High School students are most influenced by early morning start times, and are scientifically being affected by mental health disorders despite reports of “Just being sleepy”. The results of sleep deprivation are brutal, and can lead to minor, short term effects such as drowsiness, inability to focus, poor motivation, a decrease in attention span or serious, long term effects like anxiety, extended insomnia, micro-sleeping, high blood pressure, and diabetes. Teenagers themselves are more at risk than other members of the school board due to the current development of their brain, which isn't fully developed until the age of a 25. By delaying school start times until 8:00-8:30, students get more sleep and can be more productive.
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This disorder has many forms such as primary, secondary, chronic, acute and Fatal Familial. “80% of people with insomnia, have Secondary Insomnia; which is primarily caused by other emotional, neurological or medical disorders. Insomnia can also be a side effect of excessive use of caffeine, stimulants, sedatives, and prescription medications,” (Lee Ann Morgan). By delaying school start times until 8:00 or 8:30, students are granted up to an extra 2 hours of sleep time, and are more productive throughout the day without changing their bed time. In Wahlstroms article, students whose school start time was 8:30 or later reported, “Statistically significant less depressive feelings on these questions than did the early start students”. As a result, students’ mental health is better than those who go to school at an earlier time. Students in this study reported higher attendance levels, better attitudes, and more positive grades. This means that high school students’ grades, attendance, and mental state improved with just a few more hours of sleep each night. This improvement benefits the students as well as the School Boards academic reports. As a result of this, pushing back the school start time by an hour or two benefits students and the …show more content…
According to the Economic News Release, “20.5 million people ages 16-24 were employed in July of 2016”. With so many high school students involved in external time consuming events, it is difficult to enforce a schedule that gives students enough hours to sleep at night, as well as allow them to continue doing things that they enjoy. A study provided by the National Sleep Foundation discovered thatteenagers don't and shouldn't be falling asleep until around 11:00pm because of their biological sleep patterns. “Teenagers are expected to get 8-10 hours of sleep every night in order to maintain good health and be most productive, but only 15% of teens actually get 8.5 hours or more each night,” (John Hoffman). Rather than enforcing an earlier bedtime among high school students, thus ignoring biological clocks and circadian rhythms, students should be getting sleep in early morning hours rather than in the evening when they aren't tired or are occupied by other activities. If students don't scientifically fall asleep until 11:00 pm, and need 8-10 hours of sleep, students should be waking up at 7:00am at the earliest to fulfill this need. This means that school should begin later, which in turn gives students more time to sleep without interfering with biological sleep patterns. By pushing back school start time to
Waking up early at 6:00 A.M in the morning isn’t the funniest thing to do. The times on when school starts should be changed to a later time. Schools should change start times to later there is even factual evidence that this is true. In the article ‘The Teen Who Woke Up Her School’ by Jane Bianchi wrote about a teen named Jilly Dos Santos who put hard work into petitions and powerpoints to show how more sleep can better not only her but other people on school work and sports. People need more sleep to function and get through the day and to be more alert about things around them.Evidence from scientist and from teens show that people work better when they have more energy and got a good night's rest and when students don’t they sometimes start
Allowing students to sleep more by starting school later would benefit them in a multitude of ways and keep them from feeling enervated. According to the online article, A Wake-Up Call on High-School Starting Times, “...troubled kids often get caught up in a distress cycle in which too little sleep causes them to experience anxiety and inner turmoil, which, in turn, cause them to lose more sleep. In the worst
Later School Start Times Everyone has always hated getting up super early to go to school. As children get older they move to different schools, from elementary to middle to high school, and the start times get earlier. In elementary school it was never a problem getting up but getting older, it always got harder to get up and the days were always longer. Schools start so early in the morning that it is hard to focus and students tend to miss more of their earlier classes and attend all of their later classes. Schools everywhere should start later because it would benefit the students and teachers.
Researchers have proven that teenager’s brains don’t start working until ten in the morning, also that an average teenager is supposed to get eight to nine hours of sleep each night. These are a few reasons that school starting times are negatively affecting students learning abilities at school. I believe that schools should have later starting times. An average teenager is supposed to get eight to nine hours of sleep each night, however in reality most teens only get about seven hours. A lack of sleep is causing students to do worse on homework and tests. Our school starts at seven twenty-five, if it started two hours later, then students would be getting the exact amount of sleep that they need each night. A study shows that the brain doesn’t
“Sleep deprivation is epidemic among adolescents, with potentially serious impacts on mental and physical health, safety, and learning. Most teenagers undergo a biological shift to a later sleep-wake up cycle, which can make early school start times particularly challenging.” says Boergers.
According to the National Sleep Foundation, biological sleep patterns change throughout the stages of adolescence. ¨Biological 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 11:00pm.¨ (¨Teens and Sleep¨). Messing with these sleep cycles in the long run and lead to sleep disorders. Research done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests teenagers 13-18 years old should regularly sleep 8-10 hours each night for a healthy sleep. The teens who do not get a good amount of sleep are more likely to suffer from mental conditions, smoking, illicit drugs, and alcohol use. ¨Not getting enough sleep is common among high school students and is associated with several health risks including being overweight, drinking alcohol, smoking tobacco, and using drugs, as well as poor academic performance.¨ (¨Schools Start Too Early¨). On an NBC news story, Hilton Head Island High School moved its start time and benefits were noticeable. Students had higher test score averages and grades improved throughout the school.A study done in 2008 published in the journal of clinical sleep, found car accident rates fell by 16.5% when students were more aware on the road, not having to wake up before 7 am.
