A good night’s sleep can be hard to find for busy students, but a new study shows that a daytime nap can boost learning and memorization power in young adults. The idea certainly makes sense to me—even a short snooze has the power to leave me feeling exponentially more lucid than I was 20 minutes before.

Unfortunately, nap time during the school day pretty much disappeared after kindergarten. Even in college, when my dorm was just a short walk away, it was hard to find a time when work or class was not demanding my attention.

The new research, presented Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Diego, shows that young adults who took a 90-minute nap after eating lunch were able to boost their learning power, according to a Monday New York Times report.

Today, the New York Times posed the question, “do you get enough sleep?” to students on their education blog, The Learning Network. Most students replied that they were carrying some serious sleep debt, but highly doubt that schools would be amenable to giving students a free period to sleep. “If we told our school they probably would laugh at us,” one post commented.
(more…)

A cowbell — that’s what my mother used to call us to dinner after an afternoon (and, sometimes, early evening) of play.  Bent, rusted, big, and loud, it rang from the back stoop, beckoning my brothers and me from the backyard or from an even more wild and wonderful place behind our house: a place we called,  simply, “The Lot.”

The Lot was a weedy…..well, a weedy mess, really. It was the drain field for the subdivision behind us. And I’m sure it was filled with ticks and chiggers and poison ivy and snakes. And, of course, we loved it. We played baseball there in the summer, and when it rained a great deal, as it tended to do sometimes in St. Louis, The Lot would fill up with water and become a lake. (Probably a dirty, germ-laden, storm sewer of a lake, but a “lake,” nonetheless.)

I thought about “The Lot” today as I read a news release from the Alliance for Children on the importance of free play — both at home and at school — and its central role in fighting a childhood obesity epidemic that has become a cause célèbre for Michelle Obama and many advocacy groups, including NSBA.

“We’re delighted that Michelle Obama has taken up this issue as her major focus as First Lady,” said Joan Almon, the Alliance’s executive director. “Efforts to reverse the obesity epidemic have until now focused almost entirely on nutrition and physical activity with disappointing results. The missing ingredient in this recipe is play — good, old-fashioned, child-initiated play, the kind that used to keep children moving and active for hours each day.”
(more…)

This past weekend was one for the record books for us in Washington, D.C. — a snow storm socked us with more than 20 inches of snow. Many of us are from colder areas (Pittsburgh, for me), but we’ve been here so long that we’ve acclimated to snow-less winters.

Schools and offices are closed all over the Washington, D.C., metro area and beyond. While we’ve been trying to come up with names for the big storm (Snowpocolypse, Snowmaggaden, and Snowtorious B.I.G.), yet another storm is fixing to dump yet another 10 to 20 inches on us.

For the snowbound, this is a perfect time to catch up on reading — and ASBJ.com offers plenty of useful and thought-provoking articles to keep you occupied as the snow piles up. Read what schools can and can’t learn from business in our February issue. Also, find out how administrators and school leaders are coping with the stress of the down economy.

While you’re in an information-gathering mode, register for a free webinar on how to move your district into the next generation. ASBJ is partnering with Cisco on this webinar, which will be at 2 p.m. ET on Feb. 25 and will feature a seven-step process on how to assess where you are now and how to get where you need to go.  Go here to register.

Social networking? Then follow us on Twitter for updates, insights, and other items for school leaders and anyone interested in education.  Are you on Facebook? Become a fan of ASBJ here.

Interested in federal education policy and legislation? Read our coverage of NSBA’s Leadershiop and Federal Relations Network conferences at School Board News Today.

Happy reading — Spring will be here, soon.

Kathleen Vail, Managing Editor

It’s that time of year when charities bring out their best heartwarming stories, and I have to admit the ones that rescue pets always get my check. Call me a crazy cat lady, but I firmly believe that pets bring more benefits to society than we’ll ever realize.

ASBJ’s research columnist, Susan Black, must have the same soft spot. In the December issue of ASBJ, she devotes her space to heartwarming stories about therapy animals–dogs and cats and other furry friends that even can help children learn to read. Yes, that’s right—they help children learn to read.

“Therapy animals” are pets that are trained and certified by programs that “are proliferating across the country,” as more schools realize their success, Black writes. In most cases, they are the pets of volunteers or staff who have passed rigorous personality and demeanor tests and have undergone training to ensure they are suitable to work with children.

