Learning Challenge: What happens when you don't sleep?

February 16, 2020

Learning Challenge: What happens when you don't sleep?

For this challenge, I watched this TED-ED video: What would happen if you didn't sleep?

I knew that lack of sleep was bad for you, but I'm interested in how it changes the brain. I think it's cool how the brain has developed a way to clean the brain. This video shows lots of terrible side effects of sleep deprivation. It leads to short term memory loss, emotional problems, and lack of focus. All of those things effect teenagers and their success in school. This problem is similar for college students and adults, but they need less sleeps that teens.

With school and work, it's easy to think that sleeping is a waste of time, but watching videos like this reminds me how important sleep really is. This is especially important for me as a future teacher. I feel really bad for teenagers that have to go to school at 7am. If teens are supposed to get 10 hours of sleep, they would have to go to bed at like 9pm to get enough sleep. Of course, that's impossible for teens with homework and/or a social life. I think that teachers need to make sure that when they are assigning homework that it is necessary and beneficial to the student. It's my goal as a future teacher to only assign homework on the weekends, so that students have time to work on it and hopefully get enough sleep.