I wish I (and my parents) knew about this information when I was a “tween.” I was most struck by the information Carskadon provided about the amount of sleep adolescents need and the change in the release time of melatonin throughout puberty. I shared this information with my cooperating teacher and she said, “Oh, yeah, that’s why some progressive schools start later than normal public schools.” If we have this information, why is it only the progressive schools that aim to adjust to how adolescents best learn? I’m particularly struck how in NYC, most of my students (including myself) have a 45-60 minute commute that sometimes involve multiple forms of transportation. My students are tired, and attendance is a growing concern in our school. Just today one of them complained to me that he gets home from school at 6pm and has to wake up at 5am to be at school on time. He said he didn’t think it was possible to get the 9+ hours we tell him he needs. I didn’t know what to tell him except that adequate sleep important and that he try and rest on the weekends.
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Hi Gretchen,
I understand your concern. I wish I knew the importance of sleep for teenagers when I was one too. Though I was told of it, because the Chinese put grave importance in sleep as a way to stay healthy especially as adolescents, I didn’t really care much about it. But now that I think of it, sufficient sleep is vital to students’ growth. And the situation you mentioned here now that some students really don’t have the time to guarantee a nine-hour sleep everyday, is common in China too. So I can’t help but wonder what kind of support that us as teachers could do like you did in your MVP? Maybe try to give them less homework to do? Or try to educate students about the importance of sleep as well as their parents? None these seems practical enough because they might just forget about it the second day and go back to their old habbits especially like when I was a teenager, I used to believe I was young and had all the energies in the world?