Many of us are familiar with the idea of weekend meal prep, which is slicing veggies, preparing a casserole or otherwise making the work of weeknight cooking faster and easier. If you spend a couple hours on Sunday prepping meals for the week, you can make weeknight meals in 30 minutes or less.

When thinking about teaching from home, consider “meal prepping” your lessons.

So often we feel like Indiana Jones being chased by a giant boulder – just one step ahead of the game. We keep running to keep up and we never get a chance to escape the boulder altogether. If you take a “meal prep” mentality, you can get ahead of things and leave that boulder in the rear-view mirror.

How do you do this? Instead of recording the next day’s lesson every evening, try recording several lessons at a time, and releasing one a day throughout the week. Instead of coming up with new lessons or assignments, take one idea and break it into smaller pieces, and stretch it out throughout the week.

Keep lessons and activities short – instead of 30 minutes of content, you can create 3 ten-minute lessons which will last you three days. Instead of a five-page handout, you can have five days of handouts! Short lessons make the work more achievable for students (and their families who are assisting them) and make the work easier for you as the teacher.