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Some tutors are quite expert in managing breaks in lessons and managing what they do in life generally. A good friend of mine has a habit (which I adopted) to start his day on his personal needs – his finances, family needs, review of his personal life goals, and exercise.
His logic is that once that is done you can confidently turn to work knowing you have not avoided or missed anything that is a real-life priority.
You can use any app (I use DigiCal, Colornote and phone Timer) to ensure you have breaks and the calmness and confidence that comes from being well-planned.
Bringing this calmness into your teaching is a gift to your students.
We know the learning capacity of students increases after a break. I won't go into the research behind this here as it would be duplicating what is on the MyIT Blog https://www.hk.myittutor.org/post/how-much-break-should-you-have-when-you-study but let me just underline that during work breaks as a tutor, the break must be to do something completely different.
A tutor who is focused on ensuring their own and their student’s mental and physical fitness may choose a time after 25 minutes or so to take a complete break for 5 minutes with the caveat that the break is not on a phone as the evidence is that learning after phone use is impaired.
Two projects we were involved with a little while back had students doing yoga in their five-minute breaks, and that was effective, though it appears that choice around what you do in your break is as is as important as the break itself.
Something that is particularly relaxing for the student is key to that student feeling refreshed.
We know that sitting down all day is bad for your health and this is very frequently what tutors may do. In your own life try doing things like working at your desk for 45 minutes or 60 minutes or so and then having a complete break to do something entirely different.
In your break time it's a really good idea to not look at your phone but perhaps listen to music or play it, dance, meditate, watch a nature clip on your laptop (not on your phone), read a few pages of a novel, do yoga, or something else, so that you have a complete break from the work at hand.
See the MyIT Blog for more on this. https://www.hk.myittutor.org/post/how-much-break-should-you-have-when-you-study
Your long term mental and physical health will be better.
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