I have ran out of fingers on which to count the number of times I have seen a student fall completely asleep during a class this semester. It isn't always the same students either. It doesn't seem to matter what is being taught. Someone is going to decide that their first hour is nap time and nod off. Why is this? Is it something wrong with the curriculum? I would argue that is not the case at all.
The school I am assigned to starts very early in the morning. So early in the morning that I rarely see any of the staff who appear to be fully awake by the time classes are about to start, let alone the students, and that is the point. School should not start that early. It is detrimental to a student's learning to drag them out of bed before dawn and force them off to school in the dark. Now, I'm not just pulling out an opinion that would make me feel better about showing up in the early hours. The research is there to show us that schools who start later in the day see a surprisingly high increase in both grades and attendance. Don't believe me? Just follow the links.
http://www.parentcentral.ca/parent/education/post-secondary/article/923380--toronto-school-starts-hour-later-and-grades-improve
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6896471
Studies have shown that teenagers need their sleep, but their bodies are not wired for the earlier bedtimes of adults. They stay up at night because they aren't tired, not out of some sort of teenage rebellion, and yet we force them to school after just six hours of what should be a nine hour sleep schedule. What schools have been showing is that by starting even just an hour later than they are, they can improve the grades, and even moods of their students dramatically. So why don't we all hop on this badwagon? Sounds great right? Well, there are a few reasons.
We have a limited amount of transportation for students and it would likely cost a huge amount of money to fund all the new buses we would need if all the high schools started at the same time of day. We also have to consider that students would need to stay later if they start later and when we start cutting into time of day closer to 4 and 5pm, we start cutting into what many consider to be the time for sports and extra curriculars that would probably need to be changed drastically or cut to fit into the new schedule.
Of course, my belief is that if it is beneficial to the students, and we have the capability, then we should at least try. It just isn't convenient to us teachers and parents who would have to be at the school much later or pick them up from classes. Sometimes though, maybe we should sacrifice convenience for what has been proven to actually work and stop pretending like it is a students fault that he cannot seem to even stay awake at seven in the morning (I still recommend at least trying to keep them awake though, it won't do any good if he or she misses the whole lesson).
Although I completely agree that school may start too early for some students, convincing school districts to implement later start times will probably not happen any time soon. So, what can we do to keep students awake despite of their possible lack of sleep? Well, I have witnessed many teachers who seem to not care at all if their students doze off. Sleeping students happen to be one of my BIGGEST pet peeves in the classroom, and I simply will not let a student sleep away a whole class. I don't care if they're tired. If I see them sleeping, I WILL wake them up. And I really think it's as simple as that. Of course, we can do our best to create engaging lessons to capture the attention of the class, but that doesn't always work. We have to let them know that sleeping is not acceptable and there have to be consequences if it's habitual.
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