Yours,

Li Hua

   Students from Oceanside High School in Rockland will be able to sleep a little longer from this autumn.

The superintendent （负责人） of Regional School Unit 13 Lew Collins said during the school’s Thursday night meeting that the schedule （时刻表） for the schools will be changed. Oceanside East and West will start half an hour later, at 8 a. m. for the new school year.

Research has shown that teenagers’ brains are often not fully awake at 6: 30 a. m. Collins said the schedule, which is used to get students to go to school for classes that begin at 7: 30 a. m., calls for some to get on buses before 6 a. m. to get to school on time. Teachers are having meetings at 6: 40 a. m., which is too early, he thinks.

Collins visited the high schools in Rockland and asked students when they would like classes to begin. Most of them said 8 a. m. "I was surprised. I thought they would have said 9:00 or 10:00, "he said.

The National Sleep Foundation says on its website that teenagers’ biological clocks （生物钟） are designed to stay up later and get up later. The Foundation calls for schools to change their schedules, which mean a later start for elementary students （小学生） as well.

"We do not have enough buses to run, because all the high school and elementary school buses run almost at the same time," Collins said. He suggested, "We should buy six more buses and get six more drivers to keep the new schedule working."

Elementary school classes in Rockland now start at 8: 30 a. m., but they will be moved to 8:45 a. m, starting in the autumn. "I know this is a problem for working parents, but we will see what we can come up with," said Jane Brown, a teacher at Bardonia Elementary School. "Anyway, I believe if students get more sleep they’ll be more ready to learn when classes start," she added.

   Nowadays, I acknowledge that a revolution has occurred. That much has been ___ by having hand-held iPads or smart phones that allow us not only to communicate while on the _____ but also to reserve parking spaces, get weather reports, and _____ tell us where, at any given moment, we are standing on the planet Earth.

But I must acknowledge a _____. Conversation used to be surprisingly _____ to start. When I took a seat next to someone on a train, bus, or plane, the first thing I would do was _____ the person. Once the ice had been broken, the following chat _____ erupt naturally.

Time has changed, and the change has been _____. Recently, while I was _____ a long distance bus, I couldn't help but notice everyone was staring at their ______, clicking. I found an empty seat next to a middle-aged man and said "Morning" to him. He threw me a ______ and said "Morning". Then he returned to his ______. So I left him in his world.

I miss the ______ conversations with fellow travelers. One never knows what will be ______, and in fact, sometimes how ______ it will be. I was once on a ______ traveling from Iceland to Denmark. I noticed an old man looking out over the North Sea. "It's beautiful, isn't it?" I said. He turned to me,______, and we were soon chatting away. _____ I told him that I didn't know how I was going to get from the port in Denmark to my destination city. He ______,"Of course you know. I have a car and I'm going to ______ you there. "

    With around 100 students scheduled to be in that 9:00 am Monday morning lecture, it is no surprise that almost 20 people actually make it to the class and only 10 of them are still awake after the first 15 minutes; it is not even a surprise that most of them are still in their pajama’s(睡衣). Obviously, students are terrible at adjusting their sleep cycles to their daily schedule.

All human beings possess a body clock. Along with other alerting systems, this governs the sleep/wake cycle and is therefore one of the main processes which govern sleep behaviour. Typically, the preferred sleep/wake cycle is delayed in adolescents, which leads to many students not feeling sleepy until much later in the evenings. This typical sleep pattern is usually referred to as the “night owl” schedule of sleep.

This is opposed to the “early bird” schedule, and is a kind of disorder where the individual tends to stay up much past midnight. Such a person has great difficulty in waking up in the mornings. Research suggests that night owls feel most alert and function best in the evenings and at night. Research findings have shown that about 20 percent of people can be classified as “night owls” and only 10 percent can be classified as “early birds” ------ the other 70 percent are in the middle. Although this is clearly not true for all students, for the ones who are true night owls, this gives them an excellent excuse for missing their lectures which unfortunately fall before midday.