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Lucas Siegel Connie Douglas English 1102 April 1, 2014 Round Table Essay The question at hand is should high schools start later in order to improve sleeping habits of students. This is a very interesting topic and there are many viewpoints that hold different opinions. Off the bat most people think that sleep is the most essential part of a person's everyday life and they soon realize that more sleep can produce astounding improvements on a student. This is to give you full insight of the opinions from parents, teachers, and psychologists on how they view the sleeping habits of teenagers. This discussion will provide you with many different opinions and hopefully help you in shaping your belief on the subject. My name is Ryan and parents are a big part in a child's everyday life whether it is waking them up for school, taking them to practice, or just being there for when they are needed. I would know because I do it on a regular basis. I have come here to share with you my belief on the subject of whether my children's school should start later. It is important to parents that their children do well in school and succeed in whatever the wish to do. I wanted to get some more insight and non biased information from one of my other friends so I asked my friend, Cristina. Cristina Sevin, who is a good friend of mine and a parent of two high school students, told me that she does not believe her children should have to wake up at 6:00 a.m. in order to go to school. She feels as though it is not fair to them to wake up

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before the sun even rises (Aubrey). A group called "Start School Later" has created a petition to send around the country for parents to sign off on letting the school system know that they should start school at a later time. Parents are the primary factor when it comes to how well a student does in school and their opinion should be valued when it comes to the best interest of their child (Aubrey). My opinion on the issue is similar in some ways to Christina's. It really isn't fair to make someone wake up when their bodies still need to sleep. The average teenager needs at least eight hours of sleep every night and many students are not getting that amount. My son comes home from high school everyday complaining about how tired he is and all he wants to do is take a nap. On the other hand for me, I have work in the morning and I drop my children off at school and go straight there. Students would now have to be dropped off later by me which probably isn't an option or have to take the bus which they hate doing. These are just some of the things I think about when talking about this topic. Teachers are a very interesting group when I was researching this topic. My name is Barbara and I believe that there are pros and cons to this debate. I have many viewpoints that can be looked at in many different ways. My friend Mary actually did a study on this topic and she goes on to explain her viewpoint. Mary Carskadon, a professor at Brown University goes to explain her view of students sleeping habits (Orenstein). She says that the reason for a drop off of good sleeping habits from middle school to high school is mainly because of workload, less strict bed time, and access to technology has been greatly affected many other teachers would be iffy about the later start times because this made it so they would get home

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later and this would mean less time spent with their families. Some teachers also would like their students to do well for their sake whether it is for morality reasons or just to make them look good. It is interesting how some teachers have very different viewpoints from the others(Orenstein). High school teacher of course would love for their students to do well because obviously that is the ultimate goal of the education system. Whether more sleep or less homework will do it nobody knows. The only problem with this is that teachers might not get off of work in time to see their children as they get out of school as Mary went to explain up there. Obviously we would love for all students to succeed but you also have to look out for the teacher's best interest. My name is Tom and I am a psychologist doing research on sleep for teenagers. The information that has been found is very interesting. Over the past several years many studies have come out from many famous and well known psychologists to show that sleep does in fact help students in achieving higher grades. One study was done where they pushed back the start times for school by twenty five minutes and the results they got were astounding. There was an increase in students who got eight hours of sleep by 26% which is astounding data (Boergers). Psychologists believe that it would be a good thing for schools to push back their start times because sleep is a very big impact on how well a student performs in school. They say that sleep deprivation causes the change in your circadian rhythm which is not a good thing and it is even worse for younger students. In the end you can see that through the parents, teachers, and psychologists all three have very different view points on the subject of sleep for high schoolers. They all

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have their own opinions and some of theirs are supported more on fact and some of them are focused more on opinion. Both are good in some since but obviously the facts can be argued over opinion in most cases. These three groups were able to go in depth in helping us understand how this topic has many different facts and arguments about it. Hopefully this has made you think more about this topic and how you believe it should be argued.

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Works Cited

Aubrey, Allison. "Parents Of Sleep-Deprived Teens Push For Later School Start Times."Health News Florida. N.p., 03 Dec. 2013. Web. 01 Apr. 2014. <http://health.wusf.usf.edu/post/parents-sleep-deprived-teens-push-later-schoolstart-times>.

Boergers, Julie, Christfopher J. Gable, and Judith A. Owens. "Later School Start Time Is Associated With Improved Sleep And Daytime Functioning In Adolescents." Journal Of Developmental And Behavioral Pediatrics 35.1 (2014): 11-17. PsycINFO. Web. 31 Mar. 2014.

Orenstein, David. "Brown University." School Districts Can Help Combat an Epidemic of Sleepiness. Brown University, 05 Sept. 2012. Web. 01 Apr. 2014. <https://news.brown.edu/pressreleases/2012/09/hssleep>.