Were I still teaching those classes...

    In my final year teaching Leadership classes before retiring from teaching in 2009, I emphasized climate change. My premise was that leadership requires the awareness and courage to face reality, no matter how distant or uncertain. There is comfort in residing in the camp of denial, but leadership demands that one arrive there through personal research and conviction rather than by the path of least resistance. My students at the school represented the various views of their parents and while most felt an obligation to consider energy saving practices at a certain level, there was no real sense of immediacy from them. Even the best global warming evidence at hand - the current rise in sea levels, global record high temperatures in the last decade, increasing snow and ice melt - was insufficient to stir thoughts beyond typical 8th and 9th grader momentary earnestness.

    Were I still teaching those classes, I would now be revisiting the topic with the much more dramatic evidence from the current year. Few of my former students are likely to have missed the climate harbingers of this past spring and summer; the floods, the heat waves, and the intense storms. The brain is wired to prioritize threats that are most immediate and logic must be supported by limbic to raise the red flags that cause us to elevate such concerns in our memory centers. I believe I would now have their full attention.

    Were I still teaching those classes, I would describe in detail the disasters and catastrophes from around the world since 2010 began. I would begin at home. I would ask, "How many of you experienced extreme heat on the East Coast this summer?" For those many who habitually escape to the relative coolness of Cape Cod, I would remind them of July 7 when at 5 pm the temperature remained at 95 ℉ in Hyannis, Massachusetts. According to NASA and NOAA this spring was easily the hottest January through May in the temperature record (NASA & NOAA). In Mark Lynas' book "Six Degrees" he discusses the ramifications of a 2℉ global temperature increase in the context of the summer of 2003, when averaged across the continent of Europe the temperature increased 2.3 ℃ above the norm. At that time, Great Britain experience triple digit (℉) temperatures for the first time and even Switzerland reached 104 ℉ by August. In 2003, this was the worst of the past but a harbinger of things to come. Inexperience with such temperatures, poor preparation for the possibility, and denial all played a part in the 10,000 heat stroke victims in Paris, up to 35,000 deaths in Europe all together, crop losses estimated at 12 billion dollars, and forest fires in Portugal causing another 1.5 billion dollars of damage. And according to NASA and NOAA, this current year is hotter! And not just here at home. I would ask my students if they were aware of the current conditions in Russia, where they are experiencing the longest heat wave in 1000 years.  I would quote from the blog of the young actor Emile Hirsch, in Moscow to film a movie, who describes the heat and the effect of smoke from the 500 plus wild fires burning unchecked on 420,000 acres of forest. I would talk about the drownings of over 1000 Russians trying to cool off in rivers after consuming vodka. And the lack of air conditioning and other means to find relief in the normally cool but now hot and polluted city. Traveling briefly around the globe, I would point out that in Pakistan, a temperature of 129℉ was reached, the highest recorded in Asia, and in Sudan, 121℉ was reached, the highest ever in that country, and in Iraq, 125.6℉ was reached, the highest ever in that  country. And coming home again, I would mention that the month of July in the U.S. was one of the hottest ever, eclipsing the July 1936 Dust Bowl record temperature.

    Were I still teaching those classes, we would talk about water. While the more dramatic water related crisis portent of a warming globe is sea level rise, an underplayed symptom is the increased intensity of precipitation during storms. A study by the British government prior to 2005 found that once a century floods in that country are by 2080 expected to increase to one in three years, in part due to rain volume and increasing runoff. Too much water at once can be as devastating as too little. I would direct my class once again toward home, remembering the Midwest floods of this summer. But we would quickly travel to Pakistan to review the worst flooding that country has experienced in 80 years, effecting 20 million people from an unusually heavy monsoon that brought 12 inches of rain in 36 hours. Then to Poland, where floods caused the evacuation of 25,000 people, and on to Romania and the Ukraine where 9500 people had to be evacuated. And then, while the heat and wet of the summer still surrounds us, we would remember the devastating snow events of the winter of 2010: the blizzards of the United States east coast, mud slides in South America, and unprecedented winter weather around the world .

    Were I still teaching those classes, I would teach that climate change is real and inevitable, and while it may seem to stabilize in some years, or happen there but not here, change - difficult and uncomfortable change - will inevitably occur. And as leaders, we must stop thinking 'if' and begin planning for 'when'.

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Not On A School Night!

