Our School Starting Times Need to Change

Imagine school starting an hour later? Imagine having more time to get ready and sleep in? Studies show that if we have more time in the morning to sleep, we will be more prepared for the school day. Doctors recommend 7 – 9 hours of sleep each night. From personal experience, not getting enough sleep a night does affect my school day. On a normal night, I get around 6 to 7 hours of sleep. You might be thinking: Instead of completely changing our school system, shouldn’t parents just reinforce their teens bedtimes? Well, it doesn’t always work like that.  

Teenagers need 9.25 hours of sleep a night, but rarely get it, and this can lead to serious and even life-threatening problems, from decreased academic performance to illness, depression, substance abuse and falling asleep at the wheel.”  States the New York Times. The amount of homework most teachers hand out can sometimes be overwhelming and cause students to push it off and do it late at night. Homework policy is another issue. But if we had later starting times, students would be able to complete their homework in the morning and get a good night’s sleep.

Emily Kempson, 18, spoke out about this issue. ”Having to get up so early interferes with your whole mindset”  she said. ”You start the day tired and resentful, rather than excited about learning.” Her twin brother who also feels like this said, ”Lots of kids won’t come in first period,” he said. ”They just use it for sleep.”

This should show the school board that school starts too early. It is so important that kids show up to class everyday! Wilton High school acted on this. The board of education declared that school should start 40 minutes later so kids get more sleep. Now this is a start. Dr. Edward O’Malley of the Connecticut Thoracic Society stated that he would like to see high school start at 8:30 or 9 a.m., giving students more sleep. Not getting enough sleep could be fatal! I don’t understand how schools don’t see this rising issue.

All of this evidence shows that teens need more sleep to function efficiently. I truly would like to see high schools in my area and others start later than they do right now. Getting sleep is very important. Learning in school is also important. By starting high schools later, (one of the most important times of your life) kids will do better in school and enjoy it. I am looking forwards to seeing this change occur.

 

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

1 thought on “Our School Starting Times Need to Change

  1. changing the starting time wouldn’t change anything, because the school day would just end later than before, and you would end up going to bed later because of the homework.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *