Why School Should Start Later

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Do you feel tired when you arrive at school early in the morning? Well, this is quite common among younger teens. School start times are far too early for middle schoolers and high schoolers because puberty causes “phase delay," along with the natural wake up time pre-teens and teens experience. A reason why school start times shouldn’t be before 8 a.m. is because kids who are going through puberty have a shift in their sleeping patterns they may not be able to control. Dr. Nilong Vyas states, “Around the beginning of puberty, most adolescents experience later sleep onset and wake times, also called “phase delay”. This phase delay can shift the body’s internal clock back by up to two hours. As a result, the average teenager cannot fall asleep …show more content…
This is trustworthy information because an actual pediatrician researched this delay and has proven that it is a real thing. PMC says, “Pubertal changes in sleep behavior coincide with a steep decline in deep sleep and its EEG correlate, delta spectral power, that begins at age 11–12 years and continues until 16.5 years.” This is saying that starting at a young age, kids hit puberty, and because of the changes they are going through, including the shifting of their internal clock, which is causing a large change in the amount of sleep. In this quote, it also talks about how this change in sleep patterns can last for about 5–6 years; this is approximately the time kids start 7th grade to the middle of high …show more content…
Another reason why a delayed school start time will impact 6th–10th grades is that it will accommodate and fit better with the natural wake up time of an 11–16 year-old's body. UW professor Iglesia states “This study shows a significant improvement in the sleep duration of students—all by delaying school start times so that they’re more in line with the natural wake-up times of adolescents.” This quote states that the study that was done by the UW professor Iglesia has shown a big increase in middle schoolers and high schoolers sleep intake and focus in school, all because of the delayed school start times, which went from 7:50 a.m. to 8:45 a.m. Just an hour's difference in start times Studies have shown and proven that these growing kids experience things everyone has once gone through, and these newly developing issues can and have caused struggles in the academic part of life. All it takes is a delayed school start time to help children achieve