The Courageous Classroom by Taylor Janet; Dearybury Jed; & Jed Dearybury

Author:Taylor, Janet; Dearybury, Jed; & Jed Dearybury [Taylor, Janet & Dearybury, Jed]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated
Published: 2021-07-21T00:16:52+00:00

The Brain and Sleep

Sleep issues can be a huge problem for students and are associated with greater student-teacher conflict (Holdaway and Becker 2018). For children and teenagers to have healthy development, they must sleep. Many children report sleep issues secondary to inconsistent bedtimes, nightmares, insomnia, and daytime sleepiness. Children who have ongoing sleep problems may have academic difficulties and impaired socioemotional functioning. Research has found that a child's sleep patterns and functioning were significantly associated with maternal sleep problems and specifically maternal fatigue, parenting stress, and overload (Holdaway and Becker 2018). The significance of these findings may be a yo-yo effect between the child and parent sleep disruptions resulting in child mood difficulties and perhaps marital or relationship conflict. Daytime sleepiness in the classroom directly impacts the attention, perseverance, and participation/initiative in school. Teachers should remind their students about the importance of sleep for learning, emotional regulation, and their physical health.

Younger students who display higher deficits in their processing of attention and memory and their ability to regulate their mood and behavior, secondary to poor sleep patterns, can worsen as they get older. The student-teacher relationship can be made more difficult because of the nature of students who require more discipline and are less likely to function doing independent work or interacting appropriately with their peers. Teachers should screen for sleep problems in students who may be struggling with learning and behavior.

Teachers may also have impaired sleep patterns leading to physical and emotional risks for their health. Remember Jed's story about his student teaching experience. How do you think he slept that week after being up with his mom in the hospital all night? Being a teacher can be (IS) stressful and besides dealing with challenging workloads, many teachers are also faced with demands including caregiving, taking care of elderly parents, managing collegial conflicts, and a lack of administrative support. Work stress can lead to decreased sleep. Research evidence directly points to difficult and adverse job characteristics challenging healthy sleep patterns in educators. One study by Kottwitz et al. (2018) showed that 38% of teachers who had diminished sleep quality reported experiences of failure at work, social exclusion, and emotional ups and downs. Being able to recover with more sleep while away from work on vacation was positively associated with improved health and well-being. Managing stress with healthy coping practices was key.

A lack of consistent sleep can challenge emotional well-being for teachers. Sleep deprivation is a stressor and skipping one night of sleep can lead to an increased vulnerability to the perception of risk and cause a rise in anxiety and fear (Tabibnia and Radecki 2018). Emotional dissonance, or the feeling that something's just not right, can force many teachers to hold their emotions in check when dealing with students, their parents, and colleagues. That can be a difficult task as teachers diligently work to reach their educational goals and maintain a positive equilibrium in the classroom. Having to suppress most negative emotions often allows them to persist, while feeling

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