Teens need more sleep! (591)

       As a junior in high school, i have a lot going on during my day. I have two jobs, take 3 AP classes, and also am involved in extracurricular activities. I usually get home around 3:00 and usually have to go to work by 4:00 which gives me time at SMART lunch and just around 30 minutes after school to get a good majority of my school work done. But since i am overloaded with work, i end up staying up until 12am or 1am to get all of my school work done. Also, keep in mind that i have a zero hour class at 7:00 am which puts me at about 5 hours of sleep, if i am lucky. In my strong opinion, i believe high schools should be pushed back an hour on start time. Not only because of my situation, but because a lot of students at Kennedy and other high schools have schedules like mine leaving them with sleep deprivation.
       At Kennedy, students are pushed and pushed to stay involved and to take as many AP classes to get them ready for college and beyond. With everything going on in a teenager's life, i feel as though it is only suitable for the start time for school to be pushed back so we can learn. An average teenager should be getting 8 hours of sleep every night and we just don't see the importance in that anymore. All we care about is keeping a perfect 4.0 GPA and staying involved because that is what we see in our minds as ideal. Not once do we stop to think about our mental and physical health if it will but our grades in jeopardy and i think that is ridiculous.
       Although it seems impossible to start the school day earlier other schools have already taken action. Prairie High School starts at 9:00 instead of Kennedy's 7:55 and i think that is a very good idea for many reasons. Students get more sleep so they are ready to learn and their brains actually function. There are less tardies and absences due to sleeping in because of fatigue. Student's have time to do everything they need to do before and after school and they are less tired which makes for way better grades. In my eyes, i think this is a solution for a huge problem that we continuously keep having.
      Scientifically, there are also many reasons for this new start time to take place. When you wake up, your brain is not fully functioning for a whole hour after. That means that when i wake up at 6:15 that i'm not even learning anything in my 0 hour which really scares me. Also, so many teenagers have a huge sleep debt that nobody should have even until they are adults. It takes 2 weeks to make up for 1 night of bad sleep so for me, it would take a life time.
      I strongly believe that we need to put this in action to better the lives of students. Our absences and tardies would look way better and i guarantee our grades would look better as well. I know our district probably will not put this in action, but i think it is very necessary.  Our brains are still developing and need to be taken care of, but it sucks that all we really care about is not letting our grades drop and not getting into the college that we want. Something needs to be done whether small or large.