Should High-Schools Begin At Later Times?

Research has shown that teenagers experience a change in their internal sleep clocks so that waking up early and going to sleep early are difficult. I agree with the decision to change school times and what it has to offer. This would not only help the teenagers with many things but also accommodate the parents schedules too. I believe that if the school system were to alter the times so that High Schoolers were to wake up later then it would fix various conflicts; teen depression, lack of awareness, and it allows parents to work later.

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.

Imagine going to school being half asleep,High Schools should begin later in the day to accommodate for students to get natural sleep they need, Teenagers usually are not aware during the day due to sleep schedules. Sleep also affects the health of teens who do not get enough rest. High schools should change their schedules to help students become more advanced in school.

Have you ever gone to high school and fell asleep during instruction? If so you should be reading this! In this essay I will be using details from the two articles “High Schools Starting Later To Help Sleepy Teens” and “High Schools Will Start Too Early, Here’s why” to explain both authors(Michelle Trudeau & Dan Weissmann) claim about high school start times.I will also tell how both authors(Michelle Trudeau & Dan Weissman) advance on their unique perspective.

Today I am here to talk about why high school students should start school later. The problem is high school children being too tried and some falling asleep in class. This is such a big problem since children are learning less and sleeping more in their first class of the day in high schools across the country. If we deiced to start school later for high school students it might reduce the amount of kid falling asleep in class. Here are a couple of points to back up my opinion.

A high school in Ontario has decided to start its school day in the late morning( around 11:00 am). Do you agree with this move?

Studies conducted over ninety percent of high school students in America are sleep deprived, which poses the question,

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.

Would you like to start school later? Would you not want too? Some people think school should not start later. Others think school should start later.I think school should not start later.

As the education of Americans continues to fail in comparison to other countries, it is imperative that we don’t further weaken our school day by making school start later. This is important to take into consideration when deciding school start times, as well as many other facts. District officials nationwide have been discussing or even implementing a later start time in their schools. However, this will just cause more problems and hurt the students and everybody else concerned more than help them. Children need to learn how to manage their time and get the amount of sleep they need. We cannot keep enabling by starting school later.

Studies by the National Sleep Foundation have shown that teenagers lose up to two hours of sleep per night during the school year. A big component of sleep loss is a direct result of the early start times for high school. Between after school sports, work, and homework the average teen does not make it to bed before 11p.m. Adolescents then proceed to wake up before 6:30 a.m. to make it to school on time leaving them with an insufficient amount of sleep. Many fatigued teenagers then come to school and easily miss out on learning. School officials have presented a variety of solutions to school boards to increase student alertness during school hours. One reasonable solution that would be an easy fix to the problem is switching high school and elementary schools’ start times to decrease drowsiness of high schoolers in morning classes.

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.

The national sleep epidemic that has taken the world by storm is also taking a toll in not only teen’s health but also their performance in school as well as personal safety. The sleep deprivation that teens are experiencing everyday has caused many health problems as well as academic problems. I believe starting school later will hinder this ever growing teen sleep deprivation problem we face today. Letting teens sleep later is beneficial to their learning capacity as their heightened alertness improved their classroom performance as well as better memory and many other crucial achievements. So probably starting school later, but no later than eight thirty am, will lead students to perform better in school and their health will improve drastically.

Adolescents don’t choose to stay up late; they do know the consequences of being tired the next day. “The starting time of school puts limits on the time available for sleep, this is a nonnegotiable limit established largely without concern

It is a known fact that one of the problems that teachers of adolescent age students face is that the students are too tired and exhausted to pay attention to what they should be learning and being taught in school. Students are not getting the needed sleep their bodies and mind require for them to be functioning properly. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “Five out of every six middle schools and high schools nationwide start classes earlier than 8:30 a.m., making it difficult for teens to get the sleep they need to be healthy” (Cox, John Woodrow, and Emma Brown). This statistic shows that five out of six students are too tired to pay attention in school.