How rest can improve productivity

Summer is a strange time for teachers. Those who are not teachers, can never really fully understand the pressure and stress that the end of year brings within a school.

Let me give you an example. I love reading! Up to 20th May this year I had read 23 books (I log them all on Goodreads). About a week to go before D-Day, I decided to start reading a book called Ten Days to D-Day by David Stafford. I thought I might get it finished around or just after the 6th June, I am still only 51 pages in. I have had no time for reading, no time for forward planning, no time for meeting with people. June was unbelievably busy – long days followed by longer nights. I have never felt as behind with my preparation for the next academic year. Then, I was ill and missed the last two days of school . . . probably because I was tired and run-down.

Teachers need the long break over the summer to recharge their batteries. To catch up with friends and family. To take time for themselves. To catch up on the chores and jobs around the house. To get up a bit later and get a bit more sleep than usual. To enjoy more of the simple things . . . like watching sport or sitting in the garden with a book. As a society – we need teachers to be energised and enthusaistic. We need them pouring themselves out for their students. Being the best versions of themselves and making learning interesting, energetic and memorable. We need teachers to want to be back in their classrooms. We want them to have appreciated quality time off. We want them to be well-rested and ready for the ‘what’s next’.

We are 15 days into July, and I have to admit that I still do not feel that I have switched off and am ready to rest yet. I still have a few things that I need to complete and finish off and they are hanging over me. I want to get them done. I want to get everything tied up, ready for a break from everything to do with work. . . . but that’s a few days off yet.

When our bodies have been pushed to the limit and we are tired – we need to ensure that we rest. We pause. We recharge. We build back the energy reserves and store up rest. I have never been great at having a ‘lie in’. But, over the summer I sometimes need to ‘force’ myself to just stay in bed a little longer and not get up too early. But, it is not just about that – it is building in time to read, time to sit and enjoy my garden rather than just working in it.

I sometimes forget that rest can improve productivity. I need to force myself to rest. To slow down. To lose the routine (not easy – when you are someone who loves routine). When our lives are surrounded with busy-ness and noise – we sometimes fail to take time to take stock and think through things carefully. We need to give out brains time to regenerate. We need to give them the luxury of being able to think through things slowly rather than taking snap decisions. The greatest luxury for teachers in the summer, is that we have time to think, time to be creative. Last night, I sat and wrote down 3 really good ideas that cam to me as I was reading somethign else. The ideas popped into my head and whilst I doubt that any of them will ever be realised – they provide useful threads of thinking that might lead to something of importance.

Then, I thought about my classroom and my practice as a teacher. Am I giving my students enough space for creative thinking? Am I giving them the right questions/ the right tasks/ the right homework prompts to enable them to lean into their own creativity? Am I setting them up enough in the right direction? Do I give them thinking space in lessons? Do I pause enough? Do I direct them to think and to note down their own ideas? Am I actively giving them space to be creative or do I see learning merely as me trying to fill my students with my knowledge? Have I forgotten that knowledge should be explored and played with BEFORE it can be remembered or am I just intent on setting all learning in the context that this is something that must be remembered?

As teachers, we need to build in the time and space for creative, individual thinking. When I come up with a new idea of my own – it energises me, it pushes me, it makes me want to research things, to find out more, to spend time and effort on a mini-project. How do we, as teachers, try to simulate the same thing for our students in our lessons?

Brains and bodies need time to pause, to rebuild, to regroup. In the classroom, as well as during breaks, we need to ensure that we build in time for brains to catch up and to be able to work at their maximum capacity. This means that we need to build in breaks. We should work hard when we need to be working and rest hard when we don’t.