Graduation Speech : The National Sleep Foundation

It is a well known fact that teenagers in general need more sleep. According to the National Sleep Foundation: “[teenage sleep] is as important as the air you breathe, the water you drink and the food you eat. It can even help you to eat better and manage stress of being a teen.” When schools start as early as 7 o’clock, it puts students health at risk. Adolescents already have a natural shift in their internal body clock, or circadian rhythm when it comes to sleep. Puberty allows this to happen, causing a “sleep phase delay” of about two hours. When teens can't fall asleep until late and school starts so early, they aren't getting nearly enough sleep. Lack of such, according to CDC, makes the individual

As a result of a changing body and mind, adolescent sleep cycles have different needs than those of adults or younger children. As a matter of fact, Biologically, sleep patterns shift toward later times for both sleeping and waking during adolescence -- meaning it is natural to not be able to fall asleep before 11:00 pm (“Teens”). In addition to biological change in sleep patterns, teenagers also tend to have eccentric sleep cycles. Obtaining less than healthy hours of sleep during the school week and then catching up on their sleep on the weekends. Most teenagers during the school week, do not get the suggested amount of sleep. In fact, according to a recent poll conducted by the National Sleep Foundation, 80% of teenagers do not get the suggested amount of sleep of 9 hours on school nights (“School Start”). With changing bodies and minds, along with an increased amount of schoolwork and extracurricular activities, teenagers need more sleep than children of a younger age. Experts believe that moving back the start time of school for high school students will improve grades, test scores, and the overall health and personality of many students.

This article by the National Sleep Foundation describes how adolescents today are not getting the recommended amount of sleep and in return do not perform appropriately or at their maximum level at school. Through different scientific studies it was discovered that adolescent NATURALLY fall asleep at 11 P.M. or later. One study looked at the melatonin secretion in patients and how it occurred later at night in adolescents. Through research the National Sleep Foundation has urged schools to synchronize school clock with student body clocks (If teens naturally fall asleep at 11 P.M. and require 9.5 hours of sleep, school should start approximately at 9:00-10:00 A.M., 1 to 3 hours after current SC school start times). This sources supports my claim to start school later and provides support research about the negative aspects of sleep deprivation in adolescents and the importance of reforming school start times

School start times play a very big role in a student’s overall development, especially when they aren’t getting enough sleep because of it. An important factor to consider for a student’s development is the act of sleeping; that a lack of it can cause serious problems to the students’ growing body. According to research done with Brown University’s Julie Boergers, the author of the letter “Benefits of later school start times”, the amount of sleep that adolescents need ranges from 8.5 to 9.5 hours of sleep. Only 17 percent of these students

Across America school starts on average, at eight o’clock in the morning. When walking through school hallways full of kids on a typical school morning, one may see sleep deprived and tired students not looking forward to their early morning classes, waiting for the bell to ring to signal them to go to class. Students brains are not at their full potential at eight o’clock in the morning because the brain is not yet fully awake. Starting school at eight o’clock is too early for students’ minds. David A. Sousa confirms, “Teenagers are not getting enough sleep. Sleep deprivation affects their ability to store information, increases irritability, and leads to fatigue, which can cause accidents” (Sousa 117). Starting school

Many high school students wander into school each day shuffling around and trying not to pass out in their classes. In order to cut back on sleep-deprived teens, we must follow through with this solution; it would give students enough time to go to bed early and wake up at an appropriate time. According to Sleep Foundation, teenagers require eight to ten hours of sleep and are not getting that with the current schedule. Many teenagers have discombobulated biological clocks and need the opportunity to adjust their sleeping schedule as they see fit. If this plan were to be put into practice, more positive attitudes would emerge from schools all over America due to their fulfilled need of sleep, which would give teachers, students, principals, counselors, and even parents a more productive start to each day. On the other hand, I realize that the opposing side of this intelligent solution may proclaim that some teenagers would abuse this and go to bed even later, but people must also realize that a large amount of teenagers who wish to succeed academically would gladly not abuse this and respect this privilege; although there would be some teenagers to mistreat this, it is up to the maturity level of the student, and they choose whether they want to succeed or

Most student’s after school activities start between 5 to 7 o’clock and don’t end until 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. If students start school at 7:30 a.m. it makes 6:15 a.m. a viable rising time, with our knowledge a teenager needs 9 ¼ hours of sleep, so we are asking them to go to sleep by 9 p.m. Very rarely is a teenager with a hectic schedule going to be able to complete school work, sports practice or games, clubs, volunteer work, and paid employment and go to bed by 9:00 p.m. Teenagers are not able to get their after school activities completed and get the 9 ¼ hours of sleep they need to have higher overall performance in academics and

