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"Many American teenagers try to put in a full day of school, homework, after-school activities, sports and college prep on too little sleep. As evidence grows that chronic sleep deprivation puts teens at risk for physical and mental health problems, there is increasing pressure on school districts around the country to consider a later start time. In Seattle, school and city officials recently made the shift. Beginning with the 2016-2017 school year, the district moved the official start times for middle and high schools nearly an hour later, from 7:50 a.m. to 8:45 a.m. This was no easy feat; it meant rescheduling extracurricular activities and bus routes. But the bottom line goal was met: Teenagers used the extra time to sleep in. Researchers at the University of Washington studied the high school students both before and after the start-time change. Their findings appear in a study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. They found students got 34 minutes more sleep on average with the later school start time. This boosted their total nightly sleep from 6 hours and 50 minutes to 7 hours and 24 minutes."

In our busy and highly connected lives it can be difficult to find time to slow down, to deliberately and mindfully engage in reflective contemplation. Taking the time to do so can be significant for success, creativity, mental well-being and learning and yet we seem to struggle to commit time to this valuable practice. Schools, in particular seem to offer little time for students to slow down and think, and with the busy lives students lead such time is often entirely absent.

"In the last decade, rates of anxiety-related disorders in teenagers have steadily risen, particularly in girls. Researchers and psychologists posit several hypotheses about why these rates are on the rise -- from digital hyperconnectivity to heightened external pressures to simply a greater awareness, and therefore diagnosis, of mental health concerns. Whatever the causes, Dr. Lisa Damour has hopeful news for parents and teens: first, some degree of stress and anxiety is not only normal but essential for human growth. And if those levels become untenable, there are tested strategies for reining anxiety back in."

"School life can often get hectic, as you juggle between classes, assignments, projects, good grades, all laced with extreme competition, constant up gradation, and race for perfection. It is therefore, not uncommon for students to go through phases of stress and anxiety, as they surf through their learning journeys. It's important not to brush off your stress as just exam pressure or derivatives of academics. Stress and anxiety in students, is as serious a problem as it is in adults. If unattended, it can lead to several physical and mental health problems including obesity, sleep apnea, depression, eventually effecting your development and growth. In a study conducted by the World Health Organization, 25% of adolescents in India face depression, and 8% suffer from anxiety. Learning how to manage stress, won't just help you avoid serious repercussions of it, but also give your mind some much needed space and time, to function and focus well."

"Teachers are notorious for taking care of everyone but ourselves. The coming summer provides a perfect chance to change that. Some of us will seek the luxury of a true physical, mental, and emotional break from the classroom. Others will leap directly into teaching summer school in order to cobble together a full salary. Or we'll attend more conferences and trainings in the next two months than in the last 10 put together. Every teacher, even those of us in the throes of summer school and professional development, should make time to answer an existential question: Who are we when we're not teaching? Here are four ideas for making the most of that oasis of time between the end of this school year and the beginning of the next."

"Before you begin your meditation, find a quiet space to walk. It could be outdoors, or in a hallway, or even a large room, walking back and forth. Walking meditation can be a formal practice, like watching the breath. Or it can be informal, bringing awareness to this everyday activity, whenever you need to travel from point A to point B. Walking meditation gives us an opportunity to gather our awareness which so often becomes distracted or even stuck when the mind is left to its own devices. Whether moving between floors of a building, on a city street, or in the woods, it is an opportunity to guide ourselves out of the distracted autopilot we live in throughout so much of our day. Paying attention in this way, we stay safe by remaining fully aware of whatever is around. On any walk, hike, run, or other physical activity, without effort we may mentally check out-or we can practice awareness instead."

"In the age of artificial intelligence, the answer to a more optimistic future may lie in redefining work itself. WORK, as an idea, is both familiar and frustratingly abstract. We go to work, we finish our work, we work at something. It's a place, an entity, tasks to be done or output to achieve. It's how we spend our time and expend our mental and physical resources. It's something to pay the bills, or something that defines us. But what, really is work? And from a company's perspective, what is the work that needs to be done? In an age of artificial intelligence, that's not merely a philosophical question. If we can creatively answer it, we have the potential to create incredible value. And, paradoxically, these gains could come from people, not from new technology."

"Playtime. Downtime. Family time. According to Denise Pope, a senior lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, these three factors - or PDF as she calls them - protect kids against a host of negative outcomes, strengthen resilience, and bolster students' mental wellness and academic engagement. "

"The call for mathematical play is beyond some desired learning objective. Combined with the rise of mental illness and anxiety among children/adolescents, and the championing of play by Pediatricians and Child Psychologists, play in mathematics must be seen as a moral imperative."

"The start of a new school year is a great time to think about long-term plans for the upcoming year, but also the plans we need to make for our students for years to come. Each day there are news alerts on topics such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, augmented and virtual reality, digital citizenship and literacy and their relation to education. These are the trends and terms that are already a part of our world and will become an increasing part of our future. Beyond these technology-themed trends, we're learning more about social-emotional learning (SEL), mental health awareness, mindfulness and trauma-informed teaching. These are important issues and educators must stay informed on best practices and ways to make these 'themes' part of our daily practice. As educators today, it's no longer about simply planning instruction with our students in mind. We also have to consider how changing technology trends and important societal issues will impact our students both now and beyond high school. How can we best prepare them to not only find success for themselves but also make an impact on others? So the pressure is on, to really consider how we can best prepare students not just for this school year, not just for life after high school graduation, but well beyond. We need to prepare our students for the year 2030 and the future. But how?"

