Aaron Best tries to ignore the buzzing that’s ruining a perfectly good dream. Snuggled under the covers in his Scarborough bedroom, the 18-year-old Grade 12 student and star basketball player reluctantly opens his eyes.

Groggy from playing video games till after midnight – he was immersed in his favourite, NBA 2K — he slaps the snooze button and drifts off for another 10 minutes. He hits the button three more times before he gets out of bed at 7:30 a.m.

He’s out the door in half an hour for his hour-long commute — two buses and the subway — to Eastern Commerce Collegiate Institute.

But not before giving his mom, Donna, a hug and a cheerful goodbye.

That’s the biggest change she’s noticed since Aaron transferred to Eastern in Grade 11 and started getting an extra hour of sleep.

It’s the only high school in Toronto that starts its school day an hour later than usual, at 10 a.m.

“He’s more pleasant in the morning,” she says, “His mood is a lot better. I’ve gotten more hugs. I didn’t used to want to talk to him in the morning because he’d be crabby.”

The experiment, which began in the fall of 2009, is an acknowledgement by educators that the biological clocks of teenager leave them sluggish in the morning. The Canadian Pediatric Society reported in 2008 that high school students need nine to 10 hours of sleep a night and may struggle in school if they don’t get it.

The Toronto District School Board is monitoring Eastern’s experience carefully, comparing marks, attendance and lateness before and after the project started. It is a small school, with only 450 students, 80 per cent of whom come from out-of-district, which can mean long commutes. Many are drawn by Eastern’s stellar basketball teams.

Early indications are that there have been some positive changes.

The school reports the Grade 11 math failure rate has dropped from 45 per cent to 17 per cent.

Wayne Erdman, who taught there for 27 years before retiring last fall, after the first full year of the 10 a.m. start, says the difference was “like night and day,” even though it was the same course and the same student mix. “They are not strong in math, they don’t do a lot of homework. They were a good group to do an experiment on.”

And he noticed something else.

“They weren’t falling asleep in class as much,” he says. “Many work late or are up early to take brothers and sisters to school.”

And attendance improved, he says, though an official study of the impact of the late start has not been completed.

While it would be nice to see improved attendance and punctuality, principal Sam Miceli says he’s more interested in the students’ health and academic well-being. “The point is this is a health issue and we want them to be more productive.”

Eastern has received more than a dozen queries from North American school boards wondering whether the experiment is working.

It is a problem that all jurisdictions must grapple with. A 2006 poll conducted by the National Sleep Foundation in the U.S. found that North American teens are seriously sleep deprived. Noting that they need at least nine hours of sleep a night as their bodies grow, the poll found they were averaging just 6.9 hours.

Sleep researcher Mary Carskadon, who headed the poll task force, says sleep deprivation seriously affects their ability to learn.

“When you don’t get enough sleep, it is hard to pay attention, to focus. And kids, who are inclined this way, are more likely to act out. Driving a car can be a little riskier,” says Carskadon, a professor of psychiatry and human behaviour at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

Don’t blame the kids, she says. The problem is largely hormonal. Melatonin is a hormone secreted by the pineal gland in the brain. It helps regulate other hormones and maintains the body’s circadian rhythm – the 24-hour clock that plays a critical role in when we fall asleep and when we wake up. Darkness triggers melatonin production. In teenagers, whose hormones are in flux, it is released much later — around 11 p.m. — than in adults.

That’s why they’re not sleepy at bedtime.

The sleep cycle has four stages, plus a period of REM (rapid eye movement) when we dream. While the deepest sleep occurs in stages 3 and 4, we need to satisfy all stages for a good night’s rest, says Carskadon.

The cycle is repeated a number of times each night, with the REM dream interval getting longer each time. When a teenager doesn’t get enough sleep it robs them of the longer dreams that contribute to feelings of well being. It’s also thought to help consolidate the information absorbed during the day, she says.

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And what do the students at Eastern think of the late start?

Bukhari Adan transferred to Eastern in Grade 10, drawn by its size. The late start was a bonus for the 16-year-old, now in Grade 11. “It’s way better. It gives me time to do things and get more sleep. I can chill more at night. I also have more time to do assignments, so I’m doing better.”

But for many others, the late start just means more time for basketball practice. Typical is Samantha Prophet, 16, who, like her two siblings, enrolled in Eastern for the sport. She gets to school by 7:30 a.m. to practice, so the late start hasn’t meant more sleep.

And others still burn the candle at both ends, like Eliel Lukasa, who talks by cell to his friends and, also basketball mad, playing NBA 2K late at night. “I’m always tired. I’ll fall asleep in the weight room and go out cold for half an hour after lunch.”

tcrawford@thestar.ca

Late to bed, early to rise

The Canadian Pediatric Society says say teens need 9 hours of sleep a night but how much are they really getting? Source for sleep claim needed.

We asked four Grade 9 students attending Cardinal Carter School of the Arts to record how much sleep they got in November, over the holidays and the first week of school. Herewith, a few findings:

• It isn’t unusual for students to clock 10 to 12 hours of sleep on holidays and the weekends, waking in the early afternoon.

• Most averaged a little more than seven hours on school nights.

• Some rose as early as 5:30 a.m. on a school day; none was still in bed past 6:30 a.m.

• The student with the best sleep habits was Steffaney Diletto, who regularly clocked nine hours of sleep on school nights and gets up at 6:30 a.m. Sometimes she was in bed by 8 p.m.

• Natalie De Gasperis, who dances competitively every night but Tuesday and Thursday, wrote a test on little more than four hours of sleep following a late night of studying. She went to bed at 2 a.m. and got up at 6 a.m.

• Alicia Oliveri does homework every school night before bed, leaving television for the weekends. However, she also slept only four hours the night a big project was due.