The Student and Sleep
Rough Draft: Position Paper #3
Rise and shine! As most parents, or alarm clocks, find it difficult
when they try and wake there heavily sleeping adolescents before the sun rises
on the new day. Teenagers waking early for school usually spend later hours in
their routine of sports, chores, studying, extracurricular activities, or doing
assignments for other classes afterwards. Once they’ve completed these tasks
they usually go to bed pretty late at night, and by the next few hours they
have to wake up at the break of dawn. They constantly spend that next morning
struggling to keep themselves elevated when there sitting down in their
classes, and in more times than once might end up snoozing away during a
lecture. Perhaps even causing problems with others around you, or yourself like
irritating the teacher with your lack of attention. While I may be just another
freshmen in college, I know what it’s like to be waking up after a long night
of finishing homework, and causing frustration to my parents, or teachers (or
both) trying to keep my eyes focused. If maybe schools had started at a later
time then we (the students) would be able to interact more with the subject we
are being taught, and maybe we’d even see less problems’ in the classroom. In my paper I discuss why starting school
later would provide more benefits to the students, teachers, and parents then
sticking with the usual early bird routine. I’ll be discussing what I’ve found
in the research I’ve discovered through online sources, studies, and statistics
to why some people would agree with this idea, and why some might be opposed to
it. Hear all I have to say before you
throw judgment at me.
While browsing the web I came across some research on why
it almost always seems to be a constant struggle to wake early in the hours of
the morning. Through gathered studies from Michael J. Breus, PhD, I learned that
teens are “biologically driven…to these sleep-in, stay-up-late schedules” (PSY).
And as they go through the long, critical stage of puberty they are more prone
to develop sleep deficiencies that get them deeper into something called sleep debt. Teenagers require more sleep
than adults with teenagers needing roughly 9 hours of nightly sleep, compared
to the general 7-8 hours for adults. With their busy schedules, the time the
teen usually goes to sleep to when they wake up does not normally reach this
necessary amount. This impacts their learning and academic performance as
well as their behavior, and mood throughout the day. It may overall cause a
risk to one’s own health by developing unhealthy addictions, and possible
depression. Would maybe shifting these early schedules by at least half an hour
make a powerful difference? I believe so, but what about some others?
Let’s say people argued against this case of changing the
school start time. This proposal some say of school changing their times might
come with a cost. In an article from USA
Today online I discovered that some schools, coaches, parents, and even students
have a few fears if this were to come into effect (TED). Coaches as well as
students, are concerned that later starting times would cause practices, or
other after school activates to end earlier while teachers are mostly concerned
with suffering later after school traffic on the roads going home. Despite
those reasons the major factor revolves around administrators having to spend
more money on changing schedules for school buses instead of providing more
money for the classrooms. Schools of all levels normally start at different
intervals in the morning using the same buses, so that their individual drivers
can quickly pick up, and drop off those students to their proper location. A
few people in a local area would say if one school were to change their start
time to happening later it would imbalance the current system. The result would
be needing to hire more bus drivers, and buses to manage it which could
possibly end up causing more traffic on road ways. The point is all these
people find it hard to let go of the current status quo, and there reasons as
said are understandable. Change is hard to make, and usually it takes some time
to adjust.
On the other hand, let’s say a normal
high school student starts school around 8 a.m., but suddenly there was a 25
minute delay in the school start time instead. This happened in the state of
Rhode Island when a group of researchers (by the Bradley Hasbro Children’s
Research Center) studied 197 high-school students, and how the change in time
would affect the adolescents sleep habits. The results were outstanding. There
was about a 79% decrease of students sleeping less than 7 hours, and a 16% to
57% increase in students sleeping 8 or more hours nightly. The students experienced
significant improvements to their “emotional and physical health, and their
performance” at school during the day (PSY). Yet as soon as the school shifted
back to its original course the students again returned to their notorious
sluggish morning habits, so starting later does
seem to correlate with a more
positive outcome then starting at or before eight in the morning. While yes
this does provide a more reasonable idea that later beginnings provide a better
welfare for the student’s health, some would still argue with the possible
outcomes I mentioned before. What about the transportation problems, costs,
after school activities, and the roads going home?
According to another article on USA Today, some other districts tried something unusual, but clever.
They figured that children going to their Elementary schools tend to go to bed
early, and therefore awake early in the morning, but having to go to school
later then there older peers. Sense teenagers going to middle, or high school
usually do the opposite, people thought well why not “flip” that system around
(TEB)? What if instead of having nocturnal adolescents waking early, we have
the early-bird younger sleepers go to school around those early morning times? These
alterations wouldn’t put such a strenuous impact on transportation costs, or
their routed schedules. This system also makes it easier for parents to wake up
their children without too much fretting, and provide easier morning routines
for them. The time management on after school activities wouldn’t be as
worrisome, and teachers would become accustomed to the slight time change in
their daily routines. In fact studies done by the University of Minnesota found
“educational and safety benefits” (TEB). To which, and I quote included “less
tardiness, higher grade point averages in morning classes and fewer teen car
crashes” (TEB).
In conclusion let’s be reminded of the purpose of why
students come to school every day. A
principal by the name of Jayne Ellspermann once said "students come ready
to learn...and take on the activities of the day”, so the top priority in
schools should be actively on the students well-being (TEB). If we keep leaving
them with sand man eyes from too early wake up calls we’ll end up wasting time
for them, the teachers, their parents, and the school board. They’ll start to
develop chronic sleep deprivation which will cause them to become sleepy,
moody, and unable to retain as much information in classes because they weren’t
biologically created to follow these systems yet. Being a teenager is already
tedious work trying to figure out oneself for who they want to be, what they
want to do, and how they are going to get it done. Why make it more challenging
for them especially if it causes more frustrations to their teachers if they
fall asleep in the classroom, or difficult for parents to awake there hard
working adolescent(s) rise from there bed? We could just as easily slowly
transition into later times, or just go right for it like Rhode Island researchers
did. We could flip Elementary and High School with each other like other
distracts did to provide an even better solution, so why wait? The point is
most teenagers already come for an average 6 hour period of education, so we
should at least set it up to where they’ll pay attention to the learning
processes to provide for a more informed, and well slept future.
Work
Cited
Sources:
1.) Breus, Michael J. “Is
It Time to Start School Later?” Psychology
Today. Sleep Newzzz, 26 Feb. 2014. Web. 19 Nov. 2015
(PSY)
2.) Velkoff, Ted. “Later Start Times Cost: Opposing View.” USA Today. Fairfax County School Board, 27
Aug. 2014. Web. 19 Nov. 2015 (TED)
3.) The Editorial Board. “More
Sleep and a Later Opening Bell can Benefit Sleep-deprived Teens.” USA Today.
(insert), 27 Aug, 2014. Web. 20 Nov. 2015 (TEB)
4.)“Eight Major Obstacles to Delaying School Start
Times.” National Sleep Foundation. Arlington, VA, 2015. Web. 28 Nov.
2015.
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