For those who finish their work, permitting dozing off to sleep will bring better joy to students

As students reach the stage of an upperclassmen in Korea International School Jeju; grade 11 and 12 students are guaranteed at least one study hall to help reduce the academic workloads from taking AP classes.

Study hall itself is formally defined as the period of time in school curriculum set aside for study and preparation for schoolwork. Based on the definition above, sleeping during study halls is a negligent behavior for students, in fact is specifically counted as an LLD (Low Level Discipline) that could lead to a punishment of a day in-school suspension if being striked 10 times.

Despite that, one should still consider how student perspectives and teacher perspectives might vastly differ regarding sleeping during study hall.

“I see some students watching youtube and taking mental breaks, and of course sometimes I see students sleeping,” notes period 6 study hall teacher Kate Wilke, attesting to the typical highschooler’s behavior during this period.

While some students do actually spend their time effectively catching up with any assignments given to them, because the majority of the students in study halls are 12th graders, by means of having less homeworks than other grade level students due to completing most of college applications, they tend to use their time sleeping more often than juniors. This results in them receiving consecutive LLDs from sleeping and leads to such consequences like losing the senior privilege, which includes signing out of class.

In view of the reasons above, KISJ students express great unfairness for receiving sleepings during study halls when students believe sleeping is one of the ways for taking a break without disturbing others that can better help perform for their next classes.

“It’s better to sleep for 80 minutes than to keep drousing during school time,” says grade 12 student Minseo Jang who currently has received 6 LLD from sleeping in study halls.

While study hall teachers believe that sleep and school don’t match since sleeping in the day is not an effective replacement for sleeping at night, in the student's perspective, they believe that having the opportunity to rest a little more in the morning could allow teens to “offset some effects of a disturbed night of sleep.”

Minseo adds that “sleeping is important because sleeping helps us to freshen up our minds, which helps us with our memory and all.”

It’s important to note that sleep deprivation is a common issue among teenagers that isn’t a matter of one to control it. “Although it would be the most ideal thing for students to sleep early and wake up early for school, realistically speaking, this is quite difficult,” explains KISJ alumni Avril Chung, “Senior students should have the right to choose what they need to do, as long as they do it responsibly.”

As a way of calming this situation of seniors receiving LLDs that could risk them with in-school suspension, students are consistently expressing and favouring teachers to be lenient on the behaviour for making up for their exhaustion and lack of sleep during the 80 minute of study hall.

However, Kate Wilke acknowledges that there’s no guarantee of “trying to make up for sleep that’s lost in the night, when you're supposed to have a long continuous hours of sleep, trying to make up for that sleep up with incremental sleep throughout the day isn’t an effective use.” She further expresses her concern of whether permitting sleeping will “motivate more students to fall into that category of behaviour.”

With approval or disapproval of the topic expressed depending on the interpreter, be the student or teacher, only one understanding is widely interpreted the same.

Sleeping during school hours is definitely not an appropriate behaviour, nevertheless being risked and punished with a suspension isn’t either. Korea International School Jeju should consider undertaking a plan of modifying the KISJ LLD policy of sleeping during study halls, and it will be exciting to see how scheduling changes play out if possible.

“How we deal with the outcome might have some leverage to change,” Kate Wilke suggested, “School should advocate for a different consequence and outcome.”

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