If your school was like mine it had you waking up before the sun to get ready to catch the bus or hop in your car to head to school. Class for me for both middle and high school started bright and early time of 7:25. Once I had a car and could drive to school I was able to push the time I left in the morning a little, but when I was at the will of the bus I had to leave as early as 6:30. By the time the end of the day rolled around I could hardly keep my eyes open. I think it would be beneficial for school start times to be later, as to not lose the attention of students throughout the day, and then maybe more kids would be motivated to actually attend school.
The Pediatric’s webpage even states that “the average teenager in today’s society has difficulty falling asleep before 11:00 PM and is best suited to wake at 8:00 AM or later”. So, if a student has to catch a 6:30 bus then the latest they can wake up to make it on time is most likely 6 am. So, if a student falls asleep by 11 then is forced to wake up at 6 they are losing 2 hours of sleep that they need according to Pediatric. They also say that a student needs to receive the optimal amount of sleep in order to maintain good “physical and mental health”, “safety”, “academic performance”, and “quality of life”. Sleep deprivation is one of the leading negative effects amongst students. This one thing causes a domino effect of other issues. The chances of these other issues occurring, given that the problem of sleep deprivation is solved, then becomes much lower then if sleep deprivation played a role.
The Brown University Child and Adolescent Behavior Letter published an article, found online, in which they conducted their own study altering school start times as well as research the effects from when other schools changed their start times and pushed them back to make them later and allow kids to get a little more sleep. In their own experiment the results of even a 25 minute delay were “reductions in depressed mood, caffeine use, daytime napping, tardiness to class, and falling asleep in class” (Get to article here). The question is why change school start times? For one it is easily “modifiable”. It is one thing that can be controlled. Once teens form sleep habits, like going to bed late, it is very hard for them to break that. It is easier said than done to just simply tell students to go to bed earlier.
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There is definitely some type of correlation between sleep deprivation and a students mental and physical health, as well as productivity. Since both of these are essential to success, it is important that it be maintained. Therefore, later school times seem like the best solution. A good way to test this would to be take a school with an early start time, monitor the students and collect data on things such as their mental and physical health, as well as their academic success to establish a baseline. Then, take that school and delay the start time by an hour or two. Monitor the same factors and see if they improve. This needs to be done many times in schools across the country though, in efforts to eliminate as much chance as possible.
I agree with this post completely. I dreaded getting out of bed in middle/high school early even if I lived like five minutes away. I would barely stay awake during my first period. I loved those two hour delays though because I was less tired and more focused. Congress just needs to make a bill that allows school to start one hour later. It would solve every ones problem
Yes! I agree on every scientific point made in this blog post! High school was rough, was middler school was even more rough considering I had a 6:15 bus departure time. It definitely wasn’t in my best interest as an adolescent to go to sleep later than I should have. I feel that this effected my development, considering this is a time in our lives where our bodies are changing the most!
To answer your question, yes, personally for me, school started WAY too early in high school. I tried so hard to balance clubs and sports practices and homework while also trying to squeeze in a social life, and often found myself barely ever getting to bed before midnight. This cycle repeated daily and I found myself so tired on the weekends. This lack of sleep was awful and your article got me thinking. Can lack of sleep cause health issues? Here is an article on lack of sleep and weight gain. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/07/20/sleep-loss-weight-gain/7507503/
There’s an entire website dedicated to advocating the topic here: StartSchoolLater.net. Had no idea that almost half of the nation’s schools start before 8:00!
I wonder if the correlation you’re discussing could also apply to college students – more often than not, we’re free to skip classes, and I would bet that more students skip early morning classes than afternoon classes. There’s an interesting study that could really support a call to start school later in the day. Great post!
This blog post is the epitome o my high school troubles. Thankfully, I no longer have to get up at 5:45am every morning. And you better believe that I did not schedule any 8ams this semester. When reading your blog post, I couldn’t help but question if maybe the amount of hours of sleep we are getting are part of the reason that we would always be excessively tired. Check out this recommended sleep chart. In high school, we should have been getting 8-10 hours. I think I can speak for me and all of the high school population in saying that this did not happen.
Similarly to you my school started at 7:30 every morning and I did not live close to my school. Going to bed so late and waking up so early was a regular routine for me and my body would always a zombie for first period. I would always hate having a test first period too, because I always thought my body was still asleep. I thought about that a study should be conducted where they give some subjects a test first period and others later in the afternoon and see the results of the test scores. In this article, it states that it takes your brain about 2 hours to fully wake up. “Why sleep inertia occurs, we don’t fully understand. One hypothesis is that it takes different brain regions different amounts of time to transition from sleep to wakefulness.”