Why Rest Improves Your Teaching (and How to Get More of It)

Rest isn’t just a break from work: it’s the partner of good teaching. This post explores what rest truly means, the seven types every teacher needs,

Picture It -

I'm writing this at the end of July, though I won’t publish it until early August. For me, this is mid-summer: July and August are summer. When I was growing up, school ended in late June and started again on the 1st of September, and I still think of the year that way.

As a kid, I spent summers at my grandparents' farm. I worked hard for those two months: my brother and I helped in the fields and meadows under a scorching sun. But I also had hours of free time, running around and play-acting stories from books I’d devoured during the school year, usually with a village friend whose library was much smaller than mine.

Looking back, those summers were incredibly restful. (Okay, a part of me wonders now: what were my parents thinking?? We were either used as free labour or left to our own devices, as long as we returned by dinner time. Was it neglect? I don’t know. But I loved those summers.)

Now, I’m a grown-up with a career. I’ve worked in over 10 countries as a language teacher, and summers are still my “rest” time—by which I mean doing something different from the rest of the academic year. I train on CELTAs, run short English courses for type 1 diabetics, travel, plan and prepare content for Art of ELT, and deep clean when I’m home (because clutter makes me feel hotter in summer).

This year I started wondering: do I do this because of my childhood? Is it actually restful? (Yes.) If summer is my “rest time,” then what about the rest of the year? How do I rest then? What even is rest?

That’s what this post is about—what I’ve learned about rest, why it matters for teachers, and how we can weave it into our lives all year round.

What Rest Actually Is

When I first started thinking seriously about rest, my mind went straight to the obvious: sleep. Maybe naps if I was being fancy. But the more I dug into the research, the more I realised that rest is both simpler and more complicated than that.

The simplest definition I’ve found is: rest is an intentional pause or recovery: a break from effort, urgency, or output. That’s it. You could be lying in bed, staring out a café window, or pottering around your kitchen with no particular goal in mind. The key is that your body and mind are not in “go, go, go” mode.

Here’s where it gets complicated, though: different kinds of rest do different jobs.

American physician Saundra Dalton-Smith talks about seven types of rest:

Physical rest – passive (sleep, naps, lying down) or active (gentle movement, stretching, massage)
Mental rest – stepping away from problem-solving or decision-making
Sensory rest – turning down visual, auditory, and information overload
Emotional rest – having space to be unfiltered, without performing or caretaking
Social rest – time with people who restore you, or space away from draining dynamics
Creative rest – refilling the well by experiencing beauty, nature, or art without pressure to produce
Spiritual rest – connecting to something bigger than yourself, such as values, purpose, or awe

I’m not a big fan of the way Dalton-Smith packages this in her book (it’s steeped in a very American Christian worldview), but the framework itself is useful. It gets us thinking beyond “sleep more” and towards a much richer question: what kind of tired am I, and what kind of rest do I actually need?

For teachers, this is especially important. Think about it: you might not be physically exhausted after a day of online lessons, but your mental and sensory tanks could be bone dry from constant screen time and juggling multiple conversations. Or maybe you’ve been emotionally “on” all week encouraging students, defusing tension, or holding the group’s mood, and what you actually need is emotional or social rest.

Once you start naming the kind of rest you need, you can match it with something that works. A short walk might be perfect for physical rest, but useless if what’s drained is your creativity. In that case, a slow wander through a gallery or a few minutes listening to music might do more for you than another nap.

In other words, rest isn’t just about more time off; it’s about the right kind of time off. And once you get that right, the benefits go far beyond just “feeling better.”

Why Rest Matters (and Not Just in Summer)

Once you start looking at the research on rest, you see a clear pattern: when we don’t get enough of it, everything suffers. And I don’t mean just our mood or energy. I mean the actual, physical and mental systems that make us able to teach in the first place.

Let’s start with the obvious one: physical rest. When your body doesn’t get enough of it, stress hormones like cortisol stay high, inflammation builds, and your immune system gets sluggish. That’s why periods of overwork often end in illness: your body simply doesn’t have the resources to keep you upright. Even short, regular breaks during the day can help lower heart rate, reduce muscle tension, and stop fatigue from snowballing.

