The Sad Truth about Turkey and Sleeping

Happy Thanksgiving week, teacher friends in the USA! It's been a long start to the school year for staff and students alike--64 teaching days with 3 non-teaching days since August 26th in my district--WHEW! Here, Thanksgiving week means two days of Teacher-Family Conferences, followed by three days off plus a weekend! Parade, football games, friends, family, food...I hope that you all enjoy. I have some bad news, though. If you've been looking forward to gobbling a plateful of turkey in the hope that it will lead to a peaceful nap (or sleep, depending on when your meal is scheduled--ours is always in the early afternoon), think again. You may be super tired after the feast, but, in spite of what we've been led to believe, the turkey (and its magical ingredient, tryptophan) probably isn't the culprit.

A quick note about my blog...I'm discontinuing the Teachers Snacks Facebook site in favor of the actual website you're on right now. It seems redundant, but Facebook is making it difficult for me to delete it (breaking up is hard to do!).

On a more serious note, I read the book WHY WE SLEEP-Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams a few years back. In it, sleep researcher Dr. Matthew Walker contends that he and his team have disovered that more than 50 percent of the children they studied who had been diagnosed with ADHD actually had a sleep disorder. Most of them were unaware of this fact. It doesn't take an AI-turbo-powered Google search to know that the most common sleep disorder is...insomnia. I'll come back to this topic later in the week, but I'd love to hear/read your thoughts about the implications of this study for our work. If you're enjoying the blog, please take a moment to please rate the post and subscribe to Teachers Snacks (either add your email in the popup on the main page, or in the white box at the bottom of the main page where it says, "Please keep in touch!". If you've already subscribed, thanks so much! I haven't forgotten about you, and your free goodies will be along soon!), and tell a colleague about it. I'm hopeful that we are the "thoughtful and committed few" Margaret Mead speaks of in her famous quote that will help lead our colleagues and schools into a more powerful and infinitely successful future that starts NOW. I mean, um, after break! ;)

Happy snacking and leftovers,

Charles

Head chef