Picture this, students sit like sloths in a cold, dim lit room, tapping their pencil to the beat of their pulse struggling to stay awake. Daydreams fill their brains looking out the window wishing to be somewhere else, inattentive to the world around them. Eyes stare deadly into their papers hoping for the bell to ring and class to end. Grades plummet, self-esteem drops, and a continuous cycle with no end phases the new generation into depression and anxiety. Late night on their phones, studying through the night, watching their clock tick past midnight until the morning sun, only to wake up sleepless with a whole school day ahead of them filled with tests, quizzes, and learning. Many think of this as a part of growing up and life, but in reality, it is torturous. So, who wouldn’t love to wake up with barely any sleep and go to school? We can only imagine how ecstatic and lively our students would be to get up for school if they were able to get a sufficient amount of sleep every night. …show more content…
Students at Hillsborough High School have to wake up at around 6:00 am to get ready for the school day. But, is it healthy? Scientists have proven that while young kids may be able to wake up earlier, adolescents’ biological clock causes them to fall asleep later and wake up later. Not only does this cause midday fatigue, but it affects a student's grades, emotional status, and can lead to drugs and alcohol. It is common knowledge that getting 5-6 hours of sleep a night is not adequate, especially for teenagers in their transition to
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.
The primary reason for attending school is for adolescents to get an education in hopes of getting a good job. Attendance, test scores, and GPA’s all play an important role in a student’s success in school, and if they can all be improved by pushing the start time back, then this issue should be pushed further. The root problem of students not performing to their full potential has to do with the inability to focus from drowsiness in class due to the lack of sleep they are getting. To support this point, Carskadon, a professor of psychiatry and human behavior, and his team, “found that students showed up for morning classes seriously sleep-deprived and that the 7:20 a.m. start time required them to be awake during hours that ran contrary to their internal clocks” (Richmond). In other words, Carskadon believes that current high school start times go against teens’ natural sleep patterns, making them be awake at a time where their bodies aren’t ready to get up yet. This causes concentration issues making paying attention in class harder, and kids not getting the best grades they can. Also, sleep won’t get any
Have you ever been really tired when you wake up for school in the morning? Sleep is very important to all teens, or it should be. Young adults should have 8.5-9.25 hours of sleep every night, according to the National Sleep Foundation (NSF), in Sarah McKibben’s article “Wake Up Calls”. Unfortunately, two-thirds of teens are getting less than 7 hours of sleep each night, according to the NSF’s chart. This is causing a large number of schools and scientists to think that schools should start later in the morning. I fiercely disagree with this. Schools should not start later because starting later for high schools would cause too many negative consequences.
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
At this point, a lot of children do not get a healthy amount of sleep each night because school starts way too early. “Teens bodies’ inner clocks make it hard for them
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
Almost every day high school students are waking up around six o’clock in the morning to get ready for school, some even earlier than that. Nearly every morning students are waking up without adequate sleep. If sleep is one of the most essential needs of the body in order to grow and develop, shouldn’t we be more aware of how much it affects students everyday performance? The ways in which students are affected by sleep-deprivation is precisely why school needs to start later.
