Most middle and high school students do not get enough sleep, which according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is approximately 8 to 10 hours a night for teens ages 13 to 18, according to an article in K-12 Dive.
One problem is smart phones. “We have so many distractions that are easy to use, including using our phone in bed and not blocking out the blue light,” says Brinley Kantorski, director of education and multimedia development at The Partnership in Education at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh.
It’s never too late — nor too early — to create good sleep hygiene in the home. “It’s critical in early ages to have parents involved,” says Dr. Whitney Roban, author and founder of Solve Our Sleep, a sleep training program for children, teens and adults.
Here are some tips:
- Encourage students to use a sleep and mood tracker, which can be done with paper and pencil. Youth can also download free mood-tracking apps that ask questions to help students see the real-world connections between sleep and their physical and mental status.
Sleep trackers are useful tools to fold into math classes with younger students doing simple arithmetic exercises, including learning how to graph, says Gabrielle Rigney, lecturer in undergraduate psychology at Central Queensland University’s Appleton Institute School of Health, Medical and Applied Sciences in Australia.
- Involve families by assigning young students to ask parents, siblings or grandparents about their sleep. Classes can even run a simple analysis to see if sleep patterns differ based on people’s ages.
- Students in upper grades can begin to study the biology of sleep and how light and activities can affect hormones and sleep patterns.
- Pay attention to student behaviors such as falling asleep during class and ask if something is going on in their lives beyond staying up late to study, says Jennifer Martin, a professor-in-residence at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. She cautions teachers to not punish students for that behavior.
Drowsiness in students may be due to teenagers’ biological clocks. Teenagers are biologically wired to stay up later, and when school starts early, with extracurricular activities in the morning, kids don’t have enough time to sleep, Martin says.
- Chastising students for poor sleep could lead students to criticize themselves. It’s not optimal for someone already struggling after a poor night of sleep to add more stress to an already difficult day they may be facing, says Kantorski.
- Talk to students about what constitutes a restful night of sleep versus one that’s more irregular.
“There’s good sleep and bad sleep, and it’s good for people to know it’s a pretty big problem,” Kantorski says.
- Add tools into a sleep curriculum that can help students learn how to calm themselves when they’re stressed from a lack of sleep or any other issues. Grounding exercises or mindfulness activities are examples that can help students — and teachers — transition through a bad day, manage a poor night’s sleep, and take away any negative feelings they may be directing toward themselves.
“Sometimes it’s unavoidable, and sometimes kids don’t have control over the home settings and how much noise and light is happening,” Kantorski says. “Instead, focus on what they can do to mitigate a bad night’s sleep.”
K-12 Dive
