About 8 years ago, Edutopia.com published a blog post titled “Energy and Calm: Brain Breaks and Focused-Attention Practices.  If you’d like to access it, visit this link:  https://www.edutopia.org/blog/brain-breaks-focused-attention-practices-lori-desautels

Think about the schedule when you and I were in school.  They always had a break – and still do today!  It’s called, “changing classes.”

After 45 minutes or so, you’d pack up your stuff, visit your locker, put things away, grab other stuff, and then head to your next class.  The next class always started five or so minutes late.  That’s how we were trained – so think about that the next time you’re late for a business meeting.  School trained us to always stay until the end, and then it was “understood” that it took time to get to class.

College tried to change that.  Class began at 10:00 AM on the dot.  The previous class ended at 9:50.  God forbid if you needed to talk with the professor and your 10:00 AM class was on the other side of campus up 6 flights of steps (with no elevator).

But then schools started block scheduling – a 2.5 hour block of time to devote to projects.  It was thought doing so would facilitate integrating the learning from different subject areas.  The result?  We’re still looking at new ways of improving education.

So how about trying this strategy: rest.

Breaks are necessary.  Sleep is necessary. Sometimes naps are necessary.  All on, all the time, leads to burnout.  There are a vast number of articles available that attest to this necessity.

So…why don’t we do it?

You might want to sleep on that question.