Should High School Start Classes Later?

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.

High school students should have a later starting time in school due to students not getting the amount of sleep they need to function. Students that stay up late at night are way too tired to learn when they get to school early in the morning. Most students who do stay up late are unable to sleep due to melatonin not yet being produced. This shows that starting school at a later time would have many positive benefits. These benefits include higher test scores, increased attendance, more participation from students, and higher performance from athletes.

43 % of public high schools start before 8 a.m. Studies show that kids in school need 8.5-9.5 hours of sleep each night. Studies also show that 2/3 of kids in school get less than 7 hours of sleep each night. Because of all of these facts, 33% of high school students fall asleep in class. School should start later than 8 because kids still in school need more sleep than the 6-7 hours they get.

Students need eight in a half to nine in a half hours of sleep each night but most students are only getting seven due to early start times. If High School was to start later that would allow more sleep for students which would increase their concentration in a class environment. When a student is able to concentrate they are able to focus on what their learning from their teachers and are able to take what they learning and put it on paper. Doing this allows students grades to increase because they are focused on what they need to know.

To conclude, we can see how not only does more sleep make us prepared and more focused for the school day, but how it also affects our positive sleeping patterns, our ability to learn, and the amount of stress that our bodies receive. We see how many liable resources were used to conclude that sleep truly is one of the most important factors in a student's everyday life and supports the idea that school should begin later for the most positive results. Starting school later will truly minimize bad sleep patterns and habits, increase the amount of learning and lastly, put less stress on our minds and

There are many learning benefits when students start school later. The research, conducted by a sleep expert with Hasbro Children's Hospital in Providence, R.I., found that a delay in school start time of only 30 minutes was associated with significant improvements in adolescent alertness, mood and health( 1 ). The more sleep we get we can learn more and it would be better. The more

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

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

If students come to school with their brain’s not fully functioning yet because of the lack of sleep they had gotten, it would be extremely difficult to do any work. This can lead to low test scores and an impact on their grades and scores. In Source A, Nancy Shute states, “We truly believe that our teenagers are getting six to seven hours of sleep a night, and they need eight to 10.” (page 1). Many teens aren’t getting the full sleep that they need. Instead they are losing three to four hours of sleep. This amount of lack of sleep can cause student’s to be tired while they are at school. Although there have been many reports insisting that teens should be getting eight to ten hours of sleep, only 15 percent of high schools have embraced the change and made their school start at 8:30 or later. Even worse the percentage of high schools that are starting before 8 a.m. is 40 percent. Some may argue their point that middle and high schoolers can sleep at an earlier time to gain the sleep they lose, but pediatricians say that as children become teenagers their sleep-wake cycle changes. According to Source A, Nancy Shute states, “As children become teenagers, their sleep-wake cycle shifts two hours late, so it’s

School should start later for teens.If teens don't have time to sleep that means teens will be sleeping in the class that they are in.

There is much more evidence that suggests that high schools should not start before 8 a.m. For example, the biological sleep patterns of adolescence shift toward later times for both sleeping and waking. Therefore, It is not natural for teens to be going to bed before 11 p.m. on school nights. In addition, teens need about eight to ten hours of sleep each night to function best, and only 15% of teens get 8.5 hours of sleep on school nights. Also, teens tend to have very irregular sleep patterns across the week. They will go to bed much later and sleep in much later on the weekends. This is due to the fact that when teens go through puberty their melatonin levels increase later at night and decrease later in the morning.

Research shows that sleep is a necessity for everyone, especially teenagers. When starting school a little later, students can get at least 2-3 hours of extra sleep. With a 7 hour day at school, a couple of hours of homework, studying, and after school activities, there is not much time for sleep. With the extra sleep, when students get to school, they would be focused and ready to learn! “A common belief is that adolescents are tired, irritable and uncooperative because they choose to stay up too late or are difficult to wake in the morning because they are lazy, a study noted. Educators tend to think that adolescents learn best in the morning and if they simply went to sleep earlier, it would improve their concentration” (Schaffhauser 2). For all of these reasons, it is very important for teens should sleep.

I think High School should start later. I think this for three reasons which are that students do not get enough sleep, grades will suffer, and students will not be motivated to learn. So I believe school should start later.

May 30, 2015, marked the end of my high school career, and as I walked the graduation line, two things kept ringing in my head, “No more waking at 5:00am, and I no longer have to catch the bus at 6:17am,” which made me really happy. Imagine how many high school students across the United States feel the same after high school or during twelfth grade. Over the years, early school start times has been attributed to some of the reasons why students have been unable to perform well because they have been deprived of sleep. Sleep is an essential part of our daily lives and without it, we will be unable to function, as it is known that sleep is needed for optimum performance. It is one of the factors that determines how much effort we put into our daily activities, and it has several health benefits on our minds asides from the obvious ones known to people; moreover, one might conclude that it determines a whole lot of things pertaining to our daily lives. Despite the fact that we are aware of the many effects and benefits of sleep, most students in the United States are denied these benefits through early school start times, and this has several adverse effects on students academically and mentally. Schools should start later in the morning as early school start times impairs the performance of students greatly, affects students’ cognitive abilities, and denies students an adequate amount of sleep. (Finley).

Schools should consider starting at a later time in the morning so students can get plenty of sleep at night. According to a high school student who was interviewed in the article, Snooze… Or Lose!: 10 ‘No-War’ Ways to Improve Your Teen’s Sleep Habits,