turning zzz’s to a’s
Turn ZzZ’s To A’s
“Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise,” said Ben Franklin. You might ask, “What does this have to do with me, let alone teens?” Well just think. Imagine your schedule (that will represent elementary school start times) in which you can sleep in till 8 o’clock in the morning. Now, picture that suddenly changing to waking up at 6 in the morning, then having more work to do. In addition it has been proven than teens chemistry works so that they stay up late then, sleep in. So it’s not just your son or daughter being lazy, but it’s in their blood. Even further, at this particular age schedules are getting more and more rigorous. It’s pretty overt to me that we should change the start times.
“Over time, sleep deprivation leads to serious consequences for academic achievement, social behavior, and the health and safety of our nation’s youth, we must encourage schools to push back their start times to at least 8:30 a.m. — a schedule more in tune with adolescents’ biological sleep and wake patterns and more closely resembling the adult work day.” - Zoe Lofgren
Research in the 1990s found that later sleep and wake patterns among adolescents are biologically determined; the natural tendency for teenagers is to stay up late at night and wake up later in the morning. This research indicates that school bells that ring as early as 7:00 a.m. in many parts of the country stand in stark contrast with adolescents’ sleep patterns and needs. Throughout time it has been found that all people function better with large amounts of sleep. So why, especially at thia critical point in a teens life are we forced to arrise from our slumber so early every morning? Not only does it affect students, but it affects the teachers to have to get up early every morning. So we are not learning as well as we could be, and we are not being taught as well as we could be, Not exactly the best combonation ever.
Kids aren’t being taught as welll as could be, they aren’t learning as well as they could be. Aren’t we supposed to be the future? Well in that case the future could be looking a lot better and this could so easily be fixed by having school boards change the start times, for middle and highschoolers to at least 8:45am.
Bibliography:
http://www.sleepfoundation.org/hottopics/index.php?secid=18&id=206- This is the only webpage i used. It was a very reliable source.