6:00am. The alarm clock is ringing. Stinging your ears. You rub your eyes, trying to open them. You can barely get out of bed from the 5 hours of sleep you got last night. The night before you got back home at 9. Starting your homework immediately while you try and quickly have something to eat. After hours of homework you finally finish. Looking at your phone, the screen reads 12:30am. You still have to shower and get ready for bed. By the time things are done the clock reads 1am. Fast-forwarding to the morning after. You try to get ready to do the same thing over and over again. School for 7 hours, sports, hours of homework. Just to return and rarely get any sleep. 

According to The American Academy of Sleep Medicine , doctors recommend teenagers to get 8-10 hours of sleep every night. However, due to school starting at 8am students are becoming sleep deprived and aren’t able to do everything they can. They have to pay attention and do well in school. Students have to do sports or some form of physical activity after school. On top of school starting early, schools give high schoolers hours of homework, which adds on to the sleep deprivation. 

According to Stamford Medicine sleep deprivation makes it likely that teens form “an inability to concentrate, poor grades, drowsy-driving incidents, anxiety, depression, thoughts of suicide and even suicide attempts”

How should we solve this issue? Classes should start at 9 and end at 3. While this does shorten the day by an hour, it gives students the ability to get the right amount of sleep. This gives everyone the same amount of time to play sports and do their hobbies. While also getting the correct amount of sleep. 

Something that can also help is that teachers shouldn’t assign as much homework as they are. If there was absolutely no homework students would be able to go to bed much earlier which would cut out the need for schools to start later.

TTP conducted a survey of the average amount of homework for a high schooler. The results of the survey showed that high school students average 4 hours of homework every night. This forces students to sit and do homework for that amount of time. This doesn’t allow them to get the correct amount of sleep that they need.