A NEW MONSTER IN SCHOOLS!

Every 21st century teacher has got a new monster to fight. It is a trend that poses serious threat to the future of education. This monster may have been in existence centuries back, but it appears blown-up presently and it’s an area that should tickle the interest of researchers in the field of education. But what a heck is this monster? It’s not a physical creature, but demonstrates its presence in humans and is known as NARCOLEPSY.

Narcolepsy is a neurological disorder that causes excessive daytime sleepiness. That is practically what goes on in most classrooms today. Teachers are now no longer just teaching students, busy trying to keep their students awake! But what has gone wrong that quite a number of students easily fall asleep while a teacher explains a concept? Is the learning environment no longer conducive or is teaching becoming boring? This can’t be true because technology has given quality to today’s teaching. Teachers go to classrooms and cannot be predicted because of innovative teaching. During my secondary school days we never had the privilege of learning in air conditioned classrooms neither were our learning aided by the use of ICT but there wasn’t any case of narcolepsy among my classmates.

Sally* has given her mom and all her high school teachers great concern because she is a perfect case study of a narcoleptic student. Recently, one of her teachers raised an alarm when he struggled to keep her awake in his class. About 91% of the period allotted to teach Sally was spent struggling to keep her awake. An enquiry was made and all Sally’s teacher said they battle with the same challenge of keeping her awake. The question is Sally really narcoleptic? After a class she connects to the school’s Wi-Fi and spends her free periods surfing the internet and making several downloads of pictures and movies. Her teachers have concluded that she is mentally lazy because a number of observations have been made and results show that Sally get plunged into excessive daytime sleepiness basically when she takes lectures.

Barry* is the bane in the life of his classmates. He practically turns off the classroom’s AC every ten minutes.Consequently, his classmates attacks him with their sharp tongues whenever he does this. He’s been able to survive the backlashes he received because his teachers support him. He has claimed that whenever the classroom gets chilly he falls asleep. Barry’s teachers have found his falling asleep annoying because he snores heavily in most cases. However, there are a number of reasons to refute Barry’s  claim because on a number of occasions he’s fallen asleep even when his classroom was hot.

Two weeks ago a girl boarded in a secondary stood before me lamenting because her laptop was confiscated. Her school matron noticed that most of the girls in the school’s  hostel spent most of the hours meant to sleep at night watching movies or surfing the Internet. The effect of their action is that they generally struggle to stay awake during classes.The question is “Are most cases of narcolepsy among students real or artificial?”

I’ve personally observed a few students with the excessive daytime sleepiness syndrome and have come to realize that academically the have a great challenge dealing with reading comprehension questions. Their reading pace is very slow and they end up doing more of passive reading and a bit of active reading. In effect, their performance in reading comprehension tests is usually woeful.

If you are a teacher struggling to keep any of your students awake below are some tips for you:

·        Ensure the AC in your classroom is immediately turned off as soon as your classroom really gets nippy. The nippier your classroom becomes, the greater the chances for some students to fall asleep. However, you need to demonstrate  astute diplomacy when doing this because you’re likely going to hear the barks of the non-narcoleptics when the AC is switched off.

·        Spice your teaching with humour.The more a student with excessive daytime sleepiness syndrome laughs, the weaker his chances of falling asleep.

·        Try to get tough with any student you try to keep awake in class by telling such a student to stand while you teach. For students with serious excessive daytime sleepiness syndrome like Sally make them stand longer.

·        Refer students to the school counselor for further professional help.

 

 

 

*Names have been changed.