By Emmanuel Tovar, Estefanie Aquino
This year many APB teachers have been complaining about their students falling asleep in class and the students blame their teachers for the amount of homework that is being given to them that forces them to stay up late doing homework. Many even say that they do not have enough time afterschool to take a short nap throughout the day, that they rely on taking a nap in class.
When we interviewed students and asked them about how many hours of sleep they get on a daily basis, senior Victor Patino, responded with “I fall asleep late due to homework or falling asleep throughout the day, so I usually get a couple of hours of sleep.” When asked about the amount of times he has fallen asleep in class he answered, “ Once or twice in every class every other day because I do not find the class interesting or sometimes find them boring.” Victor is currently a senior which is one of the most stressful grade levels at APB due to taking AP classes and applying to college, so we decided to get a freshman’s perspective. The freshman we interviewed was no other than Anthony Garcia and when asked about the amount of hours he gets on a daily basis he answered, “ I get enough sleep by going to sleep early.” When asked if he has ever stayed up late and if he has why, he responded “ I only stay up on Tuesdays because I have late start on Wednesday.” As a follow up question we asked if homework has ever been the reason and he told us, “ I don’t really get a lot of homework and I usually try to finish it early to have more free time to myself.” Therefore the lack of sleep depends on how productive you are.
Since we have student’s perspective, we decided to get the teacher’s perspective. One of the teachers being Honors/ World History teacher Ms. Jang. We asked her if students falling asleep in her classroom was a problem and she told us, “Yes it is problem but when I see a student sleeping I only tap them on the arm and don’t ask why they are sleeping.” We also asked if she has ever wondered why the students fall asleep she answered, “ I would understand if the students were taking AP classes but I know the amount of work my tenth graders get, so they can’t say it’s because of homework.” Another teacher we interviewed was AP U.S. History/U.S. History teacher Mr. Sandoval. We asked him about how he feels about students falling asleep in class and he responded, “I’m worried because I know the amount of work my AP students get and I know how much time it takes for them to finish it.” We also asked what he thinks students should do to get enough sleep and he told us, “ They should start going to sleep at eleven so they can wake up at seven, and to start realizing how much sleeping is important.”
Overall, after interviewing APB students we came to the conclusion that many students fall asleep due to them considering the class boring and not having any interest in paying attention. Many have stated that the teachers are not to blame for them falling asleep in class but we also came to the conclusion that the juniors and seniors are getting too much homework unlike Freshman and Sophmores.
