Falling Back
Daylight Savings Time is set to end at 2 a.m. on Sunday, November 3, 2019. This means thousands of clocks will need to be adjusted by moving the time back one hour. This “extra” hour of sleep is often a welcomed segue into fall. However, it also has some ramifications that require students to adjust to this new sense of time and limited daylight hours.
The new time shouldn’t be interpreted as an opportunity for elementary students to stay up later or alter their overall routines. To be clear, implementing the Daylight Savings Time dynamic does not just impact a day in the spring when the clocks move up and a day in the fall when those same clocks fall back. DST was designed to expand citizens’ access to daylight outside the traditional workday, allowing them to have additional time outdoors enjoying the light of day, as it were.
There are a plethora of articles which advocate for extinguishing DST; however, there are a similarly established volume of articles embracing DST for any number benefits, such as its association with the decrease in the number of automobile accidents. The dynamic behind these statistics seems to be pretty straightforward: accidents are easier to avoid in the daylight versus the dark. This can be especially important when one considers that schools have two, vulnerable populations in transit each day. One is the population of novice drivers who just passed their driver’s examination and travel to and from school each day. The other, perhaps even more vulnerable population, involves the thousands of children who ride the bus to and from school each day. Any opportunity to give those drivers transporting 40, 50, 60, or sometimes even 70 students at a time, any conceivable benefit when driving needs to be embraced. There are even studies, according to “Popular Mechanics’” Dan Nosowitz, which estimate that 366 lives could be saved each year if DST were to be embraced year round.
DST also impacts schools and students by extending the hours that they can extend practices during daylight without needing to supply costly lighting. It allows any number of extra learning opportunities, just given that it’s still light outside.
While it is nearly time to embrace the roll back or the termination of DST for a few months, this newfound darkness can, however, shed some light. With less access to daylight, students can be encouraged to start on their lessons earlier in the evening and, perhaps, even spend some quality time with their families. Parents can use this altered balance of daylight and darkness to talk to their kids, discuss the day, and plan for tomorrow. In reality, the days and months without DST will pass before long; and the seasons will change, and students will be preparing to end another term. The days upcoming may seem slow, but the years pass too fast. Using these darker months to embrace some family time, may just be the opportunity to shed some light in the darkness.
Dr. Angela Farmer is a lifelong educator, an author, and a syndicated columnist. She serves as an Assistant Clinical Professor of Honors for the Shackouls Honors College at Mississippi State University where she can be reached at afaremr@honors.msstate.edu.