School Starting Too Early? Essay

Submitted By tf245yay
Words: 746
Pages: 3

School Starting Too Early?
For most high school students across the entire nation, they start school around eight in the morning. We would all agree that school is important for our teens and that they spend a certain number of hours in school each week for their education. However, I would assume that we also agree that sleep is also vital to success, especially for our students in their teen years. Many high school students, with myself included as a former high school student, have experienced a lack of sleep just to get up for school. We may not know it yet, but a few simple changes would be very beneficial for the success of our high school students.
Not many of us realize it yet, but many high school students are actually sleep deprived. Most high school students have a very busy schedule after the normal school hours
(e.g. homework, sports, extra­curricular activities, etc.) which would make them stay up way past midnight. These students would also have to get up very early in the morning and attend school sometime around eight in the morning. According to the National Sleep Foundation, teens need around 9 ¼ hours of sleep each night in order to function properly. It is also stated that teens are better off staying up later in the night and getting more sleep in the morning.
With the current schedules that our high school students have to fit into, it would be impossible for them to get an adequate amount of sleep. In the short term, this could lead to poor performance at school, there could be some serious health effects on our teens in the near future. As a former high school student myself, I would understand how it feels to wake up so tired in the morning and be sleepy during my morning classes.
Sleep deprivation is a major issue especially among students who choose to take challenging classes academically and those who choose to take part in time consuming extra curricular activities. Making either decision would show that the student is well motivated to succeed. Therefore, we should not set them up for failure by simply depriving them of their sleep. Sleep deprivation for teens may not seem to be that of a serious issue right now, but it could potentially have deadly consequences later. However, fixing this issue may not be as hard as we think. If we can simply get our school districts to “alter” the daily school schedules a little, it could make a big difference. Let’s say we made the school day begin around 9 to
9:30 AM, our students would get around an hour more of sleep! We could still have the same amount of hours in school either by having dismissal later or by simply shortening lunch/breaks. Many teachers and staff