Social Awareness project 1

Emile Beniflah 811 11/26/12

Social Awareness Writing Project

Part 2- Observe your surroundings

List-

·         Having to wake up early every morning, feeling dull and not always focused or alert in my morning classes. Performance decreases in morning especially when taking tests.

·         Public schools have a tiny budget which results in having barely any decent material! I know we’re in debt, but come on!

·         My cleaning lady pays more taxes than my family.

·         Because healthcare is so expensive, millions of people are left without it, and when they get sick they can’t do anything about it. This should be changed.

·         People are left uneducated therefore not able to get decent jobs leaving them poor. Everyone needs education- a chance.

Having to wake up in the morning might seem like a tiny problem in life, but for us teenagers, it could alter our future in a dramatic way! We are in an extremely important stage in our lives, and sleep could be the reason we go to a good High School or College!

Scientific evidence supports that the average teenager needs 8 ½ -9 ¼ hours of sleep a day, and studies show that teenagers tend to go to bed later, therefore waking up later. They can go to bed as late as they want, but they can’t wake up whenever they want! A survey from CBS News asked children from 12-15 years old how many hours of sleep they got, and the results were stunning! The average student got about 6-7 hours of sleep a night (not really shocking to me though…). That means that we (teenagers) lose about 2 hours of sleep a night!!! This has a huge impact in our daily performance in school, especially the morning classes. As we get less sleep, we “zone out” more in class and fall asleep. 6 or 7 hours of sleep might not seem like a big deal, but we could end up with sleep deficit, and that could harm us.

 So why are most schools starting as early as 7:30 -8:30, forcing us students to wake up at about 6 or 7 am? In order to meet the healthy sleep hours, we should then go to bed at about 9, which cannot happen to most teens because their brain hormone melatonin is produced later at night than adults and kids. Why not start school for example at 9:30? This could help students to concentrate throughout the day, but still leave room for extracurricular activities and family time.