Schools starting later has a lot of positive impacts; such as numerous health benefits for students. Studies show that students need between 8 and 9 hours of sleep per night. In the article “Why we must, and can, restore safe and healthy school hours”, it says that teenagers experience changes in their sleep patterns which makes it harder to fall asleep. Waking up as early as 5 or 6 on a weekday not only doesn’t give students enough time to sleep, but also interrupts a time of deep sleep. When students don’t get the amount of sleep needed to function properly, they are more likely to be depressed, obese, or moody. Some parents and teachers have noticed this and started to address it. Not only are some parents and staff concerned but so are medical professionals. In the article “Despite benefits,
For most teenagers in the twenty-first century, staying alert and awake all day during school is tremendously difficult while also being given countless homework assignments that must be done after school that day. A recent poll by the National Sleep Foundation shows that kids in the sixth grade got about 8.4 hours of sleep per night but drastically dropped to 6.9 by twelfth grade. During this major change in sleep trends, bedtimes for teens got immensely later from the average of 9:24 p.m. (6 grade) to 11:02 p.m. (12 grade), and wake times got earlier: 6:42 a.m. (6 grade) to 6:31 a.m. (12 grade). (Carskadon 5) Sleeping is crucial to living healthy for everyone, but for teens, it is detrimental to their health and wellness if they do not get enough. There are many changes that go on in an adolescent's body and one major factor in these developments is the amount of sleep that the person gets. School is also very important for adolescents as they grow up. Teens need to learn and flourish as they go into adulthood so that they will be ready when real-world problems come their way. That said, there needs to be a balance between the amount of sleep a teen gets nightly and school starting times. Later start times for schools in America will increase educational productivity and boost physical and mental wellness. So, in order to get teens a better and longer night’s sleep, what can be done to help?
Many researchers admit, “[For] teens who are returning to the routine of school… [waking up early] can be brutal”(Fenwick). With a later start time, test scores are improved and teens experience fewer car crashes as results. Many experts from the American
It has been said that, “Sleep is an universal prerequisite to health and happiness.” Many students feel extremely drowsy during school, especially in the mornings and would much rather be sleeping. At Saint Francis Xavier High School, school starts at 7:40 a.m. four days a week, and many students have to wake up around 6:15 a.m. to get ready and get to school on time. This causes a dramatic lack of sleep in the average student, a conflict that can easily be resolved by pushing back the start time of school by at least an hour. If students get more sleep, there will be multiple benefits that fall into the categories of health, academics, and energy. The start time at Saint Francis Xavier High School should be pushed back to start later in the morning in order to enable students to get more sleep which would, in turn, raise academic performance and provide health benefits.
Most high school students are sitting in their first period class by 8:00 am each weekday morning. While some students may be eager to go, many are struggling to stay awake and alert. In fact, “survey evidence shows that over a quarter of high school students report falling asleep in class at least once per week” (National Sleep Foundation 2017). As parents and administrators look for ways to improve student academic achievement, some question whether early start times are getting in the way of the learning process for teenagers. Sleep research supports this notion, finding that many adolescents are sleep-deprived because of both early school start times and changing sleep patterns during the teen years. Schools should do what is best for students and change the start times to benefit everyone.
According to Peterson, later school start time was linked as one of the reason for improvement in teens sleeping patterns. A new study finds that later school start time significantly reduces daytime sleepiness and caffeine use in adolescents. This shows that when teens sleep more there is a clear decline in sleep deprivation and mood swings.This article also states that “ It is well-known that sleep deprivation is common among teens,with potential of serious impact on mental and physical health...and early high school start times contribute to these problems’’(Peterson1). This quotes is supporting the argument that when school starts early, it generally tends to have a negative effect both physically and mentally on most teenagers.
Today 70% of teens are not receiving enough sleep (Wallace). In our nation today people of all ages are heavily affected when they do not receive enough sleep. This mostly affects teenagers though because of early start time in schools. The education system in the United States needs to create a later start time as a whole because early start times are causing students to not be as successful as they could be. We need to change this because the start times are negatively affecting a teen’s behavior, grades, and safety. There are many biological reasons why teens need to have the start time changed in order for their brains to function properly. However though some people are failing to move beyond the struggles of a later start time such as transportation and after school activities. On the other hand though many schools are looking past these flaws and finding a way to switch their start times in order to help their students succeed.
On a normal school day, students in the states drag themselves out of bed and start getting ready for school. Most students almost miss the bus or miss the bus because they are still sleepy and not moving as fast as they should be. Should school start later in the morning and head into the late afternoon? The lack of sleep affects a student’s academic studies because it can lead to weight gain or even obesity, it makes them want to doze off in class, it reduces the student’s ability to think , and it also can create a depressed or anxious state of mind.