Sleep deprivation can have a big effect on students’ education

Sleep Deprivation means not getting the required amount of sleep.  It is a common problem in many schools such as Animo Jefferson Charter Middle School (AJCMS). Some students often go to sleep at 11pm-2am in the morning. The minimum amount of sleep students should have is about eight to ten hours daily in order to focus more in class and for them to be efficient in their work, according to the “National Sleep Foundation.”

Melvin Castrejon, an eighth grader at Animo Jefferson Middle School, explains his issues he faces daily about sleep deprivation.

“I’m probably less productive because sometimes I have headaches and that distracts me from getting my work completed.”

Melvin explains that when he wakes up from sleeping late he gets headaches that make him feel that he can’t do his work which makes him less productive and more tired.

“I wanna go back to sleep but I know I have to go to school, so I force myself to get up and fight the urge to go back to sleep.”

Melvin explains that he always wants to go back to sleep and rest but knows that he cannot because he has school to attend to. He fights the urge to go back to sleep in the mornings to stop himself from being late or to not miss school. Since he told us that he sleeps pass 12:00pm, in which explains why he struggles waking up in the morning.

“I always feel tired when I wake up like no matter what, even when I sleep a lot I feel tired, ” says eighth grader Alejandro Paredes from Animo Jefferson Middle School.

Alejandro explains that every time he wakes up in the morning he always feels tired and even when he sleeps early he still feels tired which makes him feels slow.

“ I feel tired mostly in the mornings, which is why I like Tuesdays and Thursdays because we have advisory in the mornings and we really don’t do much in there, like I don’t have to think a lot but I also have math for 1st period so kinda makes me tired.”

Alejandro says that he is usually tired in the mornings and that he likes the days when he has advisory because he doesn’t have to think a lot or be productive but he says that he has math for his period which involves a lot of thinking and he has to be very productive in that class.

“ I get around 6 hours of sleep and I usually go to sleep at 12 am , around 12 am but something that helps me fall asleep faster is listening to music so I just let the music play and I start to fall asleep.”

Alejandro gets six hours of sleep each night which is a bad thing since teens must get eight to ten hours of sleep daily. Since he said that he goes to sleep usually around 12 am which is a very late time for teens to go to sleep. Alejandro found a way that makes him fall asleep faster which is listening to music and that can help make him sleep early.

“I sleep around six to seven hours and I usually go to bed at 12pm to 2am in the morning. If I sleep at around 11 to 12pm, I wake up at around 6:30 am in the morning…,” says eighth grader Melanie Sanchez.

Melanie says she sleeps somewhere from eight to six hours, though she rarely hits the eight hour mark, which isn’t the right amount of sleep she needs.

“My reason on sleeping late is that I take a lot of naps in the day time.”

Since she sometimes takes naps during the day, it causes her to sleep later in the night than sleeping at the time she should be sleeping in order for her to not repeat the cycle, so she can have more sleeping time and to take away the habit of sleeping during classes so it wouldn’t affect her education.

“It depends, if the class is quiet and there’s more independent work, I feel tired and sleepy, but if the class is more active and social, I feel energized.”

Depending on how the day goes on socializing, she feels the energy to be more active instead of having that tiring, sleepy feeling of boredom, for it would lead to her taking a nap, making a cycle of her sleeping late for all those naps she takes making her less tired and the urge to sleep.

“I am trying to to not think about things at night and trying to get a goods night sleep.”