An efficient and hardworking student requires more rest than most teens get overnight.
Many factors affect a teenager’s sleep schedule. Stress, electronics, and schoolwork can all cause teens to lose valuable sleep.
School on top of a teenager’s social and mental stress leaves them so drained and in need of rest. High school students should be allowed more time to rest during the school day.
Getting the proper amount of rest and just taking a break during the day can have so many benefits for a student. It can lead to better focus, motivation, productivity, and overall mental state.
As a sophomore at The John Carroll School, I have realized how exhausted others in the student body feel from attending seven or more classes a day and deserve to have more time to decompress from the stressful environment of the classroom.
Aside from a lack of sleep, according to Time.com, teens going through puberty can experience intense waves of exhaustion — even following a full night’s rest. Teenage brains are still maturing, and regardless of nighttime distractions, sleep is extremely essential for proper function.
Since John Carroll is a college preparatory private school, we are lucky enough to have free mods during the day, and this helps a lot; however, this time is usually spent completing homework due to the abundance of athletes and students in extracurricular activities who have no free time at home.
Homework is usually crammed into these free mods or after the many extracurricular activities our school has to offer, let alone the club sports outside of school sports.
Personally, during a sports season, most days there are practices for school followed by practice for my club team. This leaves a lot of late nights to get assignments done, causing a lack of sleep.
If we were given time, aside from off mods, dedicated to rest and de-stressing, we would work much more efficiently in all aspects of being a student-athlete.
Aside from these issues in our own school, Harford County Public Schools provides no time for a student to rest or complete homework during the school day. With many of their periods being 80 or 90 minutes long with no breaks in between, this must be profoundly more stressful as well.
Many may believe that to imitate a real-world work schedule, students must time manage and figure things out on their own. This is true; however, they are still teenagers. A teen’s brain is still developing and needs rest.
Allowing students to periodically take “brain breaks” will create a more focused and motivated student. No matter what age you are right now, it is definite that you can think of a time in high school when you were so mentally drained and exhausted, you just wanted to take a break to escape the stress.
High school students who are constantly pressured to achieve the highest grades and perform well in their sports require enough rest to properly do so.
They should be given more time, so they can properly carry out their expectations.