Falling asleep in class isn’t a one-time thing for many of us, but it has turned into an everyday occurrence. We all know the feeling. Head heavy, eyelids inching to close; so tired you can’t understand what your teacher is saying. Don’t get me wrong, becoming a pro of sleeping on a desk is something to be proud of, but, what if there was a way you no longer had to?
Originally being part of the Seattle School district, I have always been used to having later mornings, with school starting at 9 am. When I transferred districts before my freshman year of high school, I was stunned when finding that I would be trading in my later mornings, for a school start time of 7:50 am. Now having gone to Shorewood for four years, as a Senior, I have grown used to the earlier start times, but am still plagued with the ever-increasing want for more sleep.
But what if there was a way we could fix it? Having a later start time for school is the most obvious solution. Although this would get rid of the early mornings and drowsy afternoons, if school start times are later, we get out of school later. Most schools in the Seattle School district have a start time at around 8:30 am and don’t get out of school until 3:45 pm. While this trade-off for later mornings might not seem so bad, getting out of school later would affect all after-school activities. If you participate in a sport after school, you won’t get home until 5:30 at the earliest, and on the other hand, there is also school work and social life to worry about. So is starting school later really worth it?
According to the National Library of Medicine, early start times aren’t the most effective for students. Waking up early can produce dissociation, causing a lowered sense of judgment, car accidents, sleep deprivation, and depression. Add that to the homework, after-school sports, and extracurricular activities, and it’s clear to see the amount of stress that students face on a daily basis. Although school starting later would give students a longer morning, the percentage of students using that time to complete school work would be small. Having a later start time for school just pushes the time you go to bed backward, keeping you on the continuous cycle of still needing more sleep.
Instead of having a later start time, what if students could choose when they wanted to come to school? Now, I’m not saying students could choose to not come to school every day, but instead, could decide when in the day, either early morning or afternoon, they do come to school. This would fix the debate over early and later start times and would allow the very few ‘morning people’ to still get to school early in the morning, while the rest of the school is still blissfully reenacting Sleeping Beauty until later in the afternoon.
