This year we are taking a hard look at our curriculum to see where we can make it even stronger than it is, and I expect to write about some of the ideas that surface. We will be looking for lots of input from parents and alumni as well as from faculty and students. One aspect of the curriculum review is our daily schedule. As many of you know, we have an idiosyncratic 11-day schedule that is the result of a compromise made back in the 1970s when the Loomis and Chaffee schools reunited and neither school wanted to abandon its particular schedule. Idiosyncratic as it may be, there are those who love it (to borrow a Dartmouth phrase). We have a new committee that will take another look at our schedule as well as the schedules of other schools and will then make recommendations to the whole faculty. One aspect of the daily schedule that particularly interests me is when we start the day.
The evidence seems pretty incontrovertible that teenagers need more sleep than the average bear. In a new book called NurtureShock: New Thinking about Children, authors Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman summarize the research on teenagers and sleep. (By the way, the book also includes excellent chapters on mindset, teenage rebellion, lying, and sibling relationships—all well worth reading by parents and educators alike.)
Half of adolescents get less than 7 hours of sleep a night. Indeed, high school seniors average only 6.5 hours and only 5 percent get 8 hours. The impact of what the authors call “the lost hour” of sleep is dramatic and include higher levels of depression and obesity as well as lower test scores and grades. One survey of 7,000 teenagers by the University of Minnesota found that those students who received A grades averaged 15 more minutes of sleep than did those who earned B grades, who in turn average 15 more minutes of sleep than did those who earned C grades—which means that even an extra 15 minutes of sleep helps. More sleep translates into happier, healthier, more productive kids.
Teenage brains are wired differently than the brains of either younger children or adults—something that those of us who have lived with teenagers have long suspected. They spend significantly more of their sleeping time in what is called “slow-wave” sleep—40 percent compared with only 4 percent in adults—and it is this type of sleep that allows them to process the learning that has taken place that day. Indeed, the more rigorous the learning environment the more sleep that is needed. To further complicate the situation, it doesn’t help to simply put teenagers to bed earlier; they are simply not ready for sleep until later than most adults—again because of the their physiology. In young children and adults the body releases melatonin when it starts to get dark; but in teenagers this process does not begin to kick in until some 90 minutes later. And it is for these reasons that teenagers need to start later in the morning.
Several schools around the country have implemented a later start time for the school day. Among our peer schools Deerfield Academy has been a leader on this issue. They undertook an experiment of starting school at 8.30 and pushing check in earlier by 30 minutes to create an extra hour of potential sleep time. The results were impressive. One student commented, “I feel more energized throughout the day, I have more energy for exercise and my teachers say I am more alert in class.”
At Loomis, we start the school day at 8.10—significantly later than many school districts. But I would like us to consider starting later still at 8.30 and to consider earlier check-in times for boarders. I don’t know where this conversation will take us, but I do know that it is an important conversation for us to have.
