"SLEEP AFFECTS STUDENT

SUCCESS, CLASS PERFORMANCE"

October 31, 2014 - 11TH GRADE - NEWS STORY

 

This article on the amount of sleep teens get allowed me to use my newsgathering and news literacy skills to write the story. I used these skills to conduct good research, and this was the backbone of my story. While not my strongest work, this article still won an honorable mention at the MIPA Spring Awards Ceremony in 2015.​

 

It seems like just minutes ago you were setting your alarm, and now it’s going off. Where did time go? You could have sworn you set it seven hours ago, yet it feels like you’ve been asleep for seven minutes. Most teenagers aren’t getting enough sleep. It’s not uncommon to hear students complaining about how tired they are or whining about how they wish they were napping.

 

“I always feel tired at school,” said junior Analiese Guettler. “I’ll fall asleep in classes if nothing’s interesting, or just not pay attention.”

 

Guettler gets between five and eight hours of sleep per night. According to www.nbcnews.com, teens should get anywhere from 8½ to 9½ hours of sleep per night. For most, that is rare.

 

Many school districts have proposed changing their starting times to help this problem. Schools across the country have implemented new schedules so the day starts later.

 

According to www.washingtonpost.com, when a high school in Edina, Minnesota changed their starting time from 7:25a.m. to 8:30, they saw verbal SAT scores increase by several hundred points among the top ten percent of students.

 

The issue of start times is controversial. One question is this: will teenagers still be able to fit in all of their schoolwork and activities if school starts later?

 

Not only do students have homework, sports, jobs, and other activities keeping them up late, but their bodies are also contributors to the problem.

 

According to www.nbcnews.com, a teenager’s internal clock shifts during puberty, causing sleep to come naturally around 11p.m. This means in order to get the optimal amount of sleep, teens should wake up around 8 am.

 

A student’s lack of sleep can have a huge effect on performance in school.

 

“Tired students look disheveled,” said English teacher Jeremy Cunningham. “If someone hasn’t gotten a lot of sleep, you can just tell from their face. When you go to independently work, rested students are able to interact with people around them well, and actually move forward on their own, while tired students don’t.”
 

Sleep deprivation among teens can also lead to these “zombie-like” behaviors, such as difficulty focusing on classwork, memory impairment, and shortened attention spans. Fatigued teens can also be moodier, less enthusiastic, and can make poorer decisions. In some cases, the lack of sleep can lead to depression.

 

“Sometimes [students] just say, ‘Yeah, I was up ‘till three doing this last night,’ which is always hilarious to me because I just think, ‘That’s a good six hours after I went to bed and you were up that late.’ That’s crazy,” said Cunningham.

 

For Guettler, schoolwork and extracurricular activities keep her from obtaining the eight to nine hours of sleep she would like to get.

 

Said Guettler, “I usually have a lot of homework, and then I also have 6 am practices for swimming. So we have to get up really early,”

 

Freshman Gigi Padalec has a similar problem. “I get about eight hours of sleep, but I’d like to get more because between homework and tennis, I stay up pretty late,” said Padalec. “You want to pay attention more during school, but when you have so much going on it makes it kind of hard to.”

 

Even though Padalec does, on average, get more sleep than Guettler does, both are losing at least an hour of sleep every night.

 

Aside from sports and homework, there are other factors contributing to a teen’s lack of sleep. Technology and cell phones play a larger role than one might think.

 

Cell phone use stimulates the brain, meaning the longer you scroll through Instagram before falling asleep, the harder it will be to drift off into dreamland.

 

Phones also serve as a huge distraction when trying to fall asleep. By looking at your phone to set your morning alarms, it’s often hard to stay focused on this one task and keep your finger from hitting your Snapchat app.

 

“Technology is always by your side and you’re always tempted to look at things while you’re trying to sleep,” said Padalec.

 

With all of the sports, homework, and distracting technology that affects teens, sleep deprivation seems more common than ever. The continued lack of sleep can lead to chronic sleep deprivation, which leads to bigger health problems down the road.

 

But whether a student is tired or not, expectations in the classroom stay the same.

 

“I do not [adapt my teaching style to help tired students],” said Cunningham. “I feel like that’s a personal choice, you went to bed late or you have stuff going on that made you stay up late because you chose to be doing it. I just approach every student with the expectation that you’re in here and you’re going to be doing the work that we’ve scheduled to do.”