Im tired.” Or, “I’m sooo tired.” This, or some variation of it, is a phrase that we’ve all heard more times than we can count in the halls of IHS, whether it’s from friends, teachers, random students in hallways, or even yourself. Sometimes, you might use it to explain away a silly mistake: “I can’t believe I wrote 2 x 2 = 5 on that math test; I’m so tired.” Sometimes, to explain why you didn’t understand something: “I forgot everything we learned last period, I’m so tired.” And sometimes, it’s just a statement of fact: “I’m so tired; I got like an hour of sleep last night.” But it’s the truth—most of us are tired, most of the time.
It’s a well-documented fact that highschoolers—and teens in general—simply don’t get enough sleep. According to the Nationwide Children’s Hospital, the average amount of sleep that teenagers do get is around seven to seven-and-a-quarter hours per night, far below the recommended nine to nine-and-a-half hours. However, if the solution were as simple as telling teenagers to sleep more, this column would be fairly short. Unfortunately, reality is a bit more complicated, and creating an environment where teenagers at IHS get enough sleep will require a multitude of changes.
Firstly, it’s important to understand just how long nine to nine-and-a-half hours is. If you wake up at 7:30 a.m., this means going to sleep at between 10:00 p.m. and 10:30 p.m.—not just going to bed, but actually being asleep at that time. For most teenagers, and probably for students at IHS, this just seems like a ridiculously early time to go to sleep. However, there are a few good reasons why students don’t want to sleep early—it’s not just because we don’t want to.
One issue with going to sleep earlier is a simple biological barrier. Studies have shown that melatonin levels (the hormone that helps you fall asleep) tend to rise in teenagers about two hours later than before puberty. Since this is a full shift of your internal clock, it also means that you really don’t want to wake up until two hours later than usual. However, interestingly enough, ICSD’s schedule is actually more favorable to this issue than many school districts around the country, with IHS beginning later than both the middle schools and the elementary schools. This reflects the relevant shifts in sleep schedules. Since school starts at 9:00 a.m. rather than 8:00 a.m. or 7:00 a.m. for most IHS students, sleeping later and getting enough sleep is still plausible.
But the second, more pressing issue is the fact that homework, sports, and extracurricular activities serve as significant roadblocks to sleeping earlier. Even if you do finish your work earlier, you might understandably want to stay up later to do other things besides homework—play video games, talk to friends, or watch TV. So what can IHS do to make sure students are staying healthy by getting enough sleep? Well, the solution isn’t to ask students to do less of what they actually want to do in their free time, but rather rethink what IHS is asking students to do during that time.
Homework, the primary culprit of the tiredness epidemic among IHS students, is perhaps the most important obstacle—it is the only thing that students do in their free time that they don’t choose to do. (Some may argue that homework is “chosen” because students choose to take classes, but to that I respond that students, to a reasonable extent, should be more focused on choosing classes based on interest rather than homework load.) That aside, the fact is that homework, for many classes at IHS, can often be a dull repetition of whatever was being done in class that day. Repetition is very valuable in some cases, such as in learning foreign languages or when you’re trying to understand a new concept. However, for many students, this repetition often isn’t necessary, and ends up being a dull tedium. One potential solution for this would be to make more homework assignments optional, rather than mandatory, not larger projects, but simply the day-to-day practice assignments. If students feel that they do not understand the concepts, then they can do the homework to help them understand. However, if they already have a solid grasp of what they learned that day, they can skip the homework. This simple change would go a long way in helping to reduce the workload for IHS students. To be clear, optional homework would not necessarily work for all classes, and it would be important to take into consideration the exact type of class before shifting to this model. However, standardizing late policies, implementing office hours in some form, and having accessible, worked-out solutions for homework are other changes that can help make homework more manageable.
IHS should also implement effective education surrounding sleep and workload management. Having a balance between completing your work effectively and maintaining health is an important life skill, and having resources for students as early as freshman year on how to manage homework, extracurriculars, sports, and other commitments could go a long way towards helping IHS students build healthier habits. And though this article won’t delve into the health benefits of sleep, one Google search will reveal the numerous advantages—and it’s important to ensure that both you and IHS prioritize your health.