Persuasive Essay and Life

Last week, in our eighth grade, honors English language arts class, we wrote persuasive essays. We had four different topics to choose from. The first was Banning Books (Should school districts ban certain books that parents think are inappropriate?), Technology vs. Traditional Classrooms (Should classrooms keep their traditional style, or change according to new tech programs and devices?), 4-day School Week (very simple, should there be only a 4-day school week, rather than 5? most students chose this topic.), and finally, Starting School Later (Should school begin at nine and end at four?). I chose the last topic. I felt like it was a pretty good piece of writing, and wanted to share it. This is a persuasive letter, trying to persuade the School Board of Education to take my stance. (Fictorial)

Later School Opening

Is waking up early a friend or foe to any average student? Most teenagers would say foe, no hesitation. Recently, a considered idea was that teenagers would benefit from starting school later in the morning. In other words, they believe that students are not getting enough sleep each night because school starts early in the morning. On the one hand, I agree that there is a stunning lack of sleep among adolescences. However, I'm afraid I must disagree with the said reason. I believe that lack of sleep is a cause from going to bed late at night. All in all, changing the time school begins would have a negative outcome.

Why would there be a negative outcome? Teachers and students both have extra time to sleep every morning, everybody wins! Well, what about after school? Students need time to do homework, sports, and other extra-curricular activities. "...Kids simply would go to bed later then get more sleep and after school activities would be decimated," (Delisio 2). I agree with this statement, a point that needs emphasizing since so many people believe otherwise. The plan would backfire after kids end up going to bed later than normal, trying to finish mounds of homework after a game that left them utterly exhausted. Thus, the homework would also be incomplete and poorly done. It's a chain reaction.

Another point of fact is health. Waking early in the morn is beneficial to a teenager's health, if they are going to bed early as well. "Less sleep is often associated with a number of bad outcomes for teens, including obesity, an increase in car accidents and attention and memory problems." (Rettner 1). Rettner's point supports my thesis. If you are getting to bed early, there will be no problem waking up early as well. You would wake up energized, ready to go to school. I have noticed, when I sleep in on Saturdays, I love to lie in my bed for a long period time before getting up. For the remainder of the day, I am feeling slothful and uneager to move around and get exercise. If school begins later, sitting in our desks all morning and afternoon would result in a similar feeling among the students.

On the contrary, others believe that adolescents need more time to do before school activities. However this is easily resolved. As stated previously, all there is to change is the time you go to sleep. Waking early is key to remaining alert all day if you make that simple choice to go to bed, say, before 10:30 PM. Furthermore, it has been also stated that teenagers have irregular sleeping patterns. However, I discovered that just a couple of weeks into the school year, my sleeping patterns become accustomed to waking at earlier hours, and goes hand-in-hand with my daily schedule.

Hence, said reasons have proven my point that the time school begins now is perfectly reasonable, under any circumstance. I implore you to see that there is not a call for change! School is starting at a time that is best for the students. For some, there may be a problem, but the solution is a choice for the students. We are responsible for ourselves.

And... That's it. I enjoyed writing it, and just wanted to share it.

As for the rest of my life: On Saturday, there was a multi-stake youth activity to try and break world records. We tried to break a lot of things, but I don't know if we did. These were our categories: Largest game of leap-frog, largest ball of chewed-gum (it was SO gross!), most people doing the hokey-pokey, the wave, planking at one time, and doing the cha-cha slide, and largest pillow fight. It was crazy! And a lot of fun. There are pictures if you join the group San Diego Multi-Stake Youth on Facebook. It was so fun!

*This post is dedicated to my lovely aunt. I love you, Suzanne!