Ussery 1

Rachel Ussery
Mrs. Aston
ENGL 1301.J02
17 October 2015
Sound the Alarms: High School Students Are Not Sleeping Enough
All across America, high school and college students struggle to pry their eyes open in
the mornings and keep them open through the day. The generation that makes up the future of the
country is probably the most sleep-deprived generationaveraging two hours less than their
required sleep quota (Noland). This sleep deprivation affects the attentiveness, learning, and
comprehension of the student. Schools in America need to combat this sleep deprivation
epidemic by pushing their start times back to nine o clock without changing release times and
have breaks throughout the day to let their students recharge temporarily.
There are reasons sleep deprivation becomes more of a problem in high school and
college as opposed to middle school and elementary school. Students are going to bed at later
and later times as they grow older for a variety of reasons. An article by Jenifer K. Covino
discusses the fact that once puberty hits, right about the time high school starts, a teenagers
biological clock sets bedtime at 10:30 to 11:00 PM, and it is very hard for students to go to sleep
much earlier than that. Fischer, Nagai, and Teixeira note in their study that other factors that
decrease the amount of sleep students get during the week include spending larger and larger
amounts of time on schoolwork, homework, and their social life. Because of this deficit, they
often feel the need to rebound their sleep on the weekends, averaging 2-3 hours more on
Saturdays and Sundays than they do on the weekdays. This throws their biological clock off even
more, and it can decrease the amount of sleep they get when the school week starts up again.

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Students missing out on sleep are missing out on more than one would think. When
someone is asleep, their brain does not go dormant. Instead, it becomes active with predictable
brainwaves that can be examined to identify the four stages of one ninety-minute sleep cycle:
NREM 1, NREM 2, NREM 3, and REM sleep. During all of these stages, the brain replays the
events of the day, makes connections between events, and decides what information is useful
enough to keep or arbitrary enough to throw out (Green). Missing out on sleep cycles is what
leads to the different effects of sleep deprivation. Covino notes in her article that when students
do not obtain the recommended amount of sleep cycles they often do not have the heightened
memory skills, problem solving abilities, or attention span that is necessary to get the best grades
in their classes.
There are more effects of sleep deprivation than just performance in school. Students who
do not get enough sleep often continually prove to have higher stress levels and tend to be
overweight. While one is asleep, their production of the hormone leptin, which decreases hunger,
increases, and their production of ghrelin, which increases hunger for salty, starchy, and sweet
snacks, decreases. When one does not get enough sleep, they do not have enough leptin and have
an excess of ghrelin, which causes them to be hungrier throughout the day. Not sleeping enough
also leads to fatigue, lowering calorie expenditures due to unwillingness to exercise. A study
conducted on 11-16 year old adolescents found that for every hour of sleep lost the odds of
developing obesity shot up 80% (Noland, Price, Dake, Telljohann).
Because of the dramatic effects that sleep deprivation has on American students, many
people are discussing the possibility of pushing back the start times of high schools across the
nation. A small school district in Minnesota pushed their school time back to 8:30 AM, an hour
and five minutes later than their original start time. This change has created a more conscientious

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learning environment in their school. A survey conducted by the University of Minnesota the
year after the change has found that teachers have enjoyed the change thanks to an increase in
preparation time in the morning, and teenagers are maintaining their previous bedtimes, which
makes the change effective in its goal of creating more well-rested students. Because of this extra
hour of sleep, students have had the energy to wake up on time for school, and tardy rates have
gone down significantly. Along with tardy rates decreasing, visits to the nurse have become less
and less frequent. Students who had been visiting the nurse due to symptoms of fatigue have
been cured of their ailments and now spend more time in class studying instead of searching for
quick fixes from the nurse (Covino).
In some places, the issue is moving from the school board to the courtroom. A
Connecticut legislator noticed the absurdity of students groggily waiting for the bus as early as
6:15 AM, and he is pushing for high schools in his state to start no later than 8:30. When it
comes to high schools in other states, California Representative Zoe Lofgren pushed for a bill
called the Zzzzs to As Act that argued for schools to start no later than 9:00 AM, and had it
been enacted, schools would have received compensation to help them in their efforts to change
their times (Covino).
However, there are barriers to starting high school times later. When high schools begin
their school day an hour later than usual, parents who drive their students to school and then go
to work or middle school and elementary school students who rely on their high school siblings
for transportation have their schedules disturbed. This has caused some districts to abandon the
idea. Other problems in the logistics of enacting this practice are the start and end times of sports
and other extracurricular activities. Some people argue that if schools start later, teenagers are
simply going to shift their schedule and still stay up excessive amounts of time. Others say that if

