The Burnout Behind Preschool Lesson Planning

Teachers know lesson planning is part of the job. What wears them down is making hundreds of planning decisions every week without a system they can trust. In the third session of illumine's teacher burnout series, Dr. Bisa Batten Lewis, creator of the WINGS curriculum, joined the illumine team to look at why lesson planning causes so much fatigue, how to plan learning before activities, and what centers should standardize so teachers can focus on teaching. This is the written recap. The full recording is at the top of this page.

Key takeaways

Why lesson planning wears teachers out

The first poll asked what takes teachers the most time when they plan: deciding what to teach, finding activities and materials, adapting for different children, or documenting it all. Documenting came out on top. Dr. Bisa noted that anyone can write something down, but documenting correctly takes time.

Asked where their teachers actually do their planning, attendees said at home after dinner, after hours and during nap time, and that staff meetings often eat into planning time. One added that many classrooms now have more children with additional needs than before the pandemic, which takes more planning. Dr. Bisa pointed out that the recommended planning time is about an hour and a half a day, and most programs cannot protect that much because staff are needed elsewhere.

One lesson, at least nine decisions

Even a lesson that worked last year may not suit this year's children. Add up every decision across a week and it comes to well over a hundred.

More resources, less clarity

Today's teachers have more resources than any generation before them: social media groups, online searches and AI tools. Dr. Bisa argued that this creates its own problem, because teachers still have to work out where each idea fits for the children in front of them.

Plan learning first, then activities

A second poll asked where teachers usually start planning: the curriculum, child assessment, last year's plans, or every teacher their own way. Curriculum came first, with "every teacher does it their own way" a close second. One attendee said they start from assessment, which was the focus of the previous session in the series.

The illumine team described a common pattern, especially with newer teachers: starting with a fun activity found online, such as a car ramp to show gravity or handprint painting, and only then asking what children are learning from it. The fun activities are not the problem, but they need to serve a learning goal.

Stop planning activities and start planning learning.

Dr. Bisa's habit when coaching teachers is to ask why: why this song, this story, this activity, this week? If a teacher cannot answer, it may not be the right choice. A song might be chosen because it lets children practice particular sounds. Planning then becomes a cycle: developmental goals, learning objectives, experiences, observation and reflection, followed by the next plan.

Four questions every lesson should answer

Dr. Bisa's rule: if a lesson cannot answer all four, it is an activity, not a plan.

The three biggest time wasters

Her conclusion was that none of this is a teacher problem. It is a system problem.

What high-performing centers standardize

When teachers are busy trying to build systems that do not exist, they do not get to do the part they love. As the session put it, systems create consistency, and teachers create magic.

The WINGS framework

Dr. Bisa created the WINGS curriculum after years of piecing together training for educators whose courses and credentials did not always cover every part of curriculum. It was first published in 2009 and is now in its fourth edition. Every plan begins from five things:

WINGS tracks five developmental domains: cognitive, physical, social-emotional, language and literacy, and approaches to learning. It follows the assess, evaluate, plan cycle covered in the previous session: assess what children know, evaluate what they need, plan experiences, then assess again. Lessons are coded by domain and goal, so a teacher can see at a glance which skills an activity supports. Dr. Bisa did the math for a class of 20 preschoolers: five domains, one skill each, is already a hundred skills a week to plan for, which is why a curriculum that does that mapping matters.

From monthly theme to family newsletter

Planning, in Dr. Bisa's words, only ends when the learning has been seen, recorded and shared.

How illumine turns planning into one workflow

The illumine team made the case that schools should not need six different systems to solve one problem. Planning should flow into observation, documentation, assessment, parent communication and reporting without retyping. They walked through how this works in illumine:

• A lesson catalog. Every past lesson is stored and organized by developmental area, so teachers can reuse and improve earlier plans instead of starting over.
• AI lesson planning. Starting from a topic children were wondering about (in the demo, rain and thunder), the teacher picks the room, age band and developmental areas, the materials actually in the classroom, indoor or outdoor, and the curriculum framework, including WINGS. The AI drafts a full lesson: learning objective, key vocabulary, prior learning, learning sequence, main activities, group sharing, closure, reflection, scaffolding strategies and materials. Read more about AI lesson planning for childcare centers.
• Observations built in. The teacher chooses which observations to capture for each developmental area as part of the same lesson, and a multi-center operator can save the lesson to every center at once.
• Polished activity updates. A quick, typo-filled note can be rewritten in a more formal tone, expanded to describe the learning, and translated into the family's language with the original English included. See teacher-parent communication.
• AI-powered activities (shown as a preview). Teachers upload a photo, voice note or short text, and the AI identifies the child and activity and drafts the update for the teacher to review and approve. See AI daily reports.

The session's summary of the partnership: WINGS creates clarity, and illumine creates capacity.

Questions from the session

Can we use a different curriculum alongside the one our program has adopted?

Yes, as a supplement. Dr. Bisa said the forms teachers complete and submit should follow the curriculum your program has adopted and that is recognized in your program. Other curricula can still support assessment and planning.

Where do teachers actually find time to plan?

In the chat, attendees said at home after dinner, after hours, during nap time, and in planning time that gets taken over by staff meetings. Dr. Bisa agreed that many teachers take planning home because there is not enough time in the day, and that programs often cannot give the recommended hour and a half a day because staff are needed for other duties.

What should the next session in the series cover?

Attendees asked for time management.

Resources mentioned

• A lesson planning health check, emailed to attendees, with a score and key improvement opportunities.
• WINGS Foundations for Monthly Lessons, shared by Dr. Bisa in the follow-up email.
• The previous session in the series, on assessment. Read The Burnout Behind Childcare Assessments.

What to do next

For more ideas, read our guide to planning lessons for preschools and how to prevent preschool teacher burnout. To see how illumine supports planning and assessment, explore preschool assessment software or book a live demo.