Beep! Beep! Beep! A high school student’s alarm is blasting in their ears and they groggily get up from their comfy, warm bed. They got less than five hours of sleep last night because they were up finishing homework in five of their classes. Somewhere else in the world, a teacher is doing the same thing, running on five hours of sleep and getting ready for another school day. This is the reality for so many teachers and students around the world.
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), two out of three high school students aren’t getting good sleep, and it continuously affects people of all ages. No matter the age or profession, everyone can be impacted by a bad sleep schedule and notice the effects on their everyday life.
Sophomore Caden Rosinski is an active student at Kaneland High School and is a part of the musicals and plays at school. When he gets a bad night of sleep, he sees a difference in his day at school.
“I’m definitely less engaged in class, and I want to go home more,” Rosinski said. “I just feel more careless and say, ‘I don’t care, I’ll do this homework later.’”
Rosinski gets seven and a half to eight hours of sleep a night, and when he gets anything below five hours, it is not enough for him.
When you think of lack of sleep, especially in a school setting, your mind usually focuses on the students since they might seem to have a bigger workload, but that isn’t always the case. Many teachers struggle with getting a healthy amount of sleep every night because of their busy schedules.
New social studies teacher Jack Jordan only gets five and a half hours of sleep each night due to his busy work schedule and having to make up lesson plans and assignments for the first time. Especially as a teacher, Jordan feels like he has a lot of responsibilities, and when he doesn’t get good sleep, it’s difficult for him to fulfill all of them.
“I would say that it definitely does affect my energy in the classroom if I get less sleep,” Jordan said. “It’s kind of our role as a teacher to kind of hype up the class and get that energy level higher, but I would say definitely on a day where I do not sleep well it’s more difficult for me to do that.”
Although students might think they have more work and busier schedules, teachers have many responsibilities as well. According to neaToday, a study from Ball State University showed that 43% of teachers sleep an average of six hours or less each night, which is less than the recommended seven to nine. 64% report that they have felt drowsy during the school day.
As the years of high school go by, often the level of stress increases for students because of harder classes and busier schedules. This added level of stress could make it more difficult for them to focus on their sleep schedules, but senior Abi Carter manages hers well. She gets about nine hours of sleep per night while balancing her school life and volleyball commitments and being one of the captains of the varsity volleyball team. She has some techniques on how to make sure she goes to bed at a decent time and gets a good night of sleep.
“I try to not push off my homework until the end of the night, so then I’m not staying up late doing it,” Carter said. “And then I try to put my phone down around 9 p.m. so then I’m not just up scrolling all night.”
Teachers who have been working for longer could have an easier time managing their schedule and therefore could have a higher chance of getting better sleep. Although this isn’t always true, it is for English department chair Kimberly Reese. She prioritizes sleep and gets eight hours each night but tries to get 10 when she can.
“I think the benefits of good sleep are just that rest and refreshment that your body and your mind need in order to have a busy life and face a lot of different things that you’re doing,” Reese said.
Reese knows from experience that she does not do well when she doesn’t get good sleep. One time, she was returning from a trip to Hawaii with her daughter and daughter-in-law. It happened to be during the earthquake that hit Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia and triggered tsunamis and warnings throughout Hawaii. They had just checked out of their hotel and were forced to sleep in their car because their original flight had been cancelled. Reese didn’t even consider it sleep because of how uncomfortable it was for her. They slept in a grocery store parking lot that was very busy and noisy from the warnings going off. The next morning, they got on a plane at around noon Hawaii time and landed in Arizona at 9 later that night. Then, she had to wait until 1 a.m. for another flight home and finally arrived at 8 in the morning.
“I basically did not sleep at all because I didn’t sleep on the flight,” Reese said. “And so, when I got home, I hadn’t seen my husband for 10 days, and I said, ‘I’m going to bed.’” She said that she slept for about a day and a half and only got up to eat and drink because she was so exhausted from her long days of traveling.
Sleep is essential in every human’s life. It is so important, yet so many people struggle to get the right amount of sleep or any of it at all. Adolescents and teenagers are at such a crucial age and should be getting healthy sleep every night, yet their age group is the one that struggles most with the issue. Teachers also struggle with getting good sleep. Even though both of these groups struggle with the same thing, most of them show up to school every day, work together and build success.
