had a parade. I mean, it was crazy. And there was a part of me, the student council part of me, that was like, um, hello, do we have to do this just for sports? But you know, there is something about watching sports, and that is, you know, the camaraderie you feel with other people that are rooting for the same team that you are, and and and all those positive feelings, and you can get behind something and and that can be really fun. But even if you don't like football, most of us know that there's a big game that's played every year, usually it's January, February, just depends on how the season falls out. It's the first Super Bowl that was ever played was January 15th, 1967. Isn't that crazy? 1967. So I mean it's been well, not in my lifetime, I guess. Um, so but I mean it's so exciting. And the first winner was the Green Bay Packers, they beat the Kansas City Chiefs 35 to 10. So that's pretty, pretty unbelievable. And kids love to hear that kind of fact. And I actually have included those things inside of my all about the Super Bowl reader. And you can find it on TPT, Trina Debris Teaching and Learning. But I talk about what is a Super Bowl? How did the Super Bowl begin? Like it was actually an agreement between the NFL and its rival at the time, which was the American Football League. Now that has changed and they have renamed some things, but I also talk about that inside this little reader. I talk about like what is Super Bowl Sunday? And I'm and it's up to date. I actually corrected it as soon as as the last Super Bowl occurred in 2021 5. I was like, all right, there's a sentence in there that needs to be changed every single year. And that is as of 2025, both conferences are now tied at 29 wins each. The Pittsburgh Steelers are tied with the New England Patriots, each holding six Super Bowl victories. Six is the most wins of any team in NFL history. Isn't that crazy? So that whole little area of the book has to be updated every year because I want it to be accurate. Because, you know, one year it's who whoever wins this year, it's gonna be up for the next for whichever conference. So, you know, those are the kind of things you have to do. You have to work, you know, you have to update. So, one of the things is channeling football fever into something academic. How do we use uh this nonfiction reader to, you know, are we just teaching about sports? No, not necessarily. We're not just teaching about sports, we're teaching about the main idea, we're teaching vocabulary, we're teaching sequencing of events, we're teaching um authors' purpose, we're teaching text features, we're using sports as a hook to teach kids informational text standards. That is exciting because then they care when they when we use subjects they care about, they're invested, they're engaged, they're learning. So we can also pair texts with with simple writing prompts, like what who is their favorite team? And you know, what do they know about a specific player? Maybe they can do little player profiles, or they can do, you know, they can come back with a halftime analysis or a halftime ad analysis, I should say, because that's what you're really getting on the halftime, besides the halftime show. I mean, they might write something about that too, but those are just some ideas of how you channel football fever into learning. A bonus idea could even be pairing the reader with a class prediction chart or persuasive writing prompt of like convincing each other to choose the team that they're choosing. That can always be really fun too. It gets kids hyped up, it gets them involved, it gets them motivated. Now, like I said, boys do love this unit, but or this particular resource, but girls are coming along as well. And we and we can include we can be all inclusive. That's what I say. We can be all inclusive. So sometimes a little pop culture is the perfect reading motivator. All right. Hope this helps. Until next time, sweet dreams and sleep tight.