Then there’s cognitive rest. Without breaks, the brain gets caught in what psychologists call decision fatigue: the more choices you make, the worse the quality of your decisions becomes. For teachers, that means fumbling over explanations, losing track of time in activities, or blanking when students ask a question you’d normally handle easily. Research on “waking rest” shows that even a few minutes of unstructured downtime helps with memory consolidation and creative problem-solving; exactly the things we need for planning and adapting lessons.

And of course, there’s emotional rest. Teaching is emotional labour: you’re holding space for a group, regulating your own reactions, and often absorbing your students’ moods. Without time to process and release that emotional load, you start to carry it into the next day… and the next… until you feel constantly “full” and irritable.

This isn’t just about you, either. One of my favourite pieces of research on teaching talks about emotional contagion: the way our mood and nervous system state affect our students. A rested teacher is more likely to transmit calm and safety. A frazzled, exhausted teacher unintentionally spreads anxiety. Which classroom would you rather learn in?

And let’s not forget the bigger picture: studies on school calendars show that proper breaks — summer holidays, mid-term breaks, even short daily recesses — are vital for preventing burnout and keeping teachers in the profession. They’re not luxuries or “time off from real work.” They’re part of the work.

Rest, then, isn’t a fluffy extra. It’s a foundation. Without it, your physical health falters, your thinking gets sluggish, and your emotional balance tilts. With it, you have the capacity to be present, creative, and responsive in the classroom and to actually enjoy the work you trained so hard to do.

How the Brain Works When We Rest

One of the things I love most about digging into the science of rest is discovering that it’s not just “time away” from learning or work; it’s part of the learning process itself. Our brains are wired for it.

Cognitive scientists talk about two modes of thinking:

Focused mode – the state you’re in when you’re paying close attention, concentrating hard, and actively trying to solve a problem.
Diffused mode – the relaxed, open state your brain slips into when you’re not concentrating. This is when ideas float around, connect in new ways, and the “aha!” moments happen.

Focused mode is essential. It’s what helps you master grammar points, analyse a tricky classroom problem, or write a lesson plan. There’s the catch though: if you never switch out of focused mode, your brain gets locked into a narrow groove. You keep going over the same information in the same way, and fresh insights just don’t appear.

That’s where diffused mode — and by extension, rest — comes in. When you give your mind breathing space, neural connections keep happening quietly in the background. It’s why you suddenly think of the perfect lesson activity in the shower, or figure out how to explain a grammar point while you’re out for a walk.

Even boredom plays a role here. When you’re bored (and I mean truly unoccupied) your brain’s “default mode network” lights up. This network is linked to creativity, problem-solving, and even building a stronger sense of self. In other words: those empty minutes where “nothing’s happening” are doing important work.

For teachers, this has two big takeaways:

Your brain needs downtime to teach well. That means actually stepping away from planning, marking, and thinking about teaching.
Your students’ brains need it too. Long, unbroken stretches of concentration aren’t effective for learning. Pauses, even short ones, give their brains time to process and connect ideas.

So no, daydreaming is not a waste of time. Nor is staring out the window, doodling, or taking a quiet walk between lessons. These are the mental spaces where creative teaching ideas are born, and where deep learning sinks in for both you and your students.

Work and Rest: A True Partnership

One of the most refreshing ideas I’ve come across in my reading is from Alex Pang, author of Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less. His central point is simple but radical: rest is not the opposite of work. It’s the partner of work.

We’re taught to see rest as the thing that happens after the work is done: a reward, a treat, a pause before getting back to “real life.” Pang flips that completely. He argues that rest and work are part of the same cycle: you can’t do your best work without making space for deep, intentional rest.

And he’s not talking about vague “self-care” or waiting for summer holidays. He means planning your rest as deliberately as you plan your lessons. The people who produce consistently great work — in science, art, sport — tend to have one thing in common: they work in focused bursts, then stop.

For teachers, this might sound impossible. We don’t control our timetables, and our “bursts” are often dictated by the bell, not by our energy. But we do have more choice than we think in how we arrange the work around the teaching.

