Throughout the ongoing years, there has been a heart-breaking increase in adolescents reporting mental health issues. 42% of school students reported depression, 22% thought about suicide, and 10% actually took their own life. Sadly, depression isn’t the only mental health issue that children run into; another major one is anxiety. What do these effects come as a result of? Long school weeks. School places a large amount of pressure on these students, and eliminating at the very least 1 day from the school week might help the students cope with their problems. If we look at colleges all throughout our nation, there are no school days on Fridays. If students need extra help after school hours, there are always office hours and additional …show more content…
Sufficient amounts of sleep will benefit kids by, “help[ing] [them] think more clearly, have quicker reflexes and focus better,” which is a key factor when it comes to school. (The Benefits of Slumber) Kids will be able to perform better when it comes to school, and the teachers' morales will be boosted when they see their children being full of motivation. Restless children will sleep deprivation will not only underperform in school, but will also face numerous, “chronic health problems, including heart disease, kidney disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, stroke, obesity, and depression.” (What are Sleep Deprivation and Deficiency?) Having less sleep will make the students have terrible physical and mental health, while also making their grades drop. Students in regular 5 day school weeks aren’t able to get the necessary rest they need, and multiple studies have shown that it may lead to drops in grades. It was found that, “every lost hour of average nightly sleep at the start of an academic term was associated with a 0.07-point drop in a student’s end-of-term GPA. When a student slept less than six hours a night, the effect of lost sleep on a student’s grades was even more pronounced,” showing that sleep is an absolute necessity for children to do better in school. (The less college students sleep, the worse their grades, study finds) Having …show more content…
Some parents do work longer hours than others, and their schedules do not line up with those of their children. Picking them up and finding them a ride would be difficult. However, there are actually an adequate amount of solutions to this problem. One of them would be teaching the kids how to take public transportation. It will teach them how to be more responsible and take care of themselves. As high school students, this is an important skill because they will eventually be moving on to college and become full grown adults with responsibilities. Not only is this a great solution, but it teaches the kids important life lessons and habits that they will need throughout their lives. Another solution would be to sign the children up for extracurricular activities in the schools. They could learn instruments, play sports, or even work on their homework at school. Picking up an instrument or getting active in sports will not only get rid of the time problem, but it will also help the students mental and physical health. Doing homework at school or going tutoring will help the kids when it comes to their home life because they then have more time to release their stress and rest. Finally, another solution to this problem would be to carpool with friends. It will not only solve the problem, but it will help the kids develop important and
Lack of sleep can cause short term effects like headaches or mood changes, but it can also contribute to more major issues like heart disease or high blood pressure. It can also impact memory and attention span, which causes problems with attending school. These effects can be extremely harmful and can put many students at risk of health problems. Semuels interviewed a student who has a particularly busy schedule. Her say starts off at 3pm with class, and she continued to work through the night and into the next day, “That afternoon she attended a parent-teacher conference, capping off more than 24 hours straight of work and school with no sleep.”
Later School Start Times “About 90% of the teens, problem is insufficient sleep” (Dr. Chen), most of the adolescents are suffering of sleep deprived which is unabling them to be healthy and pay attention in class. Many of the schedules that are given in schools are the worst for teens because one one the things they require them to do is to wake up early to attend to the classes. Middle and High School start times should start later because it will benefit students academic growth, and improve health . Starting school times later will make teen have an academic growth. Starting school later could help teens academically because, they would be more attentive to any work or test that comes their way.
Lawrence Epstein, a medical director of Sleep Health Centers in Brighton, Massachusetts and an instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, believes that “adequate sleep is essential to feeling awake and alert, maintaining good health, and working at peak performance.” (ww2.kqed.org). Some kids get about 7 hours of sleep and feel tired throughout the day, (sleepfoundation.org). When school is over sometimes the student does not remember what they were told because they were tired in the morning. Kids should be getting about 9 ¼ hours of sleep in order to be productive and successful in
With times being pushed later students can get the recommended amount of sleep for their age(8-10 hours each night). Clearly, when school starts later into the day, it has a very positive effect on the students attending the
If they had fridays off they wouldn't lose interest in the rest of the week. They could say focused. When kids are focused they pay more attention and learn more. This is probably the reason for the increased test scores. If it is then if we implement this into other school it will also improve their test scores.
Teachers and students could use that day for options that have to do for school, teachers could use that day to grade papers, and students could use that day for their extracurricular activities. This evidence proves “During a four-day school week, teachers use the fifth day for professional development and in service. Athletics tend to take up a lot of school time” (“The Pros and Cons of a Four-Day School Week”, par. 4-5). This shows the helpfulness of a four-day school week, and what teachers and students could do.
Waikato Times says, “If students were to be pampered by a late school start, we would get a rather big shock when, further down the track, our employers would expect us to begin work at 8am.” There are also a large quantity of students who have after school jobs and due to late start late release school days they will not be able to put in as many hours as they would if the school hours were left alone. Students are also involved in sports that require after school practices. School getting out later means that practices will run later too. This would leave students less time to complete homework, not to mention the students who live out of town and have a long drive to get
I think there should be four day school weeks because students most likely want more free time out of school. The school days will end at 4:00 or maybe 4:30 pm because regular school days wouldn’t be enough learning time. This way we could have longer class periods and it’ll help because you’ll get the help you need and work will be handed in on time. Every student has missing work, longer school days help you get some of it all in and grades will be up. Plus, maybe students could do a little work on the day that they won’t have school.
Four-day school weeks lead to a detrimental drop in student achievement, and a possible loss in school funding and can affect underprivileged students into performing less than their classmates. For these reasons, the four-day school week should not be implemented. One of the many important reasons why the four-day school week should not be implemented is education. Education is being negatively impacted by four-day school weeks due to the lack of time to learn and the amount crammed into a school day.
These things will improve one’s health. In addition to improving one’s health, it is also better for one’s concentration. The average student needs about ten hours of sleep; however, most students, especially teens, only get around seven hours of sleep. If school started later students would be able to sleep in and therefore get more sleep which would increase their concentration in class.
There are 24 hours in a day, 8 of those hours belong to school. From the moment when a student wakes up, they begin to prepare for school then go to school, most schools start around 8:00-9:00 am, so most students get up 1-2 hours earlier to get ready. Students need at least 8-9 hours of sleep to be able to function. With students having after school activities that take up around 2 hours, students are exhausted and when they get home all the want to do is relax, but some of them have responsibilities that they have to do, which gives them less time to relax from a long day of school. On top of having homework students end up staying up late getting all their work done, which cause them to be less focus the next day not allowing the
Compared to the normal five day school week, students want to be at school more than normal. (S3) Students and teachers are able to limit absences with the four day school week. With the four day school week, studies have shown Academic improvement with students. Schools have noticed increased scores on grades.
The five days at school help teachers and students learn the material, yet most are not recalled from the day before due to exhaustion. Some people may say that four-day school weeks would put kids behind in school and prepare them for their future, but in reality they improve the learning
Students will have more time for doctor appointments and other appointments that they have, and teachers will have time for appointments also. Teachers and students all have more time to do things outside of school on the weekends. Although a four-day week is good there are some good things about a five-day school week
8.9% of students have attempted suicide in the past year due to lack of mental health in school. So giving this extra day for students to refresh their minds and spend time on things that are important to them. Proponents contend that the shorter school week can save money and improve student attendance. It can also help with recruitment and retention of teachers by offering them an extra day off