We’ve all woken up tired not wanting to go to school, because we didn’t get enough sleep. Of course when I say we, I mean as in teens who go to school, and possibly yourself when at the time in your life. The schedule for school doesn’t fit in very well with our sleep patterns. Sleep experts from the University of Minnesota, have found that later start times made students have a better health measure and over perform better in school (Hoofman 2). Research being done on this topic mostly specifies that bodies don’t agree with the start time, for various reasons. School start times should be pushed back an hour to benefit teens health, and school performance.
Teens are wired to be night owls and are still required to sleep at least a whole 9 hours to be able to function properly. Studies show that a school with later arrival times is 16.5% less likely to have a car crash than a school with earlier start times. Sleep is very important in order to reduce teen car crashes. If students don’t graduate from high school then who will teach them how go through life. Later school leads to higher graduation rates.
“BEEP, BEEP, BEEP!” The teenage student slams on the snooze button and struggles to get out of bed for the early school day. Teens on average need 9 ¼ hours of sleep (Backgrounder: Later School Start Times). Teens currently average fewer than 7 hours of sleep (Backgrounder: Later School Start Times). Hectic schedules, poor sleep habits, homework, and family obligations are the problem (Backgrounder: Later School Start Times). Schools are considering starting their school days later in the morning. For example, one Minneapolis school considered pushing back their start time from 7:15 to 8:30. Another Seattle school considers pushing back the school day start reported Jean Enersen. Would this benefit the students or harm the students? Is this for the better or for the worse? These are questions many superintendents and school board members are asking themselves. They all want to do what is best for their students, so the topic takes a lot of thinking, planning, and conversations. School starting later can be a very controversial issue.
In a recent survey over 70% of students want school to start at 9:00am or later, helping students by miles. Students who stay up past 1am on average every night start developing psychological and mental health problems. Other students come to school sleep deprived and do poorly on there work. Leading students to substance abuse or higher obesity due to stress. Furthermore students who go to school at a later time never develop psychological and mental health problems unlike students who go to school at early start times.
Lack of sleep of teens is not caused by choice. Many teens do not choose to stay up late at night because they are out or having fun. The body has circadian rhythms. “These rhythms are generated internally and develop without any social or environmental cues. Adolescents experience a natural circadian phase delay and, therefore, tend to stay up later and sleep in later than in preadolescents” (Final Report Summary, 2001). The opening and closing schedules of schools are not based on these rhythms but are based on the business world and what is best for it. “School schedules should be adapted to the unique needs of different sub-populations of pupils. The administrator must not bear the sole responsibility for planning class schedules” (...
Firstly, in the first article, a girl named Jilly Dos Santos stands up to the school and makes the school starting time later, by leading many students to help change the starting time. It also talks about how even students reading the article can step up and show their opinion to their school district about school starting times! in the article it states,” Your body isn't just on a later schedule though— your brain also needs more total hours of sleep (about 9.25 a night) to function at its best. Sadly, most teens are able to squeeze in only about 7.1 hours, on average.” This shows that if people don’t change the school starting times, most teenagers are losing around 2 hours of needing rest! in conclusion, if people like Jilly Dos Santos step up to change school times, teenagers may finally be able to get the
Ed Ehlinger of the University of Michigan's Boynton Health Service said in a statement. "There is a direct link between the two." I’m not alone when I say I’m tired. According to the Sleep Foundation, ¨About two-thirds of Americans say their sleep needs are not being met during the week.¨ If school were to start later, kids might do better in school and not be tired during the school day. No Sleepless Nights (an advocacy group) recommends that everybody try to get into a schedule, waking up and going to bed at relatively constant times every day of the week. On school days, I go to bed late and wake up early, and on weekends its quite the opposite, as I try to make up for lost sleep. This habit is unhealthy. If school started later, I could get into a healthy sleep schedule and not have to recover from under-slept nights. According to The National Sleep Foundation it is natural for teens to be most alert around 11 pm and then need to sleep in in the morning. ¨This shift in teens' circadian rhythm causes them to naturally feel alert later at night, making it difficult for them to fall asleep before 11:00 pm. Since most teens have early school start times along with other commitments, this sleep phase delay
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) says that students aren’t getting adequate amounts of sleep and this is a problem. It was said that “The CDC’s recommendations come a year after the American Academy of Pediatrics urged schools to adjust start times so more kids would get the recommended 8.5 to 9.5 hours of nightly rest.” (“Why School Should”). This tells us that students need a certain amount of sleep to function properly. An article from neatoday.org states “Unfortunately, concerns about lack of sleep often get the brush-off from schools and even some parents who are quick to blame inattentiveness in school solely on teen behavior, laziness, general indifference, or all of the above. If only they went to bed earlier, concentration and attentiveness would improve. But in their report, the researchers say that schools are ignoring adolescent biology and are systematically restricting the time available for sleep and causing severe and chronic sleep loss.” (“Despite Proven Benefits”) An example of this is helping with student academics. The Atlantic also regards in their article that “Researchers analyzed data from more than 9,000 students at eight high schools in Minnesota, Colorado, and Wyoming and found that shifting the school day later in the morning resulted in a boost in attendance, test scores, and grades in math, English, science, and social studies. Schools also saw a decrease in tardiness, substance abuse, and symptoms of depression. Some even had a dramatic drop in teen car crashes.” (“Why School Should”). From this data you can see that through the right amount of sleep, students are able to better perform in learning
Introduction Sleep studies have been conducted since as early as 1913. However, the impact of school start times on student academics is often overlooked by most schools. In reality, start times can significantly affect academic performance by disrupting adolescents' normal sleep cycle, leading to a lack of sleep that impairs learning, and hindering academic performance. These theories have been tested through sleep studies, and most of them have been found to be true. Sleep Cycle Changes When children transition from primary school to middle or high school, it can significantly affect their learning due to changes in their sleep cycle.