With early school start times, students tend not to have enough sleep. National Sleep Foundation and American Academy of Pediatrics recommend an eight to ten-hour sleep, which is sufficient. However, 69 percent of the students in the United States sleep less than eight hours per night, which is insufficient. It affects students negatively through health, behaviors, and grades. The lack of sleep promotes students to become sleepy, defenseless, and lead to the inability to concentrate, which may cause injuries and lack of knowledge in school. This dilemma has been around for years and years in the United States. Schools should start later to avoid this dilemma because it provides students with more time to sleep and an efficient work-and-rest

According to the National Sleep Foundation, 87 percent of high school students in the U.S. were getting less than the recommended 8.5 to 9.5 hours of sleep on school nights (Barbash). If schools in the United States would push their start times back to 8:30 AM or to 9:00 AM teens could get the amount of sleep needed for physical and mental health. Another reason for later start time is that teens are wired to stay up late at night and to sleep in late in the morning. These are just a few of the many reasons why school should have regulated later start time which would be beneficial for the students.

Sleep is a very important part of our life. The right amount of sleep is important in how productive our day turns out to be. Early school hours are causing children to not get enough sleep and making the children vulnerable to depression, anxiety, weight gain, lack of focus, and being late to school. Adolescents need between 8 to 10 hours of sleep every night. However, they are not able to get that because by the time they fall asleep at night it is past 11pm, and then they have to get up for school around 6am. The solution is to start school at a later time. Good sleep would mean that students will be more focused and productive in school.

However, there is actually a lot of science that goes behind it. During adolescence, teens go through a change in their sleep schedule which is why more teens stay up later at night and struggle to get up in the morning. Though it’s easy to say that a quick solution to this problem would be for teens to go to bed earlier. However, it’s proven that by the time you’re around seventeen years old, your body naturally wants to stay up until about 11 pm. Besides that, there is also the factor of a thing called melatonin in a teens body. Melatonin is a hormone secreted by a gland in your brain that helps your brain differentiate night from day. As a teen, the melatonin gets secreted later which causes the increase of energy later in the night and makes it harder to be able to rest.( Kyla Wahlstrom, para

The human body functions on a circadian rhythm. This rhythm determines the nightly sleep cycle by telling the body to secrete a hormone called melatonin, only stopping when good night’s sleep has been received. In teenagers, melatonin starts secreting around 11pm and does not stop until 8am. This is a problem because many schools start well before 8am, so students are showing up to school sleep deprived, tired and unprepared for the day. Not to mention, many students have had to stay up much later than 11pm to finish homework. Many experience poor memory and are underperforming on

On average in today’s society most teens don’t like going to school that early in the morning. To have to wake up so early when they only get about seven hours of sleep, to have students be coming into school at 7:30AM or maybe even earlier in some other schools, is not right. Students need to have time at night to get work done, not only schoolwork but also non-schoolwork. Needless to say, the school schedule for high school students needs to be changed and be made where they go in later. That way they get their work done and get enough sleep because without much sleep students will not be getting high grades. A health survey that the University Health Center administered showed them that one in four students say that lack of sleep has

Schools that start before 8 a.m. are a major reason students aren’t getting adequate sleep. According to the National Sleep Foundation teenagers need on average 8 ½ - 9 ½ hours of sleep a night(Schute, Nancy). Realistically students rarely get that much sleep. When students don’t get adequate sleep it has the ability to affect their attention span, memory, problem-solving ability, and mood(Rosenberg, Russell). Are these students actually expected to pay attention, learn, solve problems, and have an acceptable attitude when they wake up sleep deprived? With a sleep cycle that changes once students hit puberty and an increase in the production of melatonin its nearly impossible for teens to fall asleep before 10:30 p.m.(Edwards, Finley). In my own experience I don’t even get tired until around 11:30 p.m. and barely fall asleep before 12, so it makes it extremely difficult to wake up at 6 a.m. and get ready for the day.

Most teenagers need at least 9 hours of sleep per night in order to stay focused. Yet the period of this 9 hours shifts as a person grow older. After puberty, the body’s internal clock changes so that it is difficult for teens to fall asleep before 11pm. So even if a student go to sleep at 11, they would need to sleep until at least 8am to get a full night's sleep. Considering the time at which most high schools in this country begin, those nine hours are clearly being cut short. Few high schools starts after 8am. However, there are schools that have paid attention to this research and pushed forward the start of their school day. In 2015 Fairfax county High Schools changes its morning schedule and pushed forward an hour for students to get