Pirate career and guidance center
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We Can HelpThousands of East Texans face mental health challenges or crises every day. Many of them don’t know where to turn for help. Burke provides complete mental health services to adults and children in East Texas. From our 24 Hour Crisis Line and innovative counseling and therapy to our state-of-the-art mental health emergency center in Lufkin, we have the facilities, resources, and staff to help any East Texan in need. To make an appointment or for general information about Burke’s mental health services, call 936-634-5010 or 1-866-242-4556. Emergency ServicesBurke provides the most comprehensive mental health services in the region. Our award-winning Mental Health Emergency Center has become a national model for effective delivery of crisis-based mental health services, and our toll-free Crisis Hotline is available to anyone experiencing a mental health crisis or emergency. If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health crisis, please call 1-800-392-8343 immediately. Outpatient ClinicsBurke’s mental health outpatient services stress wellness education and empowerment as keys to improvement. Treatment services are designed to enhance clients’ strengths and natural support systems while targeting their symptoms with quality psychiatric care and services that promote self-confidence and greater independence. We work with clients to identify psychiatric disorders, assess immediate and long-range mental health needs and provide appropriate treatment services that will stabilize symptoms. Detoxification ProgramBurke and the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Council of Deep East Texas (ADAC) are offering a local, short-term medical detoxification program in Lufkin. If you are having issues with drugs or alcohol or both, call the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Council of Deep East Texas at 936-634-5753 or 1-800-445-8562 for more information or to schedule a screening with an ADAC professional. Learn more here. Visit the website for other important information and locations: http://myburke.org/services/ |
Our Career and Guidance Center is here to serve you!
We can assist in the following: College entrance requirements and selection Scholarship information Resolving or coping with personal and educational concerns Selecting your endorsement or career pathway Graduation requirements and credit remediation Testing information and college preparation LOCAL SERVICES AVAILABLE IN SHEPHERD
Clothing Closet
The Clothing Closet helps supply school clothes for students in the Shepherd schools. Children ages 4- 20 are eligible if they have a voucher from their school counselor or from the Helping Hands Food Pantry. 936- 628-3371 Helping Hands Food Pantry Behind Shepherd's First Baptist Church, there is a small wood-frame white house receiving visitors in need of assistance. The Helping Hands Food Pantry in Shepherd has provided temporary assistance to many residents through the years. It is located at 66 Magnolia Avenue, Shepherd, Texas 77371 You can contact them at: 936-628-6959 Houston Food Bank The Houston Food Bank works with our county to provide bags of food to hungry students through the Backpack Buddy Program. Each week students who have been identified and approved are given bags that contain two breakfasts and two lunches for the weekend. The Houston Food Bank also arranges food distribution to the general public throughout the year in partnership with the SMEA (Shepherd Ministerial & Educational Alliance). SMEA Shepherd Ministerial & Educational Alliance works with our district school employees to reach out to the community. They have several events throughout the year aimed at helping the community. One of the largest events is the Angel Tree Program. Resources on the Web for Parents and Students Productivity and sleepLast Updated on April 16, 2018Amelia Willson Whether you have a big presentation at work tomorrow or you’re running a marathon, friends and family are quick to tell you to “get a good night’s sleep.” Sayings like these exist because, deep down, we all know how important sleep is to our performance. Yet for some reason, we’re all trying to figure out how to squeeze in more productivity on less sleep. That’s the opposite solution. To get more productivity, you have to sleep better – not the other way around. Keep reading to learn how poor sleep hurts your productivity, while good sleep enhances it, and how you can ensure the sleep you do get is productive as well. Effect of sleep on productivityNearly half of Americans report that low-quality or insufficient sleep interferes with their daily life at least once a week. Clearly, we’re already aware that poor sleep negatively impacts our productivity. The longer hours we work, the more tired we get, and the more prone we are to error, procrastination, or the sluggishness that blocks our creativity. Researchers noted these effects as late as the 19th century, when they recommended cutting the work day from 9 to 8 hours so the total work week totaled around 40 hours. They could see that past that point, the efficiency of workers’ output seriously reduced. Many people work over 40 hours though, and even if you’re working a reasonable amount of hours, your work might not be productive if you’re not supporting it with good sleep. According to the latest research on productivity and sleep, “good sleep” refers to both the amount and the consistency of your sleep. Productivity killer #1: Insufficient sleepThe first barrier to productivity is insufficient sleep. Don’t get enough sleep, and your productivity suffers. You’ll have less energy and react slower. You’ll feel less creative and focused, and have difficulty making decisions and solving problems. These are the effects of sleep deprivation, and you can see them play out among sleep-deprived individuals in your workplace. One large 2010 study observed over 4,000 workers at four large American corporations. As opposed to the participants categorized as good sleepers, the ones with insomnia or insufficient sleep experienced the steepest productivity losses, spending nearly three times as much of their day on just time management alone: The sleep-deprived workers were also less motivated, and had difficulty focusing, remembering things, and making