The years that I spent in the public school system were often spent inside of a classroom, working hard to keep kids on task. “Everyone does everything” was a mantra that was hammered into me as I developed as an educator. “Keep kids busy” was a veteran move to manage large groups, passed onto me by many experienced teachers.
I have been reflecting lately on this classroom culture that I worked to create, a culture of constant busy-ness and productivity. I look around at the work-centric and productivity-driven lives of my fellow adults and cannot help but be haunted by my constant driving of young people to stay on task, to get things done. I see in my burned-out fellow adults grown versions of my students, people who are unable to take a break even if that is exactly what they need. In the version of school that most of us grew up in, being off-task was bad and being on-task was good. So, the logic follows that the more time we can spend “on-task”, the better off we will be.
I think this is madness. I think our inability to recognize the importance of our cognitive health leads us to suffer in a myriad of ways, including in the realms of both mental and physical health. Just like how we need to rest and recover after an intense workout, we need to be giving our brains time to rest and recover after periods of heavy use. We all know that feeling of when we need a break. We become easily distracted and struggle to focus on a single task. We might become irritable, or spacey. After enough “on-task” time, I start to feel “brain-numb”, where things just move a little slower.
These are the times in which we need a break. We need to take a walk outside, or perform a rote task that will not require heavy cognitive lifting. We need to be able to let our brains rest and recover, just like we do with our muscles after a workout.
This is why at Forge, we encourage our learners to take breaks as needed. This isn’t a “get out of schoolwork” card, or an excuse to go play outside instead of completing a difficult task. It is framed as a way to reset, or to give our brains a break for a minute. It is framed as self-care, and as a way to show respect for the learning environment of others. Instead of becoming distracting and off-task in the classroom, go take a walk around the campus. Go sit outside under a tree for five minutes, and come back ready to get to work.
Our hope is that in the long-term, these learners can go on to become healthy, productive leaders in our world that can take breaks as needed, and that recognize the importance of cognitive health. Our hope is that our learners can have confidence in themselves and their productivity without having to measure their self-worth by how much work they can get done in a day of just grinding it out.
I don’t know about you, but a world that values the health and wellbeing of its people above their work-time output is a world that I would like to live in.
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