“This I Believe”
I believe sleep is the most important thing in life. Sleep gives you energy and energy in turn allows you to do whatever you want to do. If you are well rested then you are generally happier and if you are tired then you are generally meaner. If you have a good night’s sleep then you can have a good day.
There have been studies that show human beings across the world need a certain amount of sleep depending on your age. With school starting at 7:45 I personally have to wake up at 6:30 to catch my 7:15 bus. Every year of school I get more and more homework and it gets harder and harder to get a decent amount of sleep each night. If I go to school tired I don’t pay nearly as much attention as I do if I go to school rested. Because of this, I think it would be to the school’s and students benefit if the school day was shortened. It has been proven that high school students need more sleep than anyone because most high school students are growing throughout the four years. LT has school for seven hours and fifteen minutes everyday except for once a month late arrivals that bring in a total of five hours and fifteen minutes. Illinois state law says that there is a minimum of only five hours of school attendance required daily. This means that it is legal for LT to have late arrival every day of the school year. Illinois state law also dictates that extra hours from previous days in the same school year may be counted on to other days in order to shorten or entirely remove them. This means that if you took all of the extra hours logged in the first two weeks of school already held, taking into account the four day week and late arrival day, that we could have no school for the next three days and shorten Thursday by three hours and fifteen minutes. We could do all that and then continue to have five hour days for the rest of the year.
All of these facts sound good to me and despite the significantly shortened hours, the hours we do have would be more productive. More kids would be able to keep up with their classes and test scores throughout LT would improve. The newly devised school year sounds good to me and easier on everyone involved. That is why I believe sleep is the most important thing in life.