Sleep, Play, and Study: Finding the Right Balance for High School Students

Holston Academy recently hosted our first Coffee & Connections webinar, an opportunity for everyone in the Holston community–and beyond–to get together and discuss today’s most relevant topics in the world of education. In this session, Christina Seamster, Ph.D, and Head of Schools for Holston Academy and our sister school, Palm Beach International Academy in Boca Raton, Florida, led a discussion focusing on a very timely back-to-school topic–Sleep, Play, and Study: Finding the Right Balance for High School Students.

Research on adolescent development stresses the need for sleep, playtime, downtime, and family time. However, many teenagers struggle to find enough time to fit these essentials into busy schedules that are already overloaded with extracurriculars, academics and tutoring outside of school, demanding course loads and homework, chores, family responsibilities, paid work, and commutes.  (“Give Teens More Downtime and Support with Time Management – ASCD”)

During her presentation, Dr. Seamster took a deeper dive into these topics and proposed some very helpful solutions along the way. Let’s look at the highlights of the webinar.

Part 1: Understanding Adolescent Sleep Needs

If you’re a parent of an adolescent or teen, you’re probably well aware that your child does not get enough sleep each night. What is considered “enough sleep”? The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends adolescents get between eight and 10 hours of sleep per night. Challenge Success, a nonprofit affiliated with the Stanford University Graduate School of Education, surveyed over 145,000 high school students from high-performing high schools during the last 15 years, including more than 21,000 since the start of the 2018-19 school year. 

The current reality based on their findings? High school students average 6.5 hours of sleep each night.

A closer look at those statistics revealed that fewer than 19% of high school students report getting at least eight hours, and fewer than 4% report getting at least nine hours. In Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams, Matthew Walker notes that sleep deprivation is associated with a range of negative health outcomes, including decreased immune system response, heightened irritability and anxiety (according to Challenge Success, 59% of high school students feel stressed due to a lack of sleep), and over- or under-eating.

Lack of sleep also negatively affects both learning and creativity. Further, the final sleep cycle (approximately 90 minutes) prepares the brain for future learning and to store previously learned knowledge, so it is doubly problematic for teenagers to miss out on those last couple of hours of sleep. For teenagers, getting sufficient sleep is not just beneficial but essential for their overall development.  (“Give Teens More Downtime and Support with Time Management – ASCD”)

Part 2: Academic and Homework Challenges

According to Challenge Success-Stanford Surveys of School Experiences from 2018, the average time spent on homework for most students is 2.8 hours per night. That number increases to 3.2 hours per night for students taking Advanced Placement^Ⓡ (AP^Ⓡ) courses. It’s simply way too much, especially considering that many researchers are of the opinion that the benefits of homework diminish significantly for high school students once they do more than two hours of homework. This suggests that beyond a certain point, additional homework does not contribute positively to learning and can instead increase stress and diminish overall effectiveness.

In fact, the same Challenge Success-Stanford Surveys of School Experiences from 2018 found that overall workload and homework was the second-largest stressor for high school students (71%), behind only grades, tests, finals, and other assessments, which 80% of high schoolers cite as a reason for stress. These findings underline the need to address these stressors to improve student well-being.

Right now, there aren’t enough hours in the day to accommodate everything the typical teenager is dealing with during an average school day–school, homework and studying, extracurricular activities, family time, employment, and more. Students today simply need more time for essential activities such as sleeping, relaxing, growing, and reflecting. That’s why it’s so important for schools and families to help students better manage their time to ensure a balanced life.

Part 3: Strategies for Improvement

Both schools and families must be active participants in helping students better balance the responsibilities in their lives. For example, schools should be actively looking to:

• Reduce excessive workloads
• Support balanced course loads
• Teach effective study habits and time management skills

By reducing excessive workloads and supporting students in managing a balanced course load, as well as supporting their students through the instruction of effective study habits and time management skills, they can better prepare students for their academic demands.

Families play just as critical–if not more so–a role in helping their children achieve a successful balance of responsibilities. Parents should closely examine their child’s commitments to sports, clubs, enrichment programs, and other extracurricular activities to determine if the time they’re spending on these endeavors is conducive to a healthy balance with school. Additionally, families need to work together to create a realistic, balanced schedule that allows enough time for sufficient sleep, relaxation, and family.

A major part of the problem is, fortunately, a very correctable one–time management. According to one study, 55% of high school students’ stress is a result of procrastination or poor time management. The same study also revealed that 81% of students multitask while they’re doing homework, which results in inefficiency. Both schools and families need to explicitly teach effective time management and study skills to help students become more efficient.

One way families can start is with this time scheduling worksheet that Dr. Seamster introduced during the presentation. Using this worksheet helps families:

• Collaborate on a weekly schedule.
• Block off time for sleep, meals, personal hygiene, and family time.
• Identify and adjust commitments as needed.

By visualizing their commitments, families can identify and address overloading issues. Here’s an example of what a completed sheet may look like for a typical school day.

As for schools, a couple of ways they can mitigate student overload is to implement strategies to reduce homework load and to support balanced schedules. An example of one such strategy is the in-class homework campaign. By allocating specific class periods for homework, schools can help students complete assignments more efficiently and observe variations in homework completion times. This approach can also provide valuable insights into how homework affects students’ stress levels and productivity.

While it’s certainly a challenge ensuring your teenager is getting enough sleep and has a balanced schedule that won’t cause too much stress, it can be done! Using these strategies and tools, you can help your high school student find the right mix of sleep, study, and play.

Watch our webinar recording here, and be sure to join us for our next Coffee & Connections presentation!