The Start School Later Movement

For the last few decades, a grass-roots movement across the United States has been raising awareness and campaigning to change the situation in many schools, whereby early bell times are forcing kids to get out of bed extremely early in order to make it through the school gates on time. With bus times scheduled as early as 5 am, as well as causing disruption to family lives, early school start times fail to recognize the vast body of scientific research demonstrating that adolescent sleep needs are fundamentally different to adults and younger children. In 2011, Dr Terra Ziporyn Snider started a petition to lobby the government to recognise the biological incompatibility between early school times and adolescent sleep needs. This resulted in the founding of Start School Later, which brought together all of the grass-roots activists across the States, to join with researchers and health professionals to further raise awareness and bring about change regarding the relationship between sleep and school hours. In this episode we speak to Dr Terra Ziporyn Snider, co-founder and Executive Director of Start School Later about the history and social context of America's early school start times, the science of adolescent sleep, and the California Bill SB328 which is pushing for a mandate to ensure schools are legally obliged to start no earlier than 8.30am. This episode's guest: Dr Terra Ziporyn Snider is an award-winning novelist, playwright, science writer and the co-founder and Executive Director of Start School Later, a coalition of health professionals, sleep scientists, educators, parents, students, and other concerned citizens dedicated to increasing public awareness about the relationship between sleep and school hours and to ensuring school start times compatible with health, safety, education, and equity. A former associate editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), she is the author of many popular health and medical publications including The New Harvard Guide to Women’s Health. Terra has a BA in both history and biology from Yale University, where she studied playwriting with Ted Tally, and a PhD in the history of science and medicine from the University of Chicago. Start School Later website : https://www.startschoollater.net/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/terra-ziporyn-b442911/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/terraziporyn More Resources: Sleep in Adolescents: The Perfect Storm (publication by Dr Mary Carskadon) : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3130594/ Interview with Phyllis Payne: https://sleepjunkies.com/start-school-later-interview/ Episode Homepage: https://sleepjunkies.com/start-school-later-movement/