"BLARG", the argumentative blog
This is one of my favorite works from the class. Its intention is to be a pre-professional blog post regarding an educational topic. I chose to focus on how school starting times can have a harmful impact on students. My later revisions added a graphic, used hyperlinks to add information, and added the word "right?" at the end of the third paragraph to convey a sense of doubt and clarify my meaning.
wake up! Sound Sleep and School Starting Times
it is widely understood that adolescents require upwards of 8.5 hours of sleep per night due to biological requirements of their development. It is also widely understood that many adolescents don’t get to bed early enough to get their required hours of sleep while getting to school on time. Some people believe this is the fault of teens, and that teens need to grow up and start acting like adults—after all, adults are able to get enough sleep.
Never was I the type of student to sleep in class. Always taking notes. Always engaged. That is, until tenth grade when something funny began to happen. I had always been in the accelerated math courses, but for some reason, I was no longer able to make sense of what was happening with those numbers on that whiteboard. Being my first course of the day, I found myself losing focus; my head would inevitably nod—not in assent, but in sleep. By the end of class I would be wide-awake for a whole class period till I found myself in Accelerated Chemistry where, despite my struggles to resist, I would find myself in a pool of drool, being gently shook awake at the end of class by my understanding and wizened teacher.
This went on for some time, perplexing me, until one day on my way to school, tired and running late, I fishtailed, slid across the road, and rolled my car three times into the ditch. Crawling out of the broken window of my upside-down car, I knew that something had to change. Despite my struggles to correct things already, I didn’t know that I wasn’t the problem—I thought I just wasn’t trying hard enough to meet the demands of society. After all, generations of students had succeeded before me, right?
Years later, working at a youth home, I’ve come to find that, despite what society would have me believe, I wasn’t the problem. Day after day I watch kids struggle to get to bed early, not able to fall asleep just yet; then struggle to wake up in time for classes in the morning, struggle to stop their eyes from shutting in those classes, not able to stay awake. This pattern was cyclical and it wasn’t limited to me.
Never was I the type of student to sleep in class. Always taking notes. Always engaged. That is, until tenth grade when something funny began to happen. I had always been in the accelerated math courses, but for some reason, I was no longer able to make sense of what was happening with those numbers on that whiteboard. Being my first course of the day, I found myself losing focus; my head would inevitably nod—not in assent, but in sleep. By the end of class I would be wide-awake for a whole class period till I found myself in Accelerated Chemistry where, despite my struggles to resist, I would find myself in a pool of drool, being gently shook awake at the end of class by my understanding and wizened teacher.
This went on for some time, perplexing me, until one day on my way to school, tired and running late, I fishtailed, slid across the road, and rolled my car three times into the ditch. Crawling out of the broken window of my upside-down car, I knew that something had to change. Despite my struggles to correct things already, I didn’t know that I wasn’t the problem—I thought I just wasn’t trying hard enough to meet the demands of society. After all, generations of students had succeeded before me, right?
Years later, working at a youth home, I’ve come to find that, despite what society would have me believe, I wasn’t the problem. Day after day I watch kids struggle to get to bed early, not able to fall asleep just yet; then struggle to wake up in time for classes in the morning, struggle to stop their eyes from shutting in those classes, not able to stay awake. This pattern was cyclical and it wasn’t limited to me.
Research has shown that as children become adolescents, their circadian rhythm pushes back their sleep patterns further into the night, around 11PM or even later. When they are required to be at class at 8AM, or even earlier, it is clear that they aren’t able to get those minimum 8.5 hours of sleep—and what of the students who need even more than 8.5 hours, say 9 hours, 9.5 hours. The sleep deprivation quickly adds up, not of their own fault, but because of unfair and ignorant policies that they are subject to and have little to no control over—school starting time.
|
Deprivation adds up
In a school setting, there are two fundamental things affected by not getting enough sleep: cognition and memory recall. The consequences of these two factors on school performance are glaringly obvious, but the harmful impacts for teens do not stop there. Physical health, weight gain or obesity, and depression are all linked with not getting enough sleep. Risk-reward related brain functions can become severely hampered and behavioral issues arise, including physical violence, emotional outbursts or acting out, substance use, and suicidal ideation.