Here are some Pang-inspired shifts that work in a teacher’s world:

Build breaks into your planning, not around it. Don’t treat downtime as something you’ll “fit in if there’s time”. Make it part of the schedule from the start.
Work in sprints, rest in sprints. Set a timer for 25–50 minutes of deep focus on marking or lesson planning, then step away. Even 5–10 minutes of physical or mental rest pays off.
Have active rest outlets. Walking, cooking, gardening, or making something with your hands. These are absorbing without being draining; the brain can wander while the body moves.
End the day before you’re empty. Pang’s research shows that stopping while you still have some energy left helps you come back fresher the next day. For teachers, that might mean resisting the urge to “just get one more class prepped” at 11pm.
Protect bigger rest periods. Use weekends, mid-term breaks, or lighter weeks for longer recovery, not for catching up on all the admin you’ve been putting off.

This approach takes a shift in mindset: you stop seeing rest as “time away from teaching” and start seeing it as part of the way you teach well.

Changing the Culture of Teaching

It’s one thing to make small changes for ourselves; it’s another to work in a system that doesn’t exactly invite rest. In most schools, “breaks” are often swallowed by marking, admin, or yet another meeting. Lunch is eaten over emails or writing feedback. Coffee gets cold before you drink it. By the time the bell rings, you’ve been “on” for hours without a single real pause.

The problem isn’t that teachers are bad at resting; it’s that the culture in many schools treats continuous output as normal. And when rest does happen, it’s seen as indulgence, not necessity.

But the research tells a different story. Studies on school calendars show that proper breaks — from short daily recesses to mid-term pauses to long summer holidays — aren’t just nice-to-haves. They’re linked to lower burnout rates, better teacher retention, and higher job satisfaction. Teachers who get meaningful breaks are not only healthier, they stay in the profession longer.

Even short breaks matter. A five- or ten-minute pause in the middle of the day can lower stress levels, reduce voice strain, and improve focus. In classrooms where short activity breaks are built in for students, teachers benefit too. It’s a shared reset.

Of course, many of us can’t change our timetable or rewrite the academic calendar. But there are ways to push back a little bit against the “always on” culture:

Treat your breaks as non-negotiable. If you have 15 minutes between classes, resist the temptation to fill them with work. Step outside, stretch, sip water, or just sit quietly.
Use student-led activities strategically. While students work in pairs or groups, give yourself a mini-break: sit down, take a breath, and let the room run without you for a few minutes.
Model rest for your students. Show them that pauses and silence are part of how learning works, not a waste of time.
Protect holiday time. Be intentional about how much schoolwork you let spill into longer breaks; if it’s truly rest you’re after, give it the same priority you’d give to a lesson observation.

Changing the culture of teaching doesn’t happen overnight. But every time we treat rest as part of the job, not the reward for doing it, we chip away at the idea that exhaustion is proof of dedication.

An Invitation to Reflect

We’ve covered a lot here: what rest actually is, the science behind why it matters, the different forms it can take, and how to weave it into a teacher’s life even in a system that doesn’t always make it easy.

But before you click away and move on to the next thing on your list, I want you to pause for a moment and really think about this:

💭 Which type of rest do you need most right now?

Not the one you think you should need, or the one that’s easiest to fit in — the one your body, mind, and heart are actually craving. Is it physical? Mental? Sensory? Emotional? Social? Creative? Spiritual?

Once you’ve got your answer, I’d love for you to choose one small way to give yourself that rest this week. It doesn’t have to be grand: a five-minute walk without your phone, ten minutes with your eyes closed before class, reading a poem over your morning coffee. The point is to make it intentional, to notice the shift it creates.

And if you’ve been reading this thinking, “Yes, but I want more than small tweaks! I want to actually live this way, even during the busy months,” that’s exactly what we explore inside Live Well, Teach Well. It’s my group coaching program for language teachers who want a sustainable, humane way to do their work and rest is one of the pillars we work on together. You can read more about it here.

For now, I’d love to hear from you. Send me an email at ana@artofelt.com and tell me:

What’s your relationship with rest like right now?
How do you rest during the school year?
What’s one small change you could try this week?

Rest isn’t just what happens when the work is done. In fact, it’s what makes the work worth doing!

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Categories: : ELT, rest, resting, school break, teacher burnout, teacher wellbeing