by Cuahutemoc Solorzano

Having trouble trying to sleep? Trying to balance too many things at once? Learn how to balance your sleep schedule before it leaves long-lasting effects on your health.

Sleep. Everyone needs it! But not everyone gets the suggested amount of sleep. According to Dr. Francesca Po, St. John Bosco’s Coordinator of Youth Ministry, an extremely low percentage of people only need six hours of sleep—most need around eight to nine hours.

The first four hours of sleep are spent ‘powering down’ while the other four are the actual time your brain is resting. Not getting enough sleep will cause individuals to have less patience the next day and be prone to irritability, according to Dr. Po.

Sleep is important and a lack of it could have long-lasting effects. Fortunately, there are ways to fix a bad sleep schedule.

Technology with blue screens, bright light and audio can keep people awake because they’re being stimulated by them, according to Dr. Po. Try to avoid using technology 30 minutes before going to sleep so the transition from being awake to sleeping is easier.

A lack of sleep may also leave lasting health effects. Sleep regulates the hormones and chemicals in the human body; thus, a lack of sleep will lead to an imbalance of hormones and chemicals in the body, according to Mr. Solorza.

There are three important hormones when it comes to sleep: cortisol, GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid) and melatonin, according to Mr. Solorza.

“Cortisol helps to wake us up and should decline by nighttime to help us rest. GABA is a neurotransmitter that relaxes us and is usually low in count with sleep deprivation. [Melatonin] is the hormone that helps us relax and fall asleep,” said Mr. Solorza.

An imbalance of hormones makes athletes more injury-prone and causes students to lose the ability to focus and think critically. Individuals deprived of adequate sleep will have little to no emotional stability because their hormones can’t regulate their body, according to Mr. Solorza.

Some students are deprived of sleep because they’re busy juggling extracurriculars, school and college at the same time. Trying to manage all of these things without sleep will increase stress. In order to manage a multitude of responsibilities, a student will need sleep or else they’re more likely to perform poorly.

Jayden Garcia, a junior at SJB and a participant in theater and the Bio-Medical Pathway, shared his experience trying to juggle many responsibilities.

“My sleep schedule is all over the place. Sometimes, I manage to get a good amount of sleep, but I tend to stay up quite late, especially when I have a lot of homework,” said Jayden.

Essays, projects, tournaments—whatever a student might be part of will often lead them to prioritize certain responsibilities over others. But they should prioritize their health.

“Once, I pulled an all-nighter to complete a project and the next day, I found it difficult to concentrate in class,” said Jayden. “Socializing with my friends also felt strange, as if I was not present.”

Poor sleep will have a domino effect on a student’s performance. If they’re unable to focus, then their assignments will decrease in quality. This applies to anything a student may be part of: clubs, performing arts and so on.

Stress and being unable to go to sleep go hand-in-hand. An individual unable to sleep may find it difficult because they are stressed and a student that isn’t getting enough sleep will experience increased stress.

“Stress makes it more difficult to sleep. If I am really worried about something, I have even more trouble going to sleep, which makes me more anxious,” said Jayden.

There are ways to create time for a healthy sleep schedule, though it requires more grit than a usual student might have. Julia Gisel, a student from St. Joseph’s High School with many responsibilities, shares her strategies.

“The way I normally balance all of these activities is by doing all of my homework right when it is assigned, making use of free time in class and [study hall],” said Julia. “When I come home from my various after-school activities, normally around seven to 8pm, I have dinner, then take time to do some of my hobbies and then go to sleep.”

Maintaining a consistent sleep schedule becomes difficult when technology is a core part of most individuals’ lives. It is used for communication, entertainment and so on. Since it takes next to nothing to use technology such as a phone, it becomes difficult to stop using it.

“I try not to go on my phone before I go to sleep,” said Julia. “It’s difficult. I do often find myself scrolling through TikTok to fall asleep, especially on weekends.”