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schools move later, game times for things like football and basketball will also have to be moved
around and may harm students schedules (Covino).
One argument presented in an opinion piece by Rachel Feeley states that if we let
students sleep in later, we are taking unnecessary measures and ultimately not preparing them for
the real world. Even though she acknowledges that students typically are not able to fall asleep
until 11:00 PM, and therefore they should not wake up until roughly 8:00 AM, and that later
school times decrease car crashes up to 70%, she still argues that waking up early is a necessary
part of post-grade school life and that not having students build those habits while they are in
secondary school is ill preparing them for an inevitable future of multiple alarms and early
morning wake ups. She says that if we pushed back high school start times, then we would have
to readjust the schedule of those employed and those in college.
If changing the schedule is too extreme, there are a few smaller solutions that can be used
as a daily medicine for the disease of sleep deprivation. An article written by a Dartmouth
student found that sometimes students take the matter of combatting their fatigue into their own
hands. One of the common short term solutions to a sleepy morning is caffeine consumption in
the form of coffee. Molecules of caffeine bond to receptors searching for adenosine (a hormone
created throughout the day that makes someone sleepier). When caffeine takes their place, the
adenosine cannot make someone tired. However, if more than 300 milligrams of caffeine are
consumed daily, then it can make one jittery and anxious. Another temporary solution is a short
nap. When a 20-minute nap is taken, the brain can refresh and go through any recently learned
information, therefore improving memory, concentration, and alertness. However, sleeping for
longer than this takes one out of NREM 1, and waking up past this point leaves the napper
groggy and possibly more tired and less attentive than before the nap. These can work in a

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combination by consuming the caffeine before taking the nap. Caffeine takes about twenty
minutes to activate, so once the napper awakens, they should feel refreshed.
The best way to allow students to get the prescribed amount of sleep hours and still
maintain the balance of sports, work, and school is a combination of the solutions above. High
schools need to push their start times back to nine in the morning. This will allow students
anywhere from an extra thirty minutes to an hour and a half of sleep in their mornings, where the
most important stages of sleep take place and best prepare them for their day of memorizing,
problem solving, and paying attention, similar to the results of the plans enacted in Minnesota.
These extra few hours will also allow their brains to produce more leptin and less ghrelin,
decreasing their appetites and therefore decreasing their likelihood of becoming overweight. The
times that schools let out should not be changed to later than four o clock, so students can still
participate in extracurricular activities like sports and clubs without taking away too much of the
time they already spend at home working on homework and without affecting any part-time jobs
that they currently hold.
In combination with this, schools should also offer at least one break during the day
specifically dedicated to a short nap. This will allow students to perform consistently throughout
the day and increase their attentiveness and retention for the time of the school day. Students
who strongly feel that they should not participate in this nap time can use these twenty to thirty
minute periods of their day to study or work on homework, so regardless as to how this period is
used, it will still be beneficial to the school and the students.
To some, the shifting of the schedules may cause other areas of their life to move, and
that is bad enough that the pros of adjusting to the needs of students are outweighed by the cons.
However, there are ways to give students extra sleep without shaking up other plans, like

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maintaining the time of the end of the school day. To others, these steps may seem unnecessary
and not worth the trouble because of how they were not needed before. However, in an everchanging society that has ever-changing needs, the way the school system adapts is important.
Science has revealed that sleep and problem solving are directly correlated, and in a time where
problem solving is becoming an important skill, having students who are well rested enough to
stretch this ability is absolutely necessary.
If this generation of students continues to sleepwalk, then the country will groggily
follow them as time goes on. The change has to start in secondary schools across America. High
schools need to adjust their start times to no earlier than 9:00 AM to allow their students crucial
hours of sleep and allow breaks throughout the day to recharge their brains. Parents and students
need to speak out and convince their local high schools to do this for the benefit of their students.
It is time for the education system to wake up to the needs of their students.

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Works Cited
Caffeine and Naps: The Fight Against Sleep Deprivation. DUJS Online. Dartmouth
Undergraduate Journal of Science, 3 Feb. 2011. Web. 19 Sept. 2015.
Covino, Jennifer K. Eliminating the Snooze Button. Curriculum Administrator 37.6 (2001) 44.
Academic Search Complete. Web. 19 Sept. 2015.
Feeley, Rachel. "Opinion: Delaying School Start times Won't Prepare Students for College, Real
World." The Lantern. The Lantern, 12 Sept. 2014. Web. 2 Oct. 2015.
Fischer, Frida Marina, Nagai, Roberta, and Teixeira, Liliane Reis. Explaining Sleep Duration In
Adolescents: The Impact Of Socio-Demographic And Lifestyle Factors And Working
Status. Chronobiology International: The Journal Of Biological & Medical Rhythm
Research 25.2/3 (2008): 359-372. Academic Search Complete. Web. 19 Sept. 2015.
Noland, Heather, et al. "Adolescents Sleep Behaviors And Perceptions Of Sleep." Journal Of
School Health 79.5 (2009): 224-230. Academic Search Complete. Web. 19 Sept. 2015.
The Science of Dreaming. Dir. Hank Green. Perf. Hank Green. SciShow, 2012. Film.