The concept for the reading programs is quite simple: students who have difficulties reading are placed with a therapy dog that “listens” as the child reads to it. What researchers—including Black—have witnessed is that children who are reluctant readers often blossom with a therapy dog.

While they may have been embarrassed or ashamed to read aloud in class, the dog tends to provide a calming effect that allows the child to practice their reading skills more successfully. Studies have found that children who read to dogs gain substantially more points on reading assessments and read at faster rates than struggling children who do not have such programs.  The dogs are trained to sit there and listen, perhaps offer a paw for support.   
(more…)

Photo courtesy Stockvault

Today marked the day of our office’s annual cookie exchange. Shortbread, pecan sandies, and thumbprint cookies piped with chocolate hazelnut or eggnog filling; it’s not a gathering for counting calories, but for counting blessings and good friends to share it with, year after year.

Similiar holiday traditions no doubt are practiced in your schools and offices … or maybe not, as recent policies have put focus on health promotion and stemming childhood obesity.

Many of you already know and may have been part of creating wellness policies for your district a few years back, a requirement built into the 2004 Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act.

Other than developing physical activity and nutrition goals, in concert with the public, school systems were given wide lattitude on how to implement and ultimately illustrate wellness in their community. 

For a primer, check out our archives for our special report “Getting to Wellness.”
(more…)

Photo courtesy of Stockvault

We’re all feeling more financial stress these days—whether it’s loss of a job or other income, mounting bills and floundering home prices, or just seeing other family and friends deal with the economic downturn. It’s no surprise that our stress is rubbing off on our kids–and psychologists and pediatricians are warning that can have significant consequences.

New results from an annual survey by the American Psychological Association—appropriately called “Stress in America”–show that kids “absolutely” feel their parents’ stress, and parents don’t always know that their children are picking up on it.

The APA reports that teenagers and tweens (children ages 8-12) were more likely than parents to say that their stress had increased in the last year.

Forty-five percent of teens ages 13-17 said that they worried more this year, but not all of their parents were aware of that, as only 28 percent of parents reported that their teen’s stress increased, according to the survey.

A quarter, 26 percent, of tweens said they worried more this year, but only 17 percent of parents believed their tween’s stress had increased. And while only 2-5 percent of parents rated their child’s stress as “extreme,” 14 percent of tweens and 28 percent of teens said that they worry a lot or a great deal, the APA reports.
(more…)

Photo courtesy Stockvault

It was front page news: NYC is banning that old-time, tried and true school fundraiser— the bake sale. The decision has drawn mixed emotions.

From school staff saying the policy is pointless and takes away yet another opportunity for struggling schools to make money, to public health officials saying its a good sign of districts committment to promoting a healthy lifestyle among children and adults, there has been a range of reactions.

But surprise shouldn’t be one of them.

Photo courtesy of Stockvault

Driven by the 2004 Child Nutrition  and WIC Reauthorization Act, all school systems were supposed to adopt a wellness policy the summer of 2005, which (depending on the enthusiasm of the district) could include all manner of things from exercise and nutrition to creating a healthy environment from the top down. Read our comprehensive ASBJ special report, Getting to Wellness, to get all of the details.

While NYC isn’t the first school system to take on such traditions as bake sales, they are largest to do so. But let’s face it, no matter a large city or a small community, attempts to put regulations or limits on food will always engender controversy, as one health expert told me.

“We are a very food-oriented country, we reward and punish with food,” says Ev Beliveau, the former nutrition and education director for the School Nutrition Association. “In certain parts of the country it is going to be difficult; if you don’t clean your plate, you are being disrespectful.”

But hopefully as more reports come out supporting the need to curb childhood obesity and, in general, the need to focus on prevention in order to cut soaring healthcare costs, those attitudes will change.

Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor

We held our bullying prevention webinar last week and we had more than a thousand people register (you were there, weren’t you?). That phenomenal response confirms to me that the topic of bullying prevention is on the minds of many educators, administrators, and school board members. 

A decade ago, right after the Columbine shootings, I wrote an article about bullying and what districts were doing to prevent it. I was heartened to discover that the attitude about bullying that I grew up with (it’s natural and adults shouldn’t interfere) was fading.

