After today’s AS2 lesson when I had to wake Leo up 5 or 6 times and then gave up trying, I researched online about the problem with teenagers falling asleep in class and found the following.
‘Few high school students are awake enough to get much out of their first class, particularly if it starts before 8 a.m. Research shows that teenagers’ body clocks are set to a schedule that is different from that of younger children or adults. This prevents adolescents from dropping off until around 11 p.m. The result is that the first class of the morning is often a waste, with as many as 28 percent of students falling asleep, according to a National Sleep Foundation poll. Some are so sleepy they don’t even show up, contributing to failure and dropout rates.
Even though numerous studies have found that the teenager does not function well until late morning, our first class of the day is at 7:40am and sometimes, even the most energetic and interesting teacher finds it hard to energise their class.
So what is to be done? Once I have woken him up I cannot keep him awake for more than a couple of second before he collapses onto the desk again – a bit like a rag doll? When he eventually wakes up dazed and confused everyone else laughs! I must admit the sight of Leo waking up and wondering why there are so many people in his bedroom is amusing.
The situation got worse last term because the time of the first lesson of the day was changed from 7:50am to 10 minutes earlier. Not only does this mean we all have to get up at the crack of dawn to travel to school but during the first lesson, almost nothing is learnt.