When children and adolescents don’t receive enough sleep, it results in high risk for many health and behavior problems. Studies from the American Academy of Sleep and Medicine recommend that children ages 6-12 years old should sleep 9-12 hours a night, but teenagers ages 13-18 years old should sleep 8-10 hours each night.

When I asked junior Hannah Madden about how much sleep she thinks teenagers ages 13-18 should sleep on a regular basis, she said, “I think that teenagers should get at least eight hours of sleep for the next day so they can be more productive and in a good mood for the next day.” I thought this was an excellent response, because when teenagers have enough sleep they can come to school ready to learn and not have to worry about missing assignments or not knowing the topic that was taught that day.

I wanted more advice, so I went to talk to paraprofessional Sandra Laubach she told me, “Well when my two children were in school we had a set bedtime. I felt because of the rhetorical schedule they got a good amount of sleep so they could be more productive the next day and retain what they have learned.”

These interviews were from a parents perspective, so I wondered what responses would be like from within the classroom setting. I went to see what math teacher Brianna Keeney to get advice from a math teacher’s standpoint and she said, “When students are tired they lack focus, initiative, and ambition. They do not work to their full potential, which affects their grades.”

Laubach returned and told me from a professional standpoint that “Students I work with who don’t get enough sleep rarely participate in class. Then, they have a hard time retaining what was taught in class that day and when they come the next day they are frazzled and stressed out because they don’t know what happened since they fell asleep.”

I believe that children any age tend to have terrible days because they didn’t rest for a brighter day the next morning. When this happens, it causes the teachers and peers to find students putting their head down and sleeping in class because they didn’t come to school energized and ready to learn. This eventually will affect students’ grades, which reflects what they do in class on a daily basis. Overall, it is best to find a way to get sleep so you do not feel exhausted and you come to school to improve the down times.