"Hundreds of teachers, many of them operating in countries where teach-from-home has been in place for weeks, weigh in on the mental approach you need to stay grounded in this difficult time."

"Good morning! Stay six feet away. Pull up your mask. Don't forget to wear it at all times, even outdoors. Wash your hands. Go straight to your desk. Do not pass go. Do not collect 200 germs. Goodbye! Wash your hands. Pull up your mask. Leave one at a time. Don't touch anything or anyone on your way out. See you tomorrow! This is pandemic education. It can feel so cold, so impersonal. The safety restrictions are necessary to keep COVID at bay, but what is this distance doing to our students? Plenty of research indicates that there are both physical and mental health benefits from hugging and other physical contact. Hugs reduce the negative effects of stress on the brain, by deactivating the part of the brain that responds to threats. They increase levels of oxytocin, the feel-good hormone, and ironically, may even boost the immune system. So this year's lack of contact could be taking a toll, especially on those students who don't receive much affection at home."

"You wouldn't use a hammer to try to cut down a tree. Try to use an axe to drive nails and you're likely to lose a finger. Different physical jobs call for different tools. So, too, do different mental jobs.  Optimism and big-picture thinking will help you sell your business idea. Keeping your books in order requires a more detail-oriented approach. Motivating employees requires more empathy than analytical thinking.  Different modes of thinking are best suited for different situations, and according to a new interview with star Wharton professor and best-selling author Adam Grant most of us don't utilize one particularly powerful mindset nearly enough. "

A few weeks ago, I participated in a webinar with K-12 students, parents and teachers about how online learning is going. You might be surprised to hear that the news was not all bad. The students, in particular, had some good things to say about their virtual experience: They liked that teachers were focusing more on everyone's mental health and wellbeing, and less on grades. They liked that the standardized tests for the year had been cancelled.

"IN BRIEF Anxiety about the effects of social media on young people has risen to such an extreme that giving children smartphones is sometimes equated to handing them a gram of cocaine. The reality is much less alarming. A close look at social media use shows that most young texters and Instagrammers are fine. Heavy use can lead to problems, but many early studies and news headlines have overstated dangers and omitted context. Researchers are now examining these diverging viewpoints, looking for nuance and developing better methods for measuring whether social media and related technologies have any meaningful impact on mental health."

"The week after my dad passed, I decided to come back. Bereavement time was up and I felt that getting back into my classroom would help. I was wrong. By the third day I was still feeling lost, overwhelmed, and exhausted. I ended taking the last two days of the week off. I came back, what I felt as "refreshed", the following Monday. Only still feeling lost, overwhelmed, and exhausted. As soon as I walked into the school I immediately met with the principal and told him that I couldn't continue. I needed more time away to deal with my emotions and to understand the scope of what took place. I could hear words of my dad echoing in my ear - "take care of yourself… if you don't, you'll end up sick." While my dad's health wasn't that great, and he knew it; he always made sure that everyone else took better care of themselves. Exactly like me. I make sure that others are always put before me. I could not longer do that. I needed to take care of myself before I ended up lying on the floor unable to move, like Izzy in Grey's Anatomy. Those four extra days was what I needed. I processed his death, I cried, I slept (for nearly two whole days), and I remembered the good times. I sat on the couch catching up on missed shows, Netflix, and Days of our Lives. We stress the importance of good mental health to our students, but I wasn't heeding my own words. I knew that being in the classroom too soon after his death wasn't making me a good teacher for my students."

"I think most people who are using ChatGPT to help with writing are doing it wrong. I don't just mean because they using it to cheat on school assignments (don't do that) or because they don't check the facts that ChatGPT gives (they might be made up), but because they have the wrong mental model for how to work with the system. I have mentioned that ChatGPT isn't Google, and it isn't Alexa, but it also isn't a human that you are giving instructions to. It is a machine you are programming with words."

"The phrase "artificial Intelligence" was coined by pointy-heads at MIT in 1955. Back then, it referred to an obscure field of computer science devoted to then-hypothetical programs that could engage in tasks that "require high-level mental processes such as: perceptual learning, memory organization, and critical reasoning." Fast-forward to 2023: While AI has been a murmur in tech circles for the last few years, those conversations really get loud until the commercial release of products like Chat GPT and DALL-e. Now everyone is talking about AI, everywhere you go-hyping it, demonizing it, fearing it-but most of all, misunderstanding it. This is partly because it's a complex subject-we don't even agree on what "intelligence" is, let alone "artificial intelligence"-but another reason so many are getting AI wrong essentially comes down to that familiar villain capitalism. With the explosion in popular interest, advertisers and marketers are using terms like "AI," "AI-powered," and "artificial intelligence" as a selling point so much, they're beginning to lose what little meaning they once had."

"Find information to help you support children who are struggling with mental health, behavior or learning challenges."

"I have written before (HERE) about the importance of not just moving more, but developing physical literacy skills with students.  This was pre-pandemic. And if anything the limited activity many had during the COVID-19 pandemic increased these challenges leading to what many are seeing as a health crisis. In the world of education, we rightly emphasize intellectual growth, but the significance of physical health cannot be overstated. We are intentionally trying to do this differently in West Vancouver Schools. We are looking at the whole school environment to get students moving more often throughout the day.  For us physical health is not just about sports or fitness; it's a comprehensive approach encompassing mental and emotional well-being, community involvement, and personal development."