"Not on a school night!"
How often have children heard that phrase over the years? Every parent knows that the surest way to compromise success for young people in school is to limit their sleep. Yet this is precisely what parents and educators are doing, albeit unwittingly.

The problem is biology…aided and abetted by unyielding tradition and seductive technology. While there often may be sound underlying reasons for many of the customary child raising methods and  education traditions we currently employ, just as often the original purpose for our choices may no longer exist; take for instance summer vacations, or non college preparatory courses of study (subjects for future blog articles!). And sometimes new data may indicate that long accepted practices are in reality counter-productive. The case in point: clear evidence suggests that early school start times for students in grades 8 to 12 actually diminish academic performance, a result that is probably not part of the original intention. Research has found that melatonin secretion, a marker for sleep onset, is later by almost an hour for most post puberty children. In essence, a biological change takes place at puberty causing these children to resist sleep longer. It is why adolescents struggle to wake up in the morning and don't want to fall asleep at night.

This is not recent knowledge. It is simply undersubscribed. In November 2006, Mary Carskadon, PhD., a researcher at the E.P.Bradley Hospital Sleep Research Laboratory of the Brown Medical School, presented her findings to an audience of educators and scientists at the 15th Learning & the Brain Conference in Boston. Her accompanying paper had actually been submitted to the New York Academy of Sciences two years earlier in 2004. Dr. Carskadon's findings support the evidence of sleep pattern changes during pubertal development. In fact, she concluded that "many adolescents have too little sleep at the wrong circadian phase. This pattern is associated with increased risks for excessive sleepiness, difficulty with mood regulation, impaired academic performance, learning difficulties, school tardiness and absenteeism, and accidents and injuries."! Work by Robert Stickgold of Harvard University and a host of other researchers around the country is supportive of the science. Yet with the exception of one or two west coast schools which have instituted dual start times an hour apart (students may select their start dependent upon their desire to participate in competitive sports) and high schools in Minneapolis and West Des Moines which have adopted later start times, this information appears minimally disseminated and even more minimally acted upon.

Which is why I was heartened to read a recent Associated Press article describing a study undertaken by St. Georges School, an exclusive private boarding high school in Middletown, R.I. The study was guided by Dr. Judith Owens, a sleep researcher and pediatrician at Hasbro Children's Hospital in Providence, R.I. The results appeared in the July edition of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine and "add to a growing body of evidence" supporting the findings from sleep researchers that biological changes take place in adolescent children that dramatically alter their sleep times. The St. Georges School starting time was shifted from 8 to 8:30 am. The findings for 201 students participating:

    •    55% (increased from 16%) reported a full 8 hours sleep
    •    20% (decreased from 49%) reported daytime sleepiness
    •    50% decrease in first period tardiness
    •    50 % increase in hot breakfasts served

These results are not surprising to me. Students really do want to feel well and be alert and perform well. Young people at this age are characterized by their confusion and lack of understanding about their own physical development. They require our help to establish safe and healthy practices (St. Georges School, by the way, intends to keep the later start time).


Among the practices contributing to late sleep onset may be, yes kids, homework…and TV watching. Not just for all of the commonly rehashed reasons, but because of blue light, that is 460 nanometer light, the light that is perceived by the retinal cells, those photo receptors in the eye. Our circadian rhythms are established largely by this level of light which occurs naturally in the morning and at night (the blue hour…). As Carskadon (et al) report, "Light occurring in the early part of the circadian night (evening and early nighttime) produces a delay resetting response in the (body) clock, whereas light signals in the late night/early morning result in an advanced resetting response". In other words, when my retinal photo receptors perceive blue light for a period of time in the evening, my internal sleep clock will reset itself for a later hour and in subsequent evenings I will feel wakeful longer. And here is the really interesting news…computers and televisions (and video games) emit this same blue light. The inference is clear. The use of these electronic devices after natural blue light occurrence will readjust the user's circadian rhythm to sleep later.

And so the irony is revealed. Because of a natural biological change at puberty causing sleep onset to occur an hour later, and augmented by homework assigned by teachers which must be completed on computers emitting blue light that resets the circadian rhythm to later sleep times, students from puberty onward are now struggling to meet early school start times and increasingly find themselves in a growing sleep deficit which is effecting their performance…and they have been placed in this situation unknowingly by educators and parents! 

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• Teenagers biologically programmed to wake-up later (healthfinder.gov)
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