Sleep Deprivation and Students

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Revision as of 01:32, 10 May 2006

Descriptions, definitions, synonyms, organizer terms, types of

Sleep deprivation, as defined in Wikipedia, "is an overall lack of the necessary amount of sleep. A person can be deprived of sleep by their own body and mind, insomnia, or actively deprived by another individual.”

In America today, it is almost certain that most people do not get the recommended amount of sleep each day. There can be a wide variety of reasons for why people do not get the most effective amount of sleep per day from stress to poor diet to sleep disorders.

Causes of Sleep Deprivation Taken from Better Health Channel

·Personal choice - some people don't realise that the body needs adequate sleep. Instead of regularly going to bed at a reasonable hour, they prefer to stay up late to socialise, watch television or read a good book.

·Illness - illnesses such as colds and tonsillitis can cause snoring, gagging and frequent waking, and have a direct effect on sleep by fragmenting it.

·Work - people who do shift work disrupt their sleep-wake cycles on a regular basis. Frequent travellers (for example, airline crew) tend to have erratic sleeping patterns.

·Sleep disorder - problems such as sleep apnoea, snoring and periodic limb movement disorder can disturb the person's sleep many times during the night.

·Medications - some drugs used to treat disorders such as epilepsy or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) can cause insomnia.

·The sleeping environment - sleep may be disrupted for a range of environmental reasons; for example, because the bedroom is too hot or cold, or because of noisy neighbours or a snoring bed partner.

·Poor sleep hygiene - some people's habits are disruptive; for example, drinking coffee or smoking cigarettes close to bedtime stimulates the nervous system and makes sleep less likely. Another common problem is lying in bed and worrying, rather than relaxing.

·Babies, older babies and toddlers - parents almost always experience sleep deprivation because their young children wake frequently in the night for feeding or comfort.

Application in classrooms and similar settings

Insufficient sleep has been shown to cause an increase in disciplinary problems, make students fall asleep, and often leads to poor concentration of even basic functions. This can be seen in the daily trudge that most students go through on their way through their first hour class.

“One thing that happens when you get less sleep is that the brain has to work harder to get less accomplished. In fact, in some studies, certain parts of the brain will shut themselves down in order to get simple jobs accomplished. Researchers expected to find only sluggish activity in the brains of healthy young people who took a simple word test after staying awake for 35 hours. They found instead that while parts of the sleep-deprived brains churned with activity during the test, another part of the brain -- the language center -- shut down.” (WebMD)

This can be seen when most students are working on assignments in class and if sleep deprivation is evident, this can lead to the student to get easily frustrated, angry, and not able to work.

Symptoms of Sleep Deprivation Taken from Better Health Channel

·Moodiness and irritability

·Temper tantrums

·The tendency to emotionally 'explode' at the slightest provocation

·Over-activity and hyperactive behavior

·Daytime naps

·Grogginess when they wake up in the morning

·Reluctance to get out of bed in the morning.

Evidence of effectiveness

I have seen many examples of how sleep deprivation has affected students and athletes that I have had in the past. I have seen students who regularly get A's on papers and homework come in after a late night school dance get C's or worse on a daily assignment. You will also see kids that regularly stay up late each night come into class yawning and trying to sleep in the middle of class. It is these types of students that have this regularly occur that you see dramatic changes in their attitude and ability as the year continues.

In athletics, you can tell a big difference in the performance of an athlete who gets a regular night of sleep and one that has stayed up late watching television or messing around. Their performance is drastically lower than the other athlete. I stress to all my kids that they need to get a good night's sleep before big meets or big events in their lives.

Critics and their rationale

Signed "life experiences", testimonies and stories

I find that when I don't get enough sleep during the week that I tend to lose a lot of my motivation to do things that I normally would do. I also find myself wanting to take naps during my prep periods. I know that if it affects me in these ways that it definitely has an impact on my students. I try to talk to them about taking time to organize themselves and work on time management to get things accomplished. If they can get this taken care of, they will not have to spend all hours of the day trying to accomplish things that they forgot to do earlier. -Nick Hartz

A sad, but true, fact among teachers in our school is that every year they want and ask for a 1st period lower level class. They know that most kids don't get enough sleep at night and can be somewhat lethargic during this time and are less apt to misbehave. On the flip side, honors courses don't want first hour because students are not usually on their game that early in the morning. Brad Frey, Johnsburg High School

References and other links of interest

Better Health Channel (http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Sleep_deprivation?OpenDocument)

WebMD: Lack of Sleep Takes Toll on Brain Power (http://www.webmd.com/content/article/21/1728_54980)

Sleepless at Stanford (http://www.stanford.edu/~dement/sleepless.html)

Wikipedia: Sleep deprivation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_deprivation)