For many students at Cherry Hill East, one of the biggest struggles in high school is balancing schoolwork, extracurriculars, sports, and social life in a healthy way. High school students often neglect sleep, whether it’s for a late-night study session before a big test or the piles of homework that seem to accumulate endlessly throughout the week. Mrs. Orlando, an AP Psychology teacher at East, incorporated sleep reflection essays in her yearly syllabus that intend to show students the impact of their unhealthy habits and encourage change.

When Mrs. Orlando first started working as an AP Psychology teacher at East twenty-four years ago, she gave out a dream analysis assignment like the teachers before her. The students had to keep a dream journal, which they would analyze in class to identify their types of dreams and the symbolism involved. After the first few years of giving out this assignment, Mrs. Orlando noticed a problem and decided to make a change.

“Not all of my students remembered their dreams,” she said. “And I didn’t think it was as academically useful…I noticed my students weren’t sleeping enough, so I thought [analyzing sleep] would be a better assignment.”
Taking inspiration from a sleep diary in one of her textbooks, Mrs. Orlando created the sleep reflection essay for the sleep deprivation unit she teaches in class.

The assignment requires her AP Psychology students to keep a sleep log for five consecutive days, in which they record what time they go to bed, when they wake up, how often they get up during the night, and how many naps they take during the day. During those five days, Mrs. Orlando asks her class to record their alertness on a scale of 1 to 7 and make note of their feelings throughout the day.

“[The students] then have to write an essay—a very simple essay— answering the question ‘Are you sleep deprived?’. They take the content from class and the evidence from their sleep log to support whether or not they think they are. [The students] have to explain to me what symptoms they do or do not exhibit based on what we learned in class,” said Orlando.

Over the years, Mrs. Orlando has noticed that most high school students don’t get the recommended 7-8 hours of sleep recommended for adults, let alone the 9-10 hours of sleep recommended for adolescents. Many students acknowledge the fact that they lack the sleep their bodies need, but most of them undermine the impact it has on their daily lives by dismissing sleep deprivation symptoms like irritability, lack of focus, and fatigue.

“[It] is really eye-opening [because] when [students] have the evidence and information learned in class… it’s a way to force [students] to see it and think about it differently when they have the numbers in front of them,” said Orlando, describing the assignment.

The assignment not only helps students reflect on their current sleeping habits, but it also motivates many students to make a change that could possibly help them for the rest of their high school career. Mrs. Orlando says that after she gives the assignment, many students do, or at least attempt to, get their sleep back on track.

“[The assignment] made me more aware of how I sleep and pushed me to change it. I get into bed earlier and I don’t use my devices an hour before I go to sleep,” said Gabriella Cyanick (‘25).

Liam Davis (‘25) is also one of the many students who has made positive changes in their sleep routines due to Mrs. Orlando’s sleep reflection essay.

“[The sleep reflection essay] helped me change my ways and do better. I have a red-light filter on my phone that turns on automatically at 8:45 P.M. to limit blue light.” said Davis (‘25).

While the sleep reflection essay may be the only formal essay Mrs. Orlando assigns in her class, it consistently stands out as one of the most impactful assignments of the year.

“I often ask at the end of the year what they thought about different assignments and activities and I’ll specifically ask about the sleep paper… and hands down [the students] say it’s one of the better assignments enough though they had to write a paper. Seeing the evidence of their lack of sleep is very influential so they recommended that I keep [the assignment], so I did,” she said.