“When I wake up in the morning and the alarm gives out a warning I don’t think I’ll ever make it on time”

To anyone who grew up in the 90s and was overly exposed to pop culture like myself,  the words above are instantly recognizable as the  opening lyrics of the Saved By The Bell theme song.; as is the groggy feeling of dragging yourself to school with insufficient sleep.  Does it have to be like that? Could the fictional Zack Morris and real life teenagers the world over get the sleep they need and would their memory, learning, and brain plasticity improve because of it?

While reading Dehaene’s Reading in the Brain, this line jumped out at me ” A great many studies have shown that brain plasticity is maximized by intense training alternating with sleep.” (258) A quick search for more information on this type of research led to entire book called Sleep and Brain Plasticity. Other research has found links between lack of sleep and poor memory functioning and that teenagers sleep patterns may be different than adults.  One of the  principals of universal design for learning is to adjust the curriculum to meet the individual differences of learners. If we do have conclusive research that sleep helps with memory and brain plasticity and that teenagers sleep patterns may be different than adults in that their normal rhythm is to go to sleep and wake up later, why do we force teenagers to conform to more adult sleep patterns.  Most  school days start usually at 7:30 or 8:00am. In keeping with the philosophy and goals of UDL, I believe it would behoove schools to push the start and end times of the school day back by an hour or possibly more in order to fit the biological differences in teenagers and maximize students memory function and brain plasticity.