Missing Homework

Detentions

Failing Classes

Caffeine Addiction

How do all of these tie together? Lack of sleep. As you look around your classroom, you may notice students nodding off or staring into space, causing them to miss important lessons and homework assignments. On average, students get about four to five hours of sleep.

Each student goes to seven classes – four of those are the common classes that each student takes. Those classes are usually the ones that give out the most homework. Some students are taking as many AP and/or Honors classes as they can. That being said, homework can pile up each day.

On average teachers give out about three and a half hours worth of homework each day. All together, that is about seventeen and a half hours of homework given each week. Say each of your teachers gave you about an hour worth of homework each night, would you get a decent amount of sleep?

Most schools want their students to participate in extracurriculars, sports, etc. Students who are involved in sports usually do not get home till nine p.m. Where will they have time to do homework? It has also been pressed into our brains that we should spend 60 minutes outside, have a social life, finish all of our homework, and get the recommended eight hours of sleep.

When walking the halls of HHS or even sitting in class, how many energy drinks or coffees do you see kids holding? You are bound to see in almost all of your classes a kid with a drink like KickStart, Monster, coffee, etc. The lack of sleep and exhaustion have caused kids to depend on these drinks to make it through the day and not nod off in the middle of a lesson.

Another reason for the lack of sleep is the time schools start. Most schools start anywhere from 7:30 a.m to 8:00 a.m. Due to the schools starting early, many students are waking up earlier and have not hit the advocated eight hours of sleep. Therefore, if we change the amount of homework given and even the time we start school, we might see changes in attitudes and productivity in HHS students.