Sleep is for the Weak

Brianna Ossness


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It is 1:53 in the afternoon and you hear a head slam on the table in your math class. One student’s homework proceeds to be ruined by their own drool and the rest of the students are on their phones. These are common occurrences in a high school fourth period. It leads us to question if we made school start later how much more mentally exhausted would our student and staff become?

The Nationwide Children’s hospital page addresses the fact that as we become adults we naturally acquire later sleeping habits. Although it also goes on to state that social, school obligations, and other things also keep students up just as much as their biological functions.

If we just look at the school functions around us, we can see how activities can build up and cause students to have rough sleeping patterns. There are students that participate in sports that have hour-long practices every day after school on top of two hours of homework. If we were to push school back an hour they would have even less time to complete all of their obligations and still unwind as we all need too. Knowing this common knowledge, you can see how a student would feel drastically drowned in their work without those extra afternoon hours.

There are also academic benefits to consider as well. In the Review of Economics and Statistics, author Nolan G. Pope talks about how having Math and English classes in the morning improve student’s GPA by 0.072 and 0.032. Where that doesn’t seem like a lot, students should be aware and helped in obtaining the route of most success.

Teachers are also a major part of the changing of school hours. It affects their direct work hours. There are some teachers who find it hard to finish grading and completing other requirements for their job at home and it would be extremely detrimental to them having a positive work environment. Not to mention a teacher clocking in extra hours doesn’t even add to their pay check. It would be detrimental to our learning if we are setting our teachers up to fail at their jobs, by making them work unreasonable hours.

Ms. Meghan Eames agreed to an interview in regards of this topic. When asked about which class she could pull the most participation and highest working efficiency she responded with her third period. When the question was applied to her honors classes she replied with second period. She proceeded by saying that she does not feel that she is always at her full teaching abilities. Ms. Eames also states though if school was moved back an hour later that students would just adjust their sleeping patterns to stay up later. To use her example, if school started at 8:30am instead of 7:30am, students would go to bed at 1:30am instead of 12:30am.

Finally, let us think of our fellow students. We can all agree that yes, getting up in the morning is garbage and we all wish we could sleep in. Although we would all be just as angry if we were at school later. Think of the time school starts as the balance the school has to ensure us the students free time. It allows us to make the most of our afternoons and do what we want after school. We just need to remember that school is just the extra motivation to get us up in the mornings.

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