While not every school district that has adopted a later starting time has seen staggering results, many have. Wake County found that students’ math and reading scores increased, particularly and significantly for students from disadvantaged backgrounds or socioeconomic status. The University of Minnesota published a multi-state study linking later high school start times to significant decreases in substance abuse, depression, and caffeine use. In an issue near and dear to me, Jackson Hole High School in Wyoming found a 70% decrease in teenage car crashes.
As caretakers of children, working at a youth home, we all value the success of the kids who come through our program. We want nothing more than for them to be happy and safely and successfully integrate with their families and society. But getting them involved in the community does not mean they have to be subject to the rules of sleep that adults play by.
Not only are they not adults, but also, these expectations are unfair and detrimental to their happiness, their health, and their chances of successfully moving through our program at the youth home; building healthy relationships with their family members, getting involved in the community, and working on any other issues that brought them to us.
I don’t mean to propose that getting more sleep is a panacea and that, somehow, underlying issues will disappear over night; I simply assert that there is no reason for us to be exacerbating such underlying issues by topping them off with sleep deprivation.
We are the solution
There are many common misconceptions about starting school later on a large scale, such as it will adversely impact extracurriculars or it is too expensive, but these are largely overblown and have little to do with our own school.
Being proprietors of the school, the policies regarding start time of the school are entirely within our control. All that we need to do, is do it. Sure, we may find we need to make adjustments to the daily schedule or even slightly alter the hours of the shifts that we work, but these are relatively minor sacrifices for the prosperity of the kids we are charged with caring for. Beyond this, we owe it to our kids to ensure that when they leave the program, they are not subject to unfair starting times. This can be done as simple as signing this petition, writing their school boards or superintendents, or sharing this post.
In a school setting, there are two fundamental things affected by not getting enough sleep: cognition and memory recall. The consequences of these two factors on school performance are glaringly obvious, but the harmful impacts for teens do not stop there. Physical health, weight gain or obesity, and depression are all linked with not getting enough sleep. Risk-reward related brain functions can become severely hampered and behavioral issues arise, including physical violence, emotional outbursts or acting out, substance use, and suicidal ideation.
While not every school district that has adopted a later starting time has seen staggering results, many have. Wake County found that students’ math and reading scores increased, particularly and significantly for students from disadvantaged backgrounds or socioeconomic status. The University of Minnesota published a multi-state study linking later high school start times to significant decreases in substance abuse, depression, and caffeine use. In an issue near and dear to me, Jackson Hole High School in Wyoming found a 70% decrease in teenage car crashes.
As caretakers of children, working at a youth home, we all value the success of the kids who come through our program. We want nothing more than for them to be happy and safely and successfully integrate with their families and society. But getting them involved in the community does not mean they have to be subject to the rules of sleep that adults play by.
Not only are they not adults, but also, these expectations are unfair and detrimental to their happiness, their health, and their chances of successfully moving through our program at the youth home; building healthy relationships with their family members, getting involved in the community, and working on any other issues that brought them to us.
I don’t mean to propose that getting more sleep is a panacea and that, somehow, underlying issues will disappear over night; I simply assert that there is no reason for us to be exacerbating such underlying issues by topping them off with sleep deprivation.
We are the solution
There are many common misconceptions about starting school later on a large scale, such as it will adversely impact extracurriculars or it is too expensive, but these are largely overblown and have little to do with our own school.
Being proprietors of the school, the policies regarding start time of the school are entirely within our control. All that we need to do, is do it. Sure, we may find we need to make adjustments to the daily schedule or even slightly alter the hours of the shifts that we work, but these are relatively minor sacrifices for the prosperity of the kids we are charged with caring for. Beyond this, we owe it to our kids to ensure that when they leave the program, they are not subject to unfair starting times. This can be done as simple as signing this petition, writing their school boards or superintendents, or sharing this post.
Here's a link to the actual blogpost submitted for the class, and to the right an early draft of the post is available for download.
|
|