starting school at an earlier time
starting school at an earlier time
One of the issues that the community faces is the problem of high schools starting school at an earlier time. For students’ performance to be enhanced, they should start school at a later time of the day. Most high schools students are starting school early and this has various effects on the students. Most of the schools within the community start before eight in the morning. These effects on the students translate to the level of performance of the schools and consequently impact on the community. High school students are at the adolescent stage of their life. Starting school early is one of the things that greatly affect the alertness of adolescents throughout the day.
Starting school early means that these teenagers have to wake up very early in the morning probably at 5.30 a.m. so that they can get enough time for preparations which will include taking a shower and taking breakfast. They also need enough time to travel to their schools. Having to wake up that early is depriving the teenagers of their sleep. Sleep is very important in human growth and lack of enough slip makes these teenagers loose concentration throughout the day. This is because they will be sleepy in class and since it is not easy to ignore sleep, the students in their struggle to keep awake will only find themselves not concentrating. They may keep their eyes open but their thoughts closed because of being extremely worked up in the morning.
Failure to concentrate in class because of sleep definitely leads to their poor performance. School is very important since it is here where people are taught the necessary skills that they need in life and also nurtured to become productive people in the society. When the students lack concentration in class therefore, they will not get these skills and what the society will be bringing up are people who might become dependants in life. Failure to have sufficient sleep has its health implications as well. Insufficient sleep is associated with nutritional as well as metabolic problems for example obesity. Starting school early therefore may lead to the students developing health problems. Because of this, they may have to miss school for several days making them lose out on gaining of knowledge.
Moods are very important in learning. There are stereotypes that adolescents are lazy people. However, at their stages of development, it is biological that they will have mood changes and this is a group of people that is known to be very moody at times especially when they do not get what they want or even expect. Depriving an adolescent of their sweet sleep may result to them having depressed moods (Carskadon, 2002). With such moods, it is not possible for one to have full concentration in class. With such, their grades will go down.Students drive to school. Driving while sleepy is a great risk to the student and also to other road users. Lack of enough sleep may lead to the person dozing off as they drive. This increases the risk of having car crashes. Some people may wonder why these high school students cannot go to sleep early so that they would wake up early as well. Furthermore, doing that would enable them to have enough sleep. However, biologically, the patterns of sleep among the teenagers differ from those of adults and children who are younger.
The high school students are at the puberty stage. In this stage, the patterns of sleep are bound to change. Adolescents will most probably go late to bed and consequently rise at later times of the day. Physiologically, most adolescents will not get to sleep until it is 11 p.m. This is the time when the bodies of most teenagers start the production of melatonin which is the hormone responsible for inducing sleep (Sahelian, 1996). Their bodies will stop producing this hormone at about 8 a.m. Therefore, this should be the average time for waking up and having to wake up early for school not only deprives the teenagers of their sleep, it is also at this time when they are at the lowest levels of alertness.When teenagers wake up early so as to go to school, they lose sleep that is very valuable. At the teenage age, people need about eight and half sleep hours each day. Normally students lose around two sleep hors during school nights since they are required to wake up early so as to be early for school. In the morning, students are wearier than in the afternoon. The students’ attentiveness in class is greatly affected by lack of enough sleep.
In such cases where schools start early, the first morning classes often go to waste. Students will be falling asleep in class. There are cases where the students do not even attend these first morning classes. Since school has to go on, the teacher will teach regardless of the absence of a certain student or even students. This means that the class will not be repeated and thereby the student will have missed out on important knowledge. Missing class on a single day can be seen as a minor thing. However, combining the hours that a student who misses even a single morning class in a week will have missed by the end of the academic term, then one would realize that the student will have missed a lot. This then translates to their poor performance.
