Why It's So Hard For Teachers To Rest

‘Tis the season for school breaks—a time for teachers to relax, unwind, connect with loved ones and rest.

Or not.

We all know that classroom teaching leaves little time for rest. Between managing curriculum, lesson pacing, student behavior and school politics, teachers make 1,500 decisions per day, about four per minute. We also work more overtime than adults in other professions—up to seven hours per week, equivalent to a whole workday for folks who have those luxurious one-hour lunch breaks. Add to that the unrealistic expectations and a lack of institutional support, and it’s no surprise that teachers are twice as likely to feel stressed than other working adults.

“You end up building up so much chronic stress,” Erin Crosby-Eckstein reflected in her interview. “That's a level of stress humans are not meant to exist on for eight hours a day, every day. Most adults are not doing that. Most adults are going to their office job. And their work is pretty predictable.”

With so much unrelenting stress, many classroom teachers hold on to the beacon of school breaks for dear life. (I was that teacher who always knew exactly how many weeks we had until our next school holiday or three-day weekend.) In his interview, Heath Madom talked about the countdown mentality of teaching:

The kicker? When that coveted break does finally come, it can be hard to calm down and center yourself after spending months in a state of heightened stress. It can be hard to actually rest.

Keeping busy is a way to avoid uncomfortable feelings we necessarily compartmentalize during active teaching. In her interview, grief counselor Bernadette Noll discussed how this busyness haunts us into school breaks:

She also discussed how teachers frequently use STERBs, short-term energy-releasing behaviors, to cope and distract themselves, rather than actually resting. Another former teacher I spoke with pointed out how often popular blogs and social media accounts like Teacher Trauma and Teacher Misery make light of drinking as a way to manage the stress of teaching.

The impacts of this lack of real rest are serious.

“Teachers often live in the fight/flight sympathetic state, so their body and mind don’t get the rest they need daily to function, which results in many different health problems,” Kim Brooks, a former teacher and well-being coach, told me. We’re more likely to experience illness, injuries, and burnout.

In her book Sacred Rest, Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith discusses the seven types of rest we all need: mental, spiritual, emotional, social, sensory, creative, physical. If one of these areas is out of whack (or say, five), you can feel stressed, overwhelmed and drained, and experience physical effects such as weakened immunity, insomnia and muscle pain. (Sound like you? Dalton-Smith offers a Rest Quiz to help you identify your rest deficits.)

The focus of her work is to help you be “your personal and professional best self,” which still ultimately keeps you in the productivity framework. Which is probably why education disruptor/profiteer Keller uses her model as a framework for teachers.

UNESCO’s education initiative MGIEP features a blog post with a similar emphasis, stating, “By prioritising rest, teachers can create a more positive and productive classroom environment, leading to improved academic outcomes and better social and emotional development for students.”

While it’s true that teacher stress can create a negative feedback loop in the classroom, rest for teachers is often framed chiefly as a way to improve student outcomes rather than, oh, I dunno, a way to make working conditions less exploitative and more sustainable. I think this is why these efforts largely fail.

Arguments like these also place the onus of rest, well-being and self-care on the individual, without interrogating the systems and structures that got us there in the first place. How many times did some administrator instruct us to go on walks or take baths, as though these small acts of self-care were a solution to the structural lack of support that causes burnout? It’s a little like telling new moms to “sleep when the baby sleeps”—laughably out of touch with our daily reality.

But the issue goes even deeper than these external factors. Teachers’ institutionalized lack of rest can become an internalized habit, following us out of the profession.

“Teachers are getting constant dopamine hits all day long, so even after leaving the profession, we often continue to busy ourselves, doing more, saying yes, people pleasing, helping, until we end up right back in a state of burnout,” Brooks told me.

In an upcoming interview, James Potteiger talks about the importance of resting during the teacher transition process and how he wishes he’d taken more restorative breaks during his job hunt. And in her interview, instructional designer Mandy Brown discussed how she had to learn to slow down once making the transition to the corporate world, and how she helps her mentees to do the same:

This busyness is a habit but also an avoidance tactic. We’ve talked before about the grief that comes with leaving teaching. Often there’s a sense of guilt and loss of identity as well. In some cases, teachers have experienced real trauma and abuse on the job, which only truly begins to surface once we’ve left. Both Noll and Dan Woodman discussed not realizing how abusive their circumstances were until after they’d left the classroom.

I am totally, 100% guilty of not resting, as evidenced by…. this newsletter. In addition to my work as a fractional managing editor, writing a novel and caring for two young children, I spend about 10-15 hours a week on this newsletter. While I love the conversations I get to have with former teachers and the service I get to provide to those looking to transition, I’m aware that I’m also using this as an avoidance tactic. I’m staying up late and filling every free second with work—which is what I was trying to avoid by leaving the classroom in the first place. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve just swapped teaching for the newsletter. Like I’m literally up late writing a post about resting instead of actually resting. Make it make sense.

Nap Ministry founder Tricia Hersey gets at some of these deeper motivations behind our lack of rest in her book Rest Is Resistance. (You may remember Patty Viramontes, one of our first interviewees, decided to quit after reading this book.) Hersey connects our obsession with productivity to capitalism and white supremacy, and explores the way sleep deprivation and burnout are literally killing us.

Hersey’s goal isn’t to help us return to work well-rested and ultimately more productive. Hers is purely about liberation and respecting each human’s divine right to rest.

Resting as an eff-you to capitalism definitely resonates more with me. But it doesn’t make it any easier.

“I had to learn how to rest,” former teacher and burnout survivor Tara Wyatt-Treslove shared in her upcoming interview. “Rest is not sitting on the couch watching TV with your phone in your hand.” (Anyone else feel personally seen by this?)

So how the hell do we actually rest? Do we just literally sit on our hands and do nothing?

Kinda.

Tamara Pearson, who leads up Practice Freedom Project which offers classes, workshops, and retreats to help educators manage stress, makes the distinction between behaviors that are distractions, like binge-watching TV or drinking, and those that are dedications, like meditation and yoga. She recommends distinguishing between the two for yourself and identifying what fills your personal cup.

Hersey recommends starting with active rest, “anything that can slow your body down enough that you can connect with your body and mind.” That could be dance classes, hikes, or even the ceramics class Erin Crosby-Eckstine talked about in her interview.

A true teacher, Mandy Brown talks about the break menu she created, where she rolls a dice and does the corresponding break activity.

One warning Hersey has: learning to rest is going to be uncomfortable.

“It's really going to be a slow uncovering, a slow mercy and grace towards yourself,“ Hersey told NPR about learning to rest. “I tell people to rest through the guilt, take it slow, be aware, be aware that it's happening, and then start to go deeper into the wells of yourself to begin to see what could help to help you heal.”

Anyone else completely terrified of this? I know there’s not actually a boogie man waiting in the stillness, but it sometimes feels like it.

“You have to pause and be really real with yourself,” Noll advised in her interview. “Listen to what [your inner self] has to tell you. Because they've got messages for you.”

So what do you say, should we stop and listen this winter break?

Make some time to actually sit with the stillness and with ourselves, and feel everything we’ve been pushing down with our busyness and distractions, the constant outside pressure to do more and achieve more?

I’m in if you are.