A wellness break should be a break

There is a peculiar kind of workplace humor that writes itself. “Wellness break po. No reporting.” Then, somewhere below the announcement — or perhaps five minutes later in the group chat — comes the sequel: “Please accomplish this form before 5:00 p.m.” Add a meeting, a report, a webinar, a few grades waiting to be encoded, and maybe a quick trip to school because “sandali lang naman,” and a wellness break begins to look suspiciously like work wearing comfortable clothes.

That joke feels especially timely now. On September 14 and 15, public school teachers are scheduled to have their two-day wellness break as Term 1 comes to a close. It follows the September 10–11 INSET and forms part of DepEd’s new end-of-term arrangement for School Year 2026–2027. In at least some current school implementation notices, the instruction is refreshingly clear: no instructional, administrative, or extracurricular duties during the teachers’ wellness break, except in emergencies or exigencies of service.

I hope we allow those words to mean what ordinary people understand them to mean. Let the teachers rest. Not “rest, but please check the group chat.” Not “rest, but submit this before Tuesday.” Not “no reporting, but kindly drop by school for a while.” Not “wellness break,” but report to a CDSA athletic meet, supervise athletes, officiate games, or attend another school activity that could have been scheduled elsewhere. And certainly not “rest,” but spend two days worrying about the schoolwork one is supposedly taking a break from. September 14 and 15 may be only two days, but whether teachers are actually allowed to enjoy them says something about how seriously we take wellness in the first place.

And the principle should not expire on September 16. It applies to the wellness breaks that follow, to semestral, summer, holiday, term, or weekend breaks where genuine downtime is provided, and to other periods specifically meant for teachers to recover. A break should mean being reasonably free from the work one is supposed to be taking a break from. Otherwise, we accomplish the impressive bureaucratic feat of giving people time off without actually letting them be off.

We have been here before. In October 2025, after appeals from teachers and learners affected by typhoons, earthquakes, and illnesses, Education Secretary Sonny Angara declared a four-day wellness break and described it as time to rest, regain strength, and be with family. INSET could be rescheduled, and where prior arrangements made that impossible, participation was voluntary. The Teachers’ Dignity Coalition had earlier raised the contradiction many educators recognized immediately: a wellness break loses much of its meaning when INSET and unfinished schoolwork are allowed to consume it.

That distinction matters. Teachers need INSET. Good professional development can improve instruction, assessment, technology use, inclusion, classroom management, and student support. Nobody becomes a better teacher by refusing to learn. But there is something almost comic about telling an exhausted faculty, “Your wellness matters, so please attend this eight-hour seminar on wellness.” The seminar may be excellent. It is still not rest.

Teachers also know that having no classes does not necessarily mean having no work. There are grades to compute, papers to check, lesson plans to prepare, forms to accomplish, parents to answer, activities to organize, reports to submit, and messages that arrive long after dinner. EDCOM 2 research gives this familiar experience some numbers: 42 percent of teachers in one study worked more than 50 hours a week, with substantial time going to ancillary and school-related assignments. Its more recent policy work describes teacher workload as a systemic problem compounded by large classes, diverse learning needs, shortages of support staff, and inadequate resources.

So protecting a wellness break requires more than locking the faculty room. Work has Wi-Fi. No biometric attendance can still mean a Messenger notification at 8:47 p.m. No meeting can still mean three reports due the morning after the break. No classes can still mean spending Sunday afternoon preparing everything waiting on Wednesday morning. If teachers must work ahead to earn the break and work double afterward to repay it, we have not reduced exhaustion. We have merely rescheduled it.

This is where wellness programs can become unintentionally performative. Posters say, “Your mental health matters.” There is Zumba, perhaps a mindfulness webinar, and a smiling graphic with leaves around the word Breathe. These things can help. But teacher well-being cannot be reduced to teaching exhausted people how to endure exhaustion more cheerfully. A 2026 systematic review by Moens and colleagues, covering 366 empirical studies, identified workload and time pressure among the recurring demands associated with teacher stress and burnout. Wellness, then, cannot be just about self-care. It also means manageable work, reasonable deadlines, enough support, and time teachers are genuinely allowed to keep for themselves.

To be fair, administrators are squeezed, too. They face deadlines, trainings, emergencies, disrupted calendars, procurement concerns, and directives from different offices. Sometimes the person scheduling work during the break is simply another tired educator trying to make everything fit. That is precisely why clear policy helps everyone. A protected break should not become the calendar’s spare room where we put whatever no longer fits elsewhere.

Teachers themselves can also learn to leave the break alone. It does not need three finished papers, two webinars, 10,000 steps, an organized cabinet, and a productive morning post. Sleep longer. Have coffee without rushing. Eat with family. Watch a movie. Tend the plants. Take a walk. Do absolutely nothing worth posting. Rest does not need an accomplishment report.

Students benefit from that rest as well. Teaching demands patience, judgment, creativity, attention, and emotional presence. Research has associated teacher burnout with poorer student achievement and motivation. Giving teachers time to recover is not time stolen from learning. It helps sustain the very human capacities students depend on when their teachers return.

DepEd deserves credit for moving in this direction. The October 2025 experience showed that INSET could be moved rather than automatically consume a wellness break. Now, the September 14–15 schedule makes the principle even clearer in actual school implementation: these are designated teacher wellness days following INSET, not extra INSET days waiting to happen. The challenge is ensuring that the spirit survives all the way from the memorandum to the division office, the principal’s desk, the faculty group chat, and finally the teacher’s home.

The larger issue is not whether teachers deserve rest. Of course they do. Nor should wellness become an excuse for avoiding legitimate professional responsibilities. Teachers are professionals; preparation, assessment, training, accountability, and continuing development come with the work. The fairer principle is simpler: necessary work should be purposeful, sensibly distributed, adequately supported, and kept away from time explicitly promised for recovery.

Perhaps that is why the most important word in “The teachers’ wellness break shall be protected” is not break. It is protected. Protected from the meeting that could wait, the report that could have been scheduled elsewhere, the seminar squeezed into an empty date, and the assumption that a blank day on a teacher’s calendar represents unused capacity.

So when September 14 and 15 arrive, let them be what they say they are. And when the next wellness break, semestral break, or genuine period of teacher recovery comes around, let us remember the same thing.

A blank day is not always an available day. Sometimes its purpose is precisely to remain blank.

Rest written into a memorandum is policy. Rest that teachers are actually allowed to take is wellness.

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Doc H fondly describes himself as a ”student of and for life” who, like many others, aspires to a life-giving and why-driven world grounded in social justice and the pursuit of happiness. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions he is employed or connected with.