I sleep about 9 hours on a good night. (Sometimes I wake up in the night, start thinking too much, and can't fall back to sleep.) My 7-year-old son sleeps 11 hours a night. I've always hated waking to an alarm, and haven't had to do that for years now. We go to bed between 8 and 9 pm, and if my son sleeps late, I let him. (His school is very unusual, and it's ok for him to arrive late.)
I'm happier - and I can teach better - when I've had enough sleep, so it's been a priority of mine for many years now. Recently, I've been hearing about how important sleep is for our health and our brains. The article I read just now (Snooze or Lose, at NY Magazine) gives even stronger evidence than I've seen before. This paragraph got me started writing this post:
At the end is a companion article about how to get more sleep. The bit of advice I found most helpful is to limit exposure to tv or computer screens in the last hour or two before bed. I guess if I want to sleep more soundly, I'd better stop surfing a bit earlier.
Sweet dreams!
(Kudos to Rebecca Zook, who posted about this in her blog, Triangle Suitcase.)
I'm happier - and I can teach better - when I've had enough sleep, so it's been a priority of mine for many years now. Recently, I've been hearing about how important sleep is for our health and our brains. The article I read just now (Snooze or Lose, at NY Magazine) gives even stronger evidence than I've seen before. This paragraph got me started writing this post:
In Edina, Minnesota, an affluent suburb of Minneapolis, the high school start time was changed from 7:25 a.m. to 8:30. The results were startling. In the year preceding the time change, math and verbal SAT scores for the top 10 percent of Edina�s students averaged 1288. A year later, the top 10 percent averaged 1500, an increase that couldn�t be attributed to any other variable.A combined score of 1500 is in the top 1% of all test takers. 1288 is in the top 15 to 20%. This is a huge jump. The article gives detail about how sleep helps us learn too:
Dr. Matthew Walker of UC Berkeley explains that during sleep, the brain shifts what it learned that day to more efficient storage regions of the brain. Each stage of sleep plays a unique role in capturing memories. For example, studying a foreign language requires learning vocabulary, auditory memory of new sounds, and motor skills to correctly enunciate new words. The vocabulary is synthesized by the hippocampus early in the night during �slow-wave sleep,� a deep slumber without dreams. The motor skills of enunciation are processed during Stage 2 non-rem sleep, and the auditory memories are encoded across all stages. Memories that are emotionally laden get processed during R.E.M. sleep.
At the end is a companion article about how to get more sleep. The bit of advice I found most helpful is to limit exposure to tv or computer screens in the last hour or two before bed. I guess if I want to sleep more soundly, I'd better stop surfing a bit earlier.
Sweet dreams!
(Kudos to Rebecca Zook, who posted about this in her blog, Triangle Suitcase.)
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