good decisions: Sleep deprivation devastates us, mentally, physically, and emotionally. When we don’t get enough sleep, we have difficulty focusing during the day. What we do learn and take away, we don’t remember as well. Our brain consolidates memories during REM sleep, but REM is concentrated in the latter part of the night, so if we’re not sleeping enough overall, we’re missing out on more REM sleep as opposed to the lighter stages of sleep. We also miss out on more deep sleep, the stage of sleep responsible for restoring and repairing our muscles and body tissue. As a result, our muscles ache more and we get exhausted easily. In fact, one study of athletes found that when you don’t sleep well, you tire 11% faster than everyone else who did. In the long run, chronic sleep deprivation is linked with a host of serious health issues, including obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. It’s easy to see how the effects of sleep deprivation negatively affect your productivity at school, work and life. Being sleep-deprived has a similar effect to being drunk, and we all know how unproductive we are when we’re intoxicated. Pull an all-nighter, and your response time is 50% slower than someone with just 0.1% blood alcohol level. Productivity killer #2: Inconsistent sleepPart two of the formula for good sleep is consistently good sleep. One 2017 study followed undergraduate interior design students who wore actigraphy wristbands, monitoring their sleep schedules, before giving them cognitive assessments. The more irregular their sleep schedule, the worse their cognitive abilities declines during the week. These findings have been confirmed by others, suggesting that the regularity of sleep is just as important as the amount. Also in 2017, a team of researchers observed college students at Harvard for a month and compared their sleep patterns to their academic performance. All of the students in the study got similar total amounts of sleep, but the ones who followed a regular sleep schedule performed much better than the ones who didn’t. The ones who woke up and went to sleep at different times had lower GPAs and delayed circadian rhythms. Their melatonin was released later than the consistent sleepers, as if they were experiencing jet lag, but without any travel. This second study gets at the root of why following a consistent sleep schedule is so important for productivity. Our sleep cycle is dictated by our circadian rhythms. Our circadian rhythms follow the day-night cycle (“-dian” comes from “diem”, the Latin word for “day”). In accordance with that schedule, our body releases melatonin in the evening, signaling to our brain that it’s time to start falling asleep. In the morning, our cortisol levels rise as melatonin lowers, awakening the body and preparing it to meet the day. When we don’t follow a regular sleep schedule, our melatonin production gets delayed, so we don’t fall asleep on time, and we experience the trickle-down effects it has on the rest of our body functioning. Ignoring your internal body clock has serious effects on your productivity. The prime example of this is night-shift workers with flipped schedules. Study upon study shows that these individuals have performance issues that range from impaired focus and on-the-job errors that result in lost productivity, to even scarier consequences like drowsy driving accidents. The productivity cost of poor sleepThese productivity losses cost real money. In 2016, the RAND Corporation found that sleep deprivation costs the US economy $411 billion a year and over 1 million lost workdays. People oversleep and show up late, or they skip work altogether due to an illness they were more at risk of getting because they were sleep-deprived. If they do come to work, they’re less focused and productive while they’re there. On an individual level, that translates to 11 lost days of productivity and $2,280 in lost wages each year. In the early 2000s, Harvard researchers conducted several studies focusing on sleep and work productivity. Across the board, the more sleep-deprived participants were, and the longer they worked on less sleep, the higher their risk for “fatigue-related errors,” microsleep while driving, and drowsy driving accidents. Errors are bad no matter your job, but they’re especially serious for workers in certain industries, like the medical field (one study found sleep-deprived surgeons are 20-30% more prone to error). Researchers estimate medical errors could be reduced by over a third just by shortening work shifts and allowing individuals to get more sleep. Get better sleep, increase your productivityThankfully, the relationship with sleep and productivity works both ways. Just as poor sleep worsens productivity, good sleep helps it! Get adequate sleep, and you’ll enjoy the following productivity benefits:
Some studies have researched these improvements among high school students who attend schools with later start times. Once they hit puberty, adolescents undergo a circadian shift that shifts their need to fall asleep about an hour later in the evening. Unfortunately, this coincides with the same time they start going to school earlier, and cramming the rest of their day with more homework and extracurricular activities. Sleep experts nationwide are advocating for earlier start times, since they’ve found that pushing it back just one hour significantly increased standardized test scores: Good sleep simply helps you think better. Many people, including Einstein, Dali, and more recently, Google’s Larry Page, say they got their best ideas while they slept. A healthy amount of REM dream sleep stimulates your creative thinking, explaining why you wake up with novel solutions to tough problems or with a brilliant new idea after a dream-filled sleep. How to make your sleep more productiveIf you want to make your sleep more productive, you need to make sure it’s good sleep. Here are ten tips to be a productive sleeper. 