Early To Rise, Early To Learn: Colleges Offer 6 A.M. Classes

Under a still-darkened sky, the students in this Human Growth and Development class are getting ready to discuss Sigmund Freud. The theoretical debate is going to get heated — Freud’s outlook “sucks,” one young woman will soon complain — but before any teaching occurs, there’s five minutes for coffee or tea.

After all, it is six in the morning.

“Don’t ask me how I do it,” student Nataliz Bonnet says when class finally lets out. “I just do it.”

For about a year, Miami Dade College has offered pre-dawn classes — a scheduling feature born of necessity that nevertheless suits some students just fine. One school administrator calls it “the early bird special.”