Teachers carry the weight of constant decisions

In a world obsessed with productivity, efficiency and optimisation, one profession has been quietly doing superhuman work long before corporate boardrooms invented terms like “decision fatigue.” That profession is teaching. The humble teacher, often mocked, often blamed and occasionally praised, is expected to make thousands of decisions every day with the accuracy of a neurosurgeon and the patience of a saint. Yet people still say teachers get far too many holidays, which remains one of the biggest myths. Teachers are “off” about as often as the internet is off.

Every morning, long before sunrise, teachers are already dealing with mental chaos: Should today’s warm-up change? Why is this student silent today-worry or mischief? Will some parent accuse me of ruining their child’s life because I corrected a spelling mistake? Decisions crowd a teacher like mosquitoes in monsoon season-annoying, nonstop and unavoidable. Still, society pretends teaching is simple. As if managing teenage behaviour, impossible parental expectations, admin micromanagement, syllabus deadlines, moral responsibility and ensuring no child blows something up is a routine task. Teachers are expected to float through all this with a calm smile while their mind feels like a browser with 89 tabs open-half frozen, the rest crashing. Decision fatigue may be a trendy term for productivity experts, but teachers have lived it forever. They feel it before breakfast. While ordinary people decide whether to wear a blue or a white shirt, teachers decide whether the lesson can work without the projector, whether seating needs rearranging to prevent a mini-riot, and whether Rahul is genuinely sick or simply avoiding long division. This isn’t multitasking; it’s battlefield planning.

And then there’s the myth that teaching ends with the bell. The bell simply signals that the teacher is moving from teaching duties to paperwork, counselling, planning lessons for 40 different learners, and responding to parent emails that sound like they come from a parallel universe. After-hours work is not extra-it is normal. Lesson plans, setting question papers, checking notebooks that multiply like weeds, preparing remedial notes, attending meetings that achieve nothing, worrying about mispronouncing a student’s name-teachers are always switched on. More than switched on, they are glowing like a tired neon sign. Despite this, teachers have somehow become villains in public debate. They are always too something-too strict, too soft, too modern, too old-fashioned, too loud, too quiet. Society expects them to create ideal citizens but judges them like reality-show contestants watched by people who haven’t entered a classroom in years. Decision fatigue shapes a teacher’s day.

Every choice-correcting, calming, pausing-demands emotional energy. They manage a fragile human ecosystem where one sentence can harm or heal, making thousands of decisions daily. Yet they are celebrated once a year and ignored otherwise. Their burnout is dismissed while society still expects endless patience and creativity. Teachers are exhausted because the system is unreasonable. Humans are not built for constant decision-making, yet teachers live it daily. Anyone who thinks teaching is easy should spend one day in a classroom and see how teachers hold society together through every decision.

The writer is  and educator; views are personal