Waking Up High School Start Time

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Chuck Etherton Scherden, Joseph M Language Arts II 24 May 2024 Essay on School Start Times The nine to five schedule is a classic for a reason, Because waking up any earlier than nine sucks. That's the same reason why no one signs up for college classes before nine, so why should your teen going through hormonal shifts have to wake up so much earlier than you? Well studies show they really shouldn't. Science shows that any time after 8:30 is best. Exactly why is it important that your teen is going through puberty? When you're younger, waking up early is easy, but as you get older it gets harder and harder. This is because “As children enter puberty, physiological changes delay the onset of sleep and make it more difficult to wake up early …show more content…
Going to school later doesn't help everyone, there is a specific age at which it becomes helpful. Jennifer Heissel and Samuel Norris tell us exactly when this is in their article “RISE AND SHINE: HOW SCHOOL START TIMES AFFECT ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE" where they say, “The benefits of starting school later increase sharply at age 11 for girls and 13 for boys--the gender-specific ages when puberty typically begins” (Heissel, Norris). They learned this from a study in Florida where they also saw that teenagers woke up best when the sun was rising with them, but school often starts much before the sun does. Maybe that could explain teens' terrible and inconsistent sleep schedules. Speaking of terrible, Sarah D. Sparks writes an article on how those inconsistent sleep schedules can mess up not only a teens academic success, but their behavior as well. Everyone knows that the recommended amount of sleep is around 8 hours for adults, but Sparks says, “Across the board, the teenagers were sleep deprived. On average, they get about 7.5 hours of sleep a night—somewhat normal for adults but about 1.5 hours less than the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends for adolescents” …show more content…
Many teens don't know this though and try to make up for missed sleep during the week, but this can be very bad for your mental and physical health, “Sleep variability is really coming up now as being so important for so many aspects of health and well-being—mental health, for example, and cardiometabolic health,” (Sparks). All of these things are incredibly important, but we never listen to these points. There are still a few things I need to cover, despite everything I’ve already covered. Sarah D. Sparks also wrote an article called "Later School Start Times Could Help Teachers, Too." In this article, she tells us all about the benefits other schools could receive from this change. Teachers are people too, and they can get just about as frustrated as your average person can, especially with as much sleep the average teacher gets. “The American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society recommend that adults sleep at least seven hours per night, but more than 1 in 3 American adults don't meet that sleep bar” (Sparks). If this is true for the average adult, then imagine how little teachers get with all that