Allowing Rest Time During the School Day
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What makes sleep important for teens?
Sleep is like food for the brain. During sleep, important body functions and brain activity occur. Without enough sleep, you can look bad, you may feel moody, and you perform poorly. Sleepiness can make it hard to get along with your family and friends and hurt your scores on school exams, on the court or on the field. Remember: A brain that is hungry for sleep will get it, even when you don’t expect it. For example, drowsiness and falling asleep at the wheel cause more than 100,000 car crashes every year. When you do not get enough sleep, you are more likely to have an accident, injury and/or illness.
Some Important Facts about Sleep Are:*Sleep is vital to your well-being, as important as the air you breathe, the water you drink and the food you eat. It can even help you to eat better and manage the stress of being a teen.Biological sleep patterns shift toward later times for both sleeping and waking during adolescence -- meaning it is natural to not be able to fall asleep before 11:00 pm.Teens need about 9 1/4 hours of sleep each night to function best (for some, 8 1/2 hours is enough). Most teens do not get enough sleep — one study found that only 15% reported sleeping 8 1/2 hours on school nights.Teens tend to have irregular sleep patterns across the week — they typically stay up late and sleep in late on the weekends, which can affect their biological clocks and hurt the quality of their sleep.
Not only is sleep essential, but without it, there are many consequences.
Some Consequences Are:*
Not getting enough sleep or having sleep difficulties can:
Limit your ability to learn, listen, concentrate and solve problems. You may even forget important information like names, numbers, your homework or a date with a special person in your life;Make you more prone to pimples. Lack of sleep can contribute to acne and other skin problems;Lead to aggressive or inappropriate behavior such as yelling at your friends or being impatient with your teachers or family members;Cause you to eat too much or eat unhealthy foods like sweets and fried foods that lead to weight gain;Heighten the effects of alcohol and possibly increase use of caffeine and nicotine; andContribute to illness, not using equipment safely ordriving drowsily.As you can see from this information, most teen between the ages of 12 and 15 are not getting sufficient amount of sleep. Part of this may be due to homework, but fact two of Sleep Facts says, it is natural to not be able to fall asleep before 11:00. But, with our need for 8 1/2+ hours of sleep minimum, this mean we should be getting up at around 7:30 each morning, with the minimum amount of sleep. For me personally, this is not enough time for me to get to school on time at 8:00- 8:15. I usually have a need to wake up earlier, cutting back on my sleep. Studies have also proven that getting enough sleep is important, and can affect the way you are testing and learning. Therefore, I believe that we should be able to make time for more sleep during the school day. I propose that we set up a study hall and/or rest time during the day, so that you can either catch up on lost sleep during the day, or you can finish school work because you went to bed earlier. Please sign if you think you can benefit from extra study time and/or rest time during the school day!
*From The Sleep Foundation
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