Today, the world of technology is fasting advancing and there are various social networks. Other than the biological tendencies of teenagers to stay awake up to late hours of the night, there are the pressures of staying awake and visiting these social networks. Teenagers will stay late as they chat with their friends on these networks. Today, computers and mobile phones have become a daily part of people’s lives. It is something that the society has to live with and as technology advances, these teenagers will continue to be engraved in social networks. The best the community can do is to make changes so as to accommodate the social and technological changes that the world is experiencing. Having stayed awake chatting, teenagers will be tired if they have to wake up early and thereby will struggle throughout the day at school.
Further, students also have to stay awake late so as to complete their class assignments. In school, assignments are a way of testing the levels to which the students have understood the content and they are therefore very important. Teachers will give students various take away assignments during school days. The only times that the students have to complete these assignments are during the night after school. Therefore, their hours at night are taken up by class work forcing them to stay up late. This means that they will not have enough hours of sleep if they have to wake up to start school early.
Early high school start times are also associated with increased rates of having school drop outs. School is supposed to be a place where students get a learning experience. The learning experienced should be interesting and students are supposed to take school positively. With the bad moods that students have when forced to wake up early and start school early, with having to spend a very tiring day at school because of being sleepy, and not being able to understand what they are being taught, students will see no importance of going to school. Contrary to being an environment where they gain knowledge, students will see their going to school as a form of punishment. This might result to high cases of students dropping out of school. The impacts of school drop outs are enormous in the society. They may involve themselves in unlawful activities and also become dependants.
Teachers may be worried that by starting school late, a lot of instructional time will be lost. However, starting school later in the day will increase students’ concentration and alertness and this will thereby make up for the time that they consider would otherwise have been lost. The teachers will also be able to cover wide areas of school curricula in shorter times because alertness of students also implies that understanding will be enhanced. The teachers will thus not have to keep on revisiting and at times teaching a whole lesson class again since the students do not show any understanding. This will save the school time, and also improve on its performance.
Other communities have been able to achieve success following their shift of school start times to later times of the day. A report by Kalish (2008) revealed this. For instance, according to thereport, in 2002, high schools within Kentucky and specifically in the county of Jessamine changed start time from 7.30 a.m. to 8.40 a.m. This resulted to increased attendance, and increase in the scoring among the students whenever they took standardized tests. This also led to a decrease in the number of car accidents involving teenagers. In Edina and Minneapolis, when the start times were changed to 8.30 a.m. and 8.40 a.m. respectively, the rates of student drop outs were minimized, and also problems related to behavior in school decreased.
It is therefore important for the start times in high schools to be changed to a later time of the day. However, implementing this in the schools within the community is not without any challenges. Various obstacles will be met if the proposal was to be implemented. For instance, younger siblings need to be taken care of and there are those high school students who are relied on by their parents for taking care of their younger siblings and this happens after school. Extending school hours will then imply that these students will not have such times. Other arguments may be that change of school start times would eat into the time for extra curricula activities which are very important for growth.
Students need to be prepared to be responsible persons in the future. Arguments may also be made that waking up early is one way of preparing students for future responsibilities. This is because in future, they may be required to wake up early for work and thus need to start practicing from their teenage. However, sleeping late is also a biological factor which is eminent in adolescents. Therefore, as they advance in age, this will change and they will adapt to the changes in adulthood.However, the benefits that come with changing high school start times to later times of the day outweigh the challenges. These changes also come with the management of time in the school. There is no pint of starting school early and spending a lot of time repeating the same information since students cannot concentrate. If the levels of concentration are enhanced, then less time will also be spent. Having students being absent minded and dozing off in class demoralizes the teacher. Teachers also need to have the concentration of their students so as to be motivated in their teaching.
References
Carskadon, M.A. (2002). Adolescent sleep patterns: biological, social, and psychological influences. Cambridge University Press.
Kalish, N. (2008). The early bird gets the bad grade. Retrieved on June 17, 2011 from: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/14/opinion/14kalish.html?pagewanted=print.
Sahelian, R. (1996). Melatonin: Nature’s Sleeping Pill. 2nd Ed. Be Happier Press.
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