I revisited the topic in our September issue to see what had changed in the decade after Columbine. A lot, as I found out. The school shooting tragedy has spawned a huge body of research on how bullying affect students and the best ways to do school-based prevention. The people I interviewed said that fewer educators and administrators had to be convinced of the school’s role in prevention.

I mentioned my article to my brother when he visited this summer. He’s in his mid-50s – the age of many administrators and school board members. He asked if schools should be preventing bullying, because it was going to happen anyway. I answered with a resounding yes – school is exactly the place to do this. Schools should be a safe haven for students, and they don’t learn very well when they’re being threatened, shamed, or made fun of.

David Cullen’s excellent book, Columbine, published this year, showed that neither of the two young killers was bullied. It was a myth that took on a life of its own because of our very real need to find a rational explanation for what happened. That doesn’t change the fact that other school shootings had their roots in bullying behavior and that research has shown that bullying brings student achievement down and hurts children long into adulthood.

Read my September article here, where you can also check out my first article. Also, we’re going to post the webinar, in case you missed it.

What do you think? How big of a role should schools play in bullying prevention? Leave a comment and let us know.

Kathleen Vail, Managing Editor

If you didn’t know better, you’d think the cars and trucks parked outside South Potomac Church in Waldorf, Md., one weekday night meant there was some kind of church social going on. Actually, it was something quite different — the last evening of Safe Nights, Charles County’s seasonal shelter program for the homeless.

I was at the church off a busy state highway in this Washington, D.C., exurb to do a story on how the Charles County Public Schools are helping homeless students and their families.

I’d talked to school officials at length. Now I had to find homeless students, which isn’t necessarily easy. Safe Nights rotates between various churches throughout colder months, and finding out where it was this particular week was harder than you might think.

Sometime in the 1960s, when I was in either high school or middle school, I read a book for an American history class called The Other America, by Michael Harrington, about poverty in the United States. It made a big impression on me, and one of the things the author said that has stuck with me all these years is that poverty is “invisible.” The poor are, by nature, separated from the mainstream, both physically, to be sure, and in other ways as well.

You could say the same about families that are homeless. Driving the 45 miles from my office to Waldorf, past sprawling shopping centers and endless subdivisions, I wondered, “Is there really a story here? If I have to drive this far just to find a homeless student, how big a deal is this?”

It is a big deal; we just don’t see it. Once inside South Potomac Church, I found a small, cordial community of about 50 people. Adults talking softly, sharing an evening meal. Children playing, laughing, drawing pictures, and running among the cots set up in the church hall. And, to be sure, it really did have the kind of warm atmosphere of a church social — albeit one with a backdrop of shared hardship.

Read my story, and you’ll meet two members of that community, Adrian Barbour and his 8-year-old son, son, Dubois, who goes to a Charles County Elementary School, where his father meets him every day for lunch when he’s not out on a job interview. They are remarkably accepting of their current predicament, but hope it will be temporary.

“We’re just trying to get to ‘next,’” Barbour told me. “We’re not asking for that much.”

Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor

Six years ago, I wrote a story about homeless children in the June issue of ASBJ. I visited a city I love, New Orleans, to interview children and their parents, as well as school administrators, on the challenges of educating children without permanent addresses.

In those pre-Katrina days, the intractable poverty of children was crushing the New Orleans school system.  Homelessness was just one symptom of that poverty. I was hoping to find examples of student who were stigmatized by living in shelters.

Instead, the children I spoke with were happy to be in the shelter, where they received regular meals, tutoring sessions, and counseling. Their parents were getting treatment for their drug and alcohol abuse problems and their mental health issues. 

Many of the children didn’t want to leave the shelter when their time was up, wondering if they were again facing hunger and uncertainty.

In 2003, when I wrote that piece, the number of homeless families was on the rise, with the high cost of housing being one of the factors. This year, those numbers are growing again,  as more middle-class families are being hurt by the mortgage crisis and rising unemployment.

This month, my colleagues Naomi Dillon and Lawrence Hardy take a look at how schools are working to keep homelss children on track academically and emotionally. Their articles are online and free to nonsubscribers for a limited time.

Kathleen Vail, Managing Editor