Sleep is perhaps the most neglected part of the trinity of health, as stated earlier by Dr. Francesca Po. Responsibilities are important but sleep is more important to your overall health.

“Prioritize your sleep, as it will have an effect on most other elements of your life, like mental health, school and sports performance and relationships,” said Julia. “Even if it means not getting a homework assignment in on time or not being able to watch a show you were looking forward to, sleep is more important to your overall physical and mental health than anything else.”

Fortunately, Mr. Solorza knows some methods to form a healthy sleep schedule.

“We need to train ourselves to ‘wind down’ as our bedtime approaches. It helps to try and sleep around the same time each night. Finding a calm activity an hour or so before bed helps us calm down. [It’s extremely important to] avoid screen time. We are phone addicts, but the light from phones pauses our brain when it’s trying to transition into sleep mode,” said Mr. Solorza. “Avoiding sugary foods or caffeine drinks before bed and, my personal favorite, trying to calm the mind and avoid thinking of the challenges tomorrow will bring as you try to sleep.”

For an in-depth discussion of sleep and how it affects the body, consider visiting this link. To learn more about how sleep deprivation can affect the body, consider visiting this link.

by Josue Sanchez, co-Editor-in-Chief

Developments in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and chatbots, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and DALL·E, have presented a wide array of opportunities (or temptations) for students, which begs the questions: how can we use AI well, and is there any value in it?

It’s not a reach to say that most students across the country have at least heard of ChatGPT. The chatbot, released by AI research company OpenAI in November 2022, has presented a fundamental shift in the modern discussion around artificial intelligence technologies and programs.

The ramifications of these technologies extend into various facets of life. For example, the widely-known SAG-AFTRA protests in 2023 began because actors and script-writers for movies were concerned about their employers utilizing these technologies, pushing human experiences out of motion pictures.

AI tech has even entered the field of law, with the development of DoNotPay, an AI company that has developed a “robot lawyer,” which allegedly contests erroneous parking tickets for users.

Perhaps most notably, artificial intelligence programs have been affecting the realm of education. As these services are used more and more by students, teachers have resorted to detecting the use of AI-written work in student essays and projects. New websites, like GPTZero and QuillBot, as well as existing software like Turnitin, a commonly-used plagiarism checker, have allowed teachers to monitor student work.

There is an argument, however, that AI technologies are being mismanaged within schools. Is it possible for AI to be beneficial to the learning experience? Or rather, should it be removed from the field of education altogether?

Before addressing these questions, it is important to understand how these chatbots work. When any AI-powered program receives a prompt, whether it is for an image of a cat or an opening paragraph for an essay, it relies on a large collection of training data, typically made up of everything on the Internet. When a user types something into the chatbot, the program makes predictions about what each consecutive word should be, based on the information it has from across the Internet. 

This applies everywhere. Asking for an AI drawing of a cat would take information from images across the Internet and use these images to generate an “accurate” response to the prompt. While this is already controversial by itself, the ramifications it could cause in the world of schooling are much greater. Teachers have varying opinions on the use of AI in education.

One of these teachers is Ms. Megan Fennell, the current Social Studies Department Chair, as well as a social studies instructor for both sophomores and seniors. In her time at Bosco, she has seen the impact of AI technologies in education. Her classes generally focus on more in-class work rather than online essays and activities, meaning that she has not seen as much AI work when grading.

That being said, she still believes that AI makes the learning experience less impactful, as it can just “do” the work for students who don’t want to do much.

“I think it dumbs down people, especially since a lot of kids and even adults don’t know how to use AI properly,” said Ms. Fennell. “If you just let them go free range, it can be dangerous.”

Teachers have also learned to tell when students are using ChatGPT, even with rapid developments in the technology.

“I will know if you’re using AI, because I know what you’re capable of,” said Ms. Fennell. “I know your sentence structures. I know what you know, so it can be easy to detect.”

