Mammoser, Gigen. (June 13, 2019). Starting School Later in the Morning Helps Teens Get Their Homework Done. Heathline. Available at https://www.healthline.com/health-news/pushing-back-school-help-teens-get-homework-done (Acessed June 17, 2019).
A.) Because kids’ and teens’ sleep cycles change over the course of puberty, they tend to wake up later at around eight or nine in the morning. But unfortunately, school usually starts way before then, distrubing their sleep cycles and making them more tired and unfocused during school hours and thereafter. To find a way to make teens more energized and focused throughout the school day, a study was done where a school district volunteered to start the school day about an hour later at or after 8:30 am.
B.) Over the course of the school year starting from the fall of 2017 until the spring of 2018, the study took place at Cherry Creek School District, where more than 15,000 students in the grades 6-11 participated in the study by taking surveys on their condition in response to the new time change. The intervenion was incredibly effective as students had more sufficient sleep and on the weekends lessened oversleeping by 38 minutes. Fewer students reported being too sleepy to do homework and there was a signifigant increase of academic engament during school hours.
C.) While I can’t think of anything to be seen as confounding, as sleeping-in leading to more energization throughout the day seems to be pretty striaght-forward. Speakig from personal experience, I definately felt more energized throughout the school day when I woke up at around eight am instead of the usual five am. However, the study design could be improved upon. For example, whose to say that the students who reported their conditions didn’t just lie so that they could sleep in more instead; having to go to school later doesn’t necessarily mean that they will go to bed around an apporpriate time. I think that the teachers and parents should have also had a survey distributed to see if the students claims really are true, and thus have more consistent findings.
D.) I think it’s very possible for this to catch on again, as this has happened before in the past. I myself used to go to school that started at around 9:00 am when I was in elementary, however, for some reason my school district set the start time earlier and earlier from middle school to high school to the point where I would wake up at around 5:00 am. In theory, I think if this study was proposed to my school district for instance, as being more healthy for the students, they would be willing to consider changing it back to 9:00 am. Though I think the reason it was set earlier is because of the fact that parents need to get to work on time and can’t do that if their kids need a ride to school. Though a way to solve that would be to reinstate school buses again, and maybe possibly change the starting time of workplaces themselves. It could possibly be marketed as “new” and “innovative” since now there are studies that prove what is the most effective for sleep cycles and class focus. This study could also be interpreted to the sleep cycles of employees and wanting to monopolize their time and energy to their work. Essentially, this will only be changed if it benefits adults as well, as adults are the ones who would make a decision on this implementation.
This was really interesting. My school always started at 8:15, and in high school if you took the early period 7:20. most days when I had gym first we would all go into the locker room so we could sleep a little extra.
Just this past year my school district changed the time elementary, middle, and high schools begin and end the school day. I remember waking up at 5:30 in the morning at school and not being able to focus until hours later. I would have given anything to start school at 8:30.