1. Find your best sleep schedule.What’s the best sleep schedule for productivity? It depends on you and your chronotype. Besides being a fancy word for whether you’re a night owl or an early bird, your chronotype dictates your internal body clock, and whether you’re more productive in the morning or at night. Instead of trying to force your chronotype to fit societal standards, lean into it and do your best work at the best times for you. Beyond your chronotype, you should also make sure you’re getting enough sleep to feel rested. The average recommended amount of sleep for adults is between 7 to 7.5 hours per night, but the ideal amount for you may fall outside of that range. If you wake up after 6 hours of sleep and feel great, don’t drive yourself crazy trying to force yourself to sleep one more hour. On the flip side, if you don’t feel refreshed until you’ve had a full 8 hours, accept that, and make room for yourself to sleep 8 hours each night. Once you know how much sleep you need, set a sleep schedule that allows for that amount and follow it religiously. The better you train your body to a regular sleep schedule, the easier it is to fall asleep and wake up. Follow this schedule every day, even the weekends, to avoid any sleep debt building up. 2. Induce sleep with a calming bedtime routine.Each night, in the half hour before bed, complete the same set of activities in the same order. We usually recommend up to 60 minutes, but since you have a busy schedule, we’re shortening it to 30. The goal is to train your mind to associate this bedtime routine as preparation for sleep, so aim for soporific activities if possible. Take a warm bath, make yourself a cup of bedtime tea, or write down your to-do list. Writing your tasks down helps clear them from your mind so you can worry about them tomorrow, instead of while you’re lying in bed at night. 3. Transform your bedroom into a restful sleep environment.Reserve your bed for sleep and sex only – no work, hobbies, and definitely no binge-watching TV. You want your mind to associate your bed with rest and relaxation, not stressors from work or exciting TV shows. Beyond activities, there’s much you can do to make your bedroom conducive to sleep. Keep it cool and dark. Set the thermostat to somewhere in the mid-60 degrees Fahrenheit and use blackout curtains or an eye mask if needed. Outfit your bed with a high-quality, supportive mattress and comfortable bedding. Keep your bedroom clean, preventing allergies and irritation, and clear of clutter, relaxing your mind. 4. Turn off your phone.All electronics interfere with your sleep, but if you’re like most people, your smartphone is going to be your biggest blocker for sleep. The problems with electronics and sleep is that all of these devices emit high levels of strong, piercing blue wavelength – the wavelength of light that your brain perceives the strongest, and also associates with sunlight. The more your eyes take in this light, the more convinced your brain becomes that it’s daytime, and that you should be alert and awake. Plus, with smartphones, we tend to hold them close to our faces, really drowning our eyes with blue light. Meanwhile, we’re often reading work emails or checking Facebook, either of which can be activating stressors of their own. 5. Level up your power naps.Everyone needs to take a break sometime. Why not spend it on getting a little shuteye? By definition, a power nap is a short, 20 or 30 minute nap, taken as a productivity boost. The brevity of the nap is what makes it so refreshing, so it’s critical to keep it short. Any longer than 30 minutes, and you risk entering deep sleep, from which it’s even more difficult to wake up and you’ll feel groggier than before. It’s also important to take the nap when you’ll most need it, such as during that productivity dip around 2 or 3 in the afternoon. Schedule a break, block off your calendar, and go find a quiet place to sleep in your office where you won’t be judged. To take your nap to the next level, drink a cup of coffee before your nap, so you’ll wake up feeling super alert. 6. Get sunshine during the day.Sunshine wakes you up, so you might be wondering how getting more of it could possibly help you sleep? If you get plenty of natural sunlight during the day, particularly in the morning, it helps synchronize your circadian cycles. Your brain relearns to be awake and alert during the day when the sun is out, and asleep at night when it’s dark. Give yourself a special boost by pairing that early morning sunshine with a brisk walk or fitness activity outside, using a light therapy box on your desk in the morning, or moving your desk to sit by an outside window. 7. Exercise regularly.Speaking of exercise, this is another energizing activity that actually helps improve your sleep – depending on when you do it. Avoid exercising late at night, as it will activate your nervous system and make sleep harder to come by. But exercise regularly and in the morning or early part of the day, and you’ll help physically tire your body out so you practically fall into bed at night. 8. Watch what you eat and drink.A healthy diet makes for a healthy body, and the healthy sleep to go along with it. Eat well during the day, but take special care to what you ingest after the afternoon. Limit your caffeine, drugs, and alcohol. Watch out for heavy dinners of overly fatty foods, or late-night snacks filled with sugar. To varying extents, these all mess with your digestive system and your mind, interfering with your ability to fall asleep and stay asleep. Even with drowsy depressants like alcohol, they may initially help you fall asleep only to interrupt your sleep cycle and wake you earlier than necessary. 9. Wake up well, too.Go for gold by finishing up productive sleep with productive waking. Don’t hit snooze. Spring up out of bed and get going with a morning routine, which might include brushing your teeth, brewing a cup of coffee, or a few energizing jumping jacks. Open up the windows and let the sunshine in, or use a dawn simulator alarm clock. Avoid looking at your phone or emails for at least a little bit, allowing your body to adjust to the day a bit before hitting it with stress. 10. Schedule tasks while you sleep.If you’re worried you won’t get everything done with all this extra time spent sleeping, brainstorm how you can schedule certain tasks to take place while you sleep. Cook tomorrow’s dinner using a slow cooker. Schedule your business travel during red-eyes so you can sleep while you fly. If you want to work on solving a particular problem, or have a big exam the next day, review the material before you sleep, so your mind can work on it in your dreams. Additional resources
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