Persuasive Essay: Why School Should Later School Start Time

Over 87% of teenagers don’t get enough sleep and go to school tired. Teenagers have constant expectations to live up to, but with the amount of sleep they’re getting it can be seemingly impossible. The question has been brought up time and time again, should the school day start later? Because of the risks of not getting enough sleep, trying to keep up with their their busy schedules, and being in their adolescent years, having the school day start later would help teenagers around the world immensely.

In “High Schools Starting Later to Help Sleepy Teens” by Michelle Trudeau and “High Schools Will Keep Starting Too Early.Here’s why.” by Dan Weissman they both have their own perspectives on life about school starting times and the problems they may bring to the students of high schools.In Michelle Trudeau’s story she says that the starting times for high schools has many students still very drowsy and tired most of the time having them nod off during school instruction.She states that in an average high school 20% of students fall asleep in class on a typical day.Therefore, in need to prevent this from happening teens need more sleep as opposed to them not getting enough sleep from either staying up late or period as some experts say.There are many ways to add additional support for teens and their sleep.

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

Schools all around the nation have starting times for school, that are too early for the students and teachers alike. Schools starting times should be 8:30 in the morning or later, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Sleep loss has become more common in children due to early start times which only gives them 6-7 hours of sleep a night when growing children should have 8-9 hours a night. children suffer the chronic loss of sleep due to the hormonal roller coaster that you call puberty, which only lets them begin to go into a REM sleep around 10 p.m. . It’s also been proven that adolescent children suffer from highers risks of physical health problems, mental health problems, lower test scores, missing school, substance abuse, and being in a car crash due to sleep deprivation. Students end up having to get up before 6:30 to get ready and catch the bus or walk to school, but when you have to study for hours after school, eat, clean up, participate in extracurricular activities, including sports and clubs, and do chores in less than 4 hours to get the sleep they require to be healthy mentally and physically it’s almost impossible. School should start later to better our future generations, with more sleep we could have more positive members of societies.

         When children hit puberty they experience a delay in their biological block which in turns causes a shift in melatonin. Melatonin is the natural hormone in a person’s body that notifies them if it is time to sleep or time to wake up. A distraction in this can cause many behavior health and mental health issues such as substance abuse, depression or sadly suicide. Only about a tenth of the population actually get the right amount of sleep they need. The minimum amount someone should sleep is eight full hours. In the

Research has shown that teenagers experience a change in the internal sleep clock so that waking up early and going to sleep early are difficult. Some people believe that high school classes should begin later in the day to better accommodate students’ natural sleep clocks. Waking up early can be a real struggle for teenagers. Most teens naturally sleep in until ten thirty or eleven on weekends. I do believe high school classes should start later because teens could sleep more naturally, it would give teenagers more time to do things in the mornings, and more sleep equals better

In the first place, students are not getting enough sleep. In the article “Should School Start later” by Lisa M. Herrington [20] “According to the National Sleep Foundation “59% of 6th-8th graders and 87% of high schoolers aren't getting the sleep they require”. This quote shows that students are not getting the sleep they need. And kids must wake up early how are they getting the sleep we need. “So why don’t kids just go to sleep earlier? It’s not that simple” Says Danny Lewin, a sleep specialist at Children's National Health system in Washington, D.C. “Adolescents have a deeply programmed biological clock to go to bed later and wake later” Says

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

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.

There may be some of you out there who simply believe, “Why don’t they just go to sleep earlier?” The truth is, that the biological clock in adolescents can change on average two hours from middle school into high school, which means that they are supposed to go to sleep at 11 and wake up at around 8 (“Teens Need”). This time frame is not taken into account in high school start times, which suggest adolescents going to sleep at 9 and waking up at 6. The time suggested by the schools goes against a high schooler 's biological clock, leaving most teens going to sleep around 11 and waking up at an average time of 5:30; a mere 6 ½ hours of sleep is achieved with this time frame, 3 hours less than what has been recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics (Maloney-Dunn). The American Academy of Pediatrics suggest a high school start time of 8:30 or later

DING! DING! That awful sound of the alarm goes off. Sound familiar? For many middle school and high school students across America this is just a typical early weekday morning. This isn’t because teens are lazy, it is because of the school start times. I think teen students’ need a later school start time for many supported reasons. Although, schools starting later means school would end later and possibly interfere with extra-curricular activities, school times should be should be pushed back to later times because students will have a better sleep pattern, students health will improve, and students will have better academic performance.

School is not the most desirable place that a teenager would want to be at seven hours a day, five days a week, 180 days a year, and even more problematic is that for them to get to school on time, they have to fight their biological clocks (Hansen). Many schools have started pushing their start times back by even just an hour, and helped with the students grades and mental health by giving them the time they need to sleep (“4 Good Snooze”). Pushing start times back a good idea because it will give students the rest they need to be successful.

Research shows that teens sleep cycles are naturally delayed (Should High School Start Later, 2013). About fifteen percent of high schools start at 8:30am or later and, forty percent of schools start earlier than 8:00 am (SiOWfa, 2014). The start times of schools are reducing the amount of sleep a student is receiving on school nights. Most teens start their day at 5:30-6:30 am to prepare for school, but if their natural bedtime is 11 pm or even midnight, they are getting only 6-7 hours of sleep! Remember that teens need at least 8 hours to function properly. To fix this issue schools will have to start later.

Thomas Decker once said, “Sleep is that golden chain that ties health and our bodies together.” School. There’s a lot of things people can say about it. Mostly they’re arguments about school such as should school have trimester or semesters? Or maybe school should be year round rather than having a summer break. However, out of all those, one in particular caught my eye. Should school start later? Now me being a student myself, this was very enticing. Being able to sleep more and have a full night's rest would be delightful. I, myself, believe that school starting later would be beneficial for school and the kids going to school. It would have its pros and cons, but it would be an overall positive impact to everyone.

“The average amount of sleep that teenagers get is between 7 and 7 ¼ hours. However, they need between 9 and 9 ½ hours (studies show that most teenagers need exactly 9 ¼ hours of sleep)” states https://www.nationwidechildrens.org/sleep-in-adolescents which is a website that talks about teenagers and the amount of sleep they receive each night. Waking up early every morning will take a toll on a teenager, especially, since they have school five days a week, have after school activities, and they have to work on homework for hours on end. With the early start times of high schools all around the world, how do teens get the adequate amount of sleep they need? The answer is they don’t. “The CDC's Youth Risk Behavior Survey in 2015 showed that 73% of U.S. high school students get fewer than 8 hours of sleep on school nights, and 43% get 6 or fewer hours” says http://www.startschoollater.net/wake-up-calls-fast-facts.html which is a website that talks about the amount of sleep teens get, and the amount they