Sleep is a requirement humans need to function regularly throughout the day and school is often an obstacle blocking that requirement.
Students have essays, homework, studying, etc., that are keeping us up longer and longer each day. After school activities, sports, jobs and more take up precious time during the day and leave no time to do homework at night.
Time keeps ticking and the longer it takes to finish homework, the less time people have to sleep. On average a person should have eight hours of sleep each night.
According to The National Sleep Foundation, “Teens from ages 15-18 years old are required to get 8-10 hours of sleep to being able to complete school work through a six hour day”.
The National Sleep Foundation also has acknowledged that “babies, children, and teens need significantly more sleep than adults to support their rapid mental and physical development”.(www.sleepfoundation.org).
In order to get 8-10 hours of sleep required, students would need to go to bed at 9-10 p.m., making the necessary amount of sleep impossible for the typical teen.
If a person gets home at nine at night from activities or his/her job, she/he still has to take care of hygiene, chores, and homework leaving no time for these eight sleeping hours. Add in studying, writing essays, reading, doing homework, it could be around midnight or even later before a person goes to bed
Even if students try to go to bed around 10:30-11 p.m., waking up to get to school on time is a real killer. Some people wake up at five am to get to the bus, which makes them even more tired throughout the day.
People also have problems or trouble sleeping, others stay up playing video games or doing things not involving school and forgetting what time it is, later realizing they have homework yet still have to wake up early to get to school.
Students hear it everyday where people say they’re tired or only got three hours of sleep.
Students like the time we leave school for the day, but not the time we start. Students hate waking up at 6 am everyday and all my friends or people talking say they’re tired every day and want to leave and go to sleep.
If we start later and end later it will help us as students because we will be more awake and will have gotten more sleep. We won’t be tired after school or at night and have actual energy to do work, sports, and activities.
Sleep is the most factor that comes to people functioning the next day. School should be started at a later time to try to help the students get more sleep.
Students are the main focus in school and if they’re tired or not happy from waking up so early everyday that can cause a decline in the schools academic performance.
A new study shows that a good night’s sleep can translate to improved academic performance. Researchers at McGill University and the Douglas Mental Health University Institute in Montreal found that “children who had a better quality sleep performed better in math and languages” (time.com).
According to NBC.com, schools in California have pushed back school start times and hope to set a precedent across the nation. None of the high schools start before 8:30 a.m. and no middle school can start before 8 a.m. This also makes sense because younger children tend to pop out of bed super early and are ready to go–teenagers are not. Maybe it should switch and elementary school should start at 7:18 and the high school should start at 8:35. The switch could benefit both groups.
This proves the more rest your body gets the more energy you will have for the day. The idea of shortening the hours we have in school or changing the school schedule to later in the day is something the Board of Ed should take into consideration to help students’ mental and physical health.