Does more Sleep Mean Better Grades?

    On Nov. 12 during morning assembly, the upper school students had the privilege of having Dr. Shannon Farris, Assistant Professor at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at Virginia Tech Carilion, speak about what neuroscience is and what she and her team do at the research institute. Somewhere in the middle of her speech, I remember hearing her mention the importance of sleep and its connection to both learning and retaining information effectively. This got me thinking; would I do better in school if I slept more?
As highschool students, we often face the dilemma of having too much to do and not enough hours in the day. Many students at North Cross participate in sports and other extracurricular activities on top of all their school work. Between going from school to sports or to extracurriculars and then home to do homework, scarf down a meal and take a shower, time can be scarce. This can lead to getting to bed at an ungodly hour, which will only make such a busy daily routine even more difficult for students to maintain.  
The article “Nightly Sleep is Key to Student Success” from Carnegie Mellon University talked about a study done at CMU which looked at the connection between sleep and academic performance among college students. The study found that the students on average “sleep 6.5 hours per night, but negative outcomes accumulate when students received less than six hours.” However, the article states that “sleep guidelines recommend teenagers get eight to10 hours of sleep every night.” The Center for Disease Control recommends that teenagers get eight to ten hours of sleep per night. Contrary to that information, the CDC states that a nation-wide study on high school students found that “about 7 out of 10 (72.7%) did not get enough sleep on school nights.” The CDC states that “children and adolescents who do not get enough sleep have a higher risk of obesity, diabetes, injuries, poor mental health, and problems with attention and behavior.”
The Office of Neuroscience Research at Washington University in St. Louis published the article “More sleep leads to better grades and well-being.” The article notes that in a study by Tim Bono, PhD, lecturer in psychological and brain sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, found that, “students who get a good night’s sleep night in and night out earn higher marks and feel a stronger sense of well-being than those with fluctuating sleep schedules.” Another study he did found that “the students who reported the most stable, consistent sleep patterns earned a GPA of 3.66, on average, while the students with the most variable sleep earned a GPA of 3.21. Students with regular sleep patterns also reported higher levels of well-being. These effects held even when controlling for SAT scores and baseline happiness.” 
Dr. Farris shared her knowledge of the connection between sleep and performance through an email she sent me.“Sleep is required for our brains to function, although the exact reasons for this are not entirely clear. There are some recent studies in rodents that give us hints as to why sleep is important for central nervous system function. Firstly, during sleep (or when under anesthesia), the fluid flow in the brain and spinal cord increases, and it’s been proposed that this increase in flow cleans the cellular debris generated throughout the day from our brains. This is consistent with why brain disorders (anxiety, depression, dementia) can be caused or exacerbated by a lack of sleep (without sleep, junk and debris build up and make brain functioning more difficult). Secondly, a very recent study showed that the more synaptic plasticity that occurs (changes in the strength of synaptic connections that is the molecular basis of memory) the more delta oscillations are generated, which are low frequency waves that promote restful sleep. Thus, the more you learn, the more your brain is driven to sleep! So, I would argue that quality and length of sleep should correlate with learning performance. However, learning has to occur—so sleep alone will not make you smarter, but sleeping after learning certainly will. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends 8-10 hours of sleep for every 24 hours for teenagers.”
A possible solution to help students improve the amount of sleep they get could be by starting the school day off later. If the school day started at 8:30 or 8:45, perhaps students would do better in class having gotten more sleep. I was fortunate enough to spend a year in New Zealand and experience going to a school there. While there, I attended New Plymouth Girls’ High. It was very different, but a huge difference was that over there, school started at 8:40 am and ended at 3:20 pm. I not only got to sleep more, but I felt more energetic throughout the day. Perhaps if North Cross School followed a similar schedule, students would have better concentration and participation in class, on the sports fields, and in their extracurriculars throughout the day. 
I understand that transportation is something to consider when revising school start times. However, if parents or caregivers had to drop off students earlier in the day, the students would be able to complete their assignments in the time before school starts and catch up on sleep the night before, saving 30 minutes or so of work to do before class starts in the morning. 
A concern teachers might have due to the later start in the school day might be having to shorten classes. However, having experienced going to a school that started later, I can safely say that the 30 or so start time difference does not have a sizable impact on class at all. After all, it is a seven hour school day and I don’t think cutting out 1/14 of the school day is really going to affect the amount students learn a day. I honestly believe that a well rested student will learn more in a shorter amount of time then a tired one would learn in a longer amount of time. 
Finally, the question that may be pressing a critic’s mind; how do we know that students are using the extra time to sleep instead of scrolling the internet or goofing off. The answer; you don’t. It is up to students to be responsible and go to bed at a reasonable hour when possible. Perhaps a good idea would be to have students who have grades below the acceptable level to have to come to school earlier to study and complete late assignments until their grades go up. This way the students who are taking advantage of the later start will be able to get more sleep and those who are not will have extra time to get their work done. 
If changing school start times is not a possible solution, there are other ways for students to get their much-needed hours of sleep. For starters, if students get off the screen at the right time, they might go to bed earlier and even experience a better quality of sleep. The Sleep Foundation states that “Electronic back-lit devices like cell phones, tablets, readers, and computers emit short-wavelength enriched light, also known as blue light…. Blue light can also reduce the amount of time you spend in slow-wave and rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep, two stages of the sleep cycle that are vital for cognitive functioning.”
Students could also try to increase their productivity while in the classroom so that they do not have to bring as much work home with them. However, this all comes back to the amount of sleep students get at night. If a student is not getting enough sleep at night it will be much harder to concentrate and be productive in class. This means students will end up having to take the work home and possibly lose sleep because of it, completing the detrimental circle of sleep deprivation. Whatever it is that a student does to improve their sleep routine, it is important to remember that sleep does not just affect whether or not a student comes to school with dark circles under their eyes, it affects their grades and overall well being. 

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