Educators are barraged with information about the value of brain food, water, exercise, and vitamins on student learning. This information is often contradictory to and not substantiated by medical or cognitive research. As a neurologist and middle school teacher, the author has found the evidence supporting the value of these factors limited, particularly when scrutinized through a medical lens. One aspect of brain health that has been well examined through neuroimaging and cognitive testing is the influence of sleep on the brain. The findings are indeed a wake-up call with regard to the impact of sleep on focus, memory, test performance, mood, and high-risk behavior. In this article, the author discusses the importance of optimizing sleep quality for children and how students' sleepy brains fail them. As sleep research has demonstrated, students from elementary school through college need an age-associated number of hours of sleep to learn effectively. Armed with this information, students can make more informed decisions. When students understand the physiology of sleep, they may realize that it's better to review their notes thoroughly and go to sleep for nine hours than to cram for an extra hour.