When the alarm clock goes off in a teen's room at 5:30 or 6:00, they probably press the snooze button to catch a few more minutes of sleep before they have to face the school day only an hour away. School start times around the U.S.A. are generally early times. There are only a few schools that have taken adolescent sleep into consideration which then resulted that changing school start times will help students emotionally, physically and academically.

Changing school start times will lead to positive emotional effects for teens. Educational researcher Kyle Wahlstrom, from the University of Minnesota has been involved in the changing of school start times around the country. Wahlstrom was involved in a changing of school start times in a Minneapolis school district that changed their start time from 7:20 - 8:40 a.m. giving students about one hour of extra sleep. Wahlstrom has seen many positive effects of extra sleep for students. "Students reported less depression when there was a later starting time, and teachers reported that students were more alert and ready for learning. Parents reported that their children were easier to live with because their emotions were more regulated." Wahlstrom stated(http://cehd.umn.edu/pubs/researchworks/sleep.html).

Teen's have a biological clock which makes teens fall asleep later and wake up later. This is just a normal sign of puberty all teens have to go through. Teens want to fall asleep around 10:00 -11:00 p.m. and wake up around 9:00 - 11:00 a.m. Teens will most likely stare at the ceiling for about an hour until a later time when they will actually fall asleep. School should be changed to a later time to work around a teen's biological clock(http://www.stanford.edu/~dement/adolescent.html).

Besides emotional and physical benefits teens will get with the changing of school start times, they may also get positive academic results with later school start times. It has been proven that teens see their grades rise and they also seem to have better focus in school. Teens who are sleep deprived tend to earn lower grades than what they should be getting.(http://cehd.umn.edu/pubs/researchworks/sleep.html).


Despite all of these positive effects that will show in students if school start times are changed, some people don't think so. One of the opposing groups of people are those of the Jessamine County.(http://www.sleepfoundation.org/sitec.huIXKjM0IxFb2511911k.DCEBChanging_School_Start_Times_Jessamine_County_Kentucky.htm.). Some parents of the students said that there are personal reasons why school start times should not be changed. The personal reasons include scheduling, athletics and more. They think that changing school start times is too big of a change to take into consideration. These people should put themselves in the students positions and say otherwise

More than 80 school districts around the country have taken teen's amount of sleep into consideration and have changed their school's start time.(http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6896471). If citizens of this country want to see our youth go somewhere and make a difference in society, why don't we change something that should and can be changed to help our students feel good about themselves and have better emotional, physical, and academic skills to assist them in their journey to be someone? If all schools took action to change their start times, so we will find a huge improvement in our student's education across the nation.