Later Start Time For High School Essay

Words: 681
Pages: 3

Imagine waking up at five in the morning to go through a whole school day, having volleyball or track practice, and then going home to take care of chores while finishing homework for the next day. Teenagers across the Unites States are extremely tired after all of this and adults would be too. Early start times threaten student health and affect teen development. Making students wake up early doesn’t give them enough time to obtain sleep. In fact, without a sufficient amount of sleep a teenager’s mood, ability to think, to react, and learn gets negatively affected. Chesterfield County Public Schools should have a later start time for high schools.
Young adults are struggling to keep up academic performance because they hardly get sleep. How can anyone expect a teenager to comprehend four different lessons a day with 4-5 hours of sleep? It’s hard for them to pay attention when their eyes are shutting every 5 minutes. Due to this, teens can get moody and possibly enter a state of depression under the stress of school. When the body gets rest the brain has time to process the information from the previous day. Therefore, with no rest students are going through the week and not understanding what they are taught. Consequences can be that grades drop, extra help outside of school is needed, and parents worry about their child’s future.
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I understand that adults think teenagers will get enough sleep if they go to bed early, but due to the changing of our bodies it’s hard for us to go to sleep at earlier times. If the school board’s main goal is to help pursue the education of students then the right amount of sleep is needed. Researchers at Ghent and KU Leuven universities stated that student’s scores were ten percent higher when they had 7 hours of sleep versus less sleep. After all, “sleep is the golden chain that binds health and our bodies together.” - Thomas