For as long as people have been going to school, the common winter break length amongst High Schools across the nation varies between one or two weeks before Christmas and returning to school up to a week after New Years. When I heard a fellow student go on a rant about winter break being too short this year, it made me wonder “should winter break be longer?” Unlike your average high school, Glen Rock High School’s break length is not the same. This year, GRHS starts their winter break on Dec. 23 and returns to school on Jan. 2nd. What a short break! This is precisely why students are having a common request for an extended break.
Winter Break has become a time that all students look forward to during the first semester. Data from GRHS shows that 84% of students surveyed feel that break should be longer. This also leads to the question of “Why are we returning the day after New Years?” 58% of the same students feel that we should return to school in 2-3 days after New Years and not the following day.
Not only do students simply just want an extended break, Mental Health is also benefiting from a longer time period off from school. The Circuit Newspaper states “Extending [high school students’] break would be beneficial for the mental health of students, teachers, and all other school employees. A longer break would give students more to relax and rewind.” This is exactly the case in GRHS, as we witness the painful transition back to school after a shorter break.
After the long awaited break every student struggles to reenter school mode and focus. Even if we have a 3 or 4 day weekend, I struggle to get back into school mode and still feel as if it’s the weekend when back in the classroom. It’s a rough transition from laying in bed all day to waking up at 6:30 am and starting to learn at 7:50. Teresa Sapienza, a sophomore at Glen Rock High School, shared her thoughts on how returning to school feels. Sapienza said, “Going from getting enough sleep every night, I still feel the holiday spirit [while going back] to school. It’s super tiring and depressing.”
If this request is not addressed then it can lead to more complaints and an even larger struggle to return to school from the shorter break. If Winter break was extended to a few days after New Years and started a few days before Christmas Eve, then students and teachers would enjoy their break more as well as return to school in a much smoother way.