This view is shared by other instructors on campus. Mrs. Michelle Tracy, a current English teacher for freshmen, juniors and seniors, has also seen the rise of AI in schooling. Being in the English department, likely the department that is most affected by AI, she has had to take extra measures to ensure that work is truly student-written.

“With AI, you can completely generate something that’s not yours,” said Mrs. Tracy. “It’s added another dimension to the way we have to detect plagiarism in the classroom.”

She believes that it is much harder to ensure that a student is capturing any information from school, and that this is not just affecting the English department.

With that in mind, the issue is not clear-cut. Some believe that AI can also be used as a tool to help with learning and that it can provide some positive benefits to the learning environment. Many students believe that AI isn’t a tool for cheating, but rather a tool for learning, facilitating the process behind certain assignments.

“It gives me information or ideas for certain assignments, and I make sure to use it responsibly,” said a Bosco senior. “In some cases, I think of it as almost like a Google search but in a more efficient form.”

Others feel that it can serve as a good tool when thinking of ideas.

“I only use it to build ideas when brainstorming on an assignment,” another Bosco student said.

“I feel as though AI can be a double-edged sword,” said someone else. “Yes, the amount of time it can save you when it comes to reading and writer’s block is substantial. But, it is dangerous to the foundation of the younger generations’ reading comprehension, stamina and creativity.”

This belief is shared by teachers as well. Many teachers believe that there are indeed positive ways to use the technology—not to do the assignment, but to help with the process behind said assignment.

“I think it depends on how they want to use it,” said Ms. Fennell. “It has to be up to the teacher and the discretion on what exactly [a student] wants to use it for.”

This belief is also shared by other teachers. Mrs. Tracy, for example, believes in the positive ways that AI could be used to help students comprehend more material. 

“It could be a tool for them to actually use their editing skills or use their analytical skills,” said Ms. Tracy. “I think there are beneficial ways that they can be used.”

At the center of this discussion is the topic of appropriate usage. It’s not necessarily about using the AI, but rather how it is used. A student could use it to generate their entire essay on a book they have never read.

However, it’s important to acknowledge that there is a gray area: how about a student turning in their original college applications essay to ChatGPT and asking for improvements? How about asking it for ideas that a student can use to develop their own essay? How about a student asking ChatGPT for sources?

The answers to these questions are not clear. Therefore, it’s best to be mindful of the way that we use these technologies and really think critically about whether the technologies are doing the work, or just helping us with it.

AI has a lot of value for students, but it also carries a lot of risk. Our school, much like dozens of schools in the region, has the purpose of preparing all our students for their future careers and studies. In order to be prepared, it is important for students to actually learn things and to expect the unexpected in life. This is an important part of our lives, and ourselves.

The major question: is AI hampering our ability to learn and to face these challenges, or not? The answer to that question will be rooted less in the AI technologies themselves and much more in the habits of the human beings who use them.

by Nels Nelsen

California State University, Long Beach graduate, former resident of Mexico and St. John Bosco’s new world language instructor, Mr. Oscar Del Real, answered questions about his experiences in education and in life.

Q: How long have you been an educator? 

A: I have been a teacher for two years, but I was a teacher’s assistant for three years before that.

Q: Why did you come to teach at Bosco? 

A: I saw an ad at EDJOIN and decided to apply. I thought it was a good match for me since I am a Catholic myself.

Q: How long do you plan to stay teaching at Bosco? 

A: I hope I have the opportunity to teach here long-term and teach for many years.

Q: Where did you grow up? 

A: I grew up in a small town, or at least it was by the time, called Tepic, Mexico.

Q: Where did you go to high school? 

A: I did two years of high school in Mexico at a high school called CECYTEN and four years at Bell High School.

Q: What was your best subject overall when you were in school? 

A: I was good at math and Spanish. 

Q: Where did you go to college and what did you study? 

A: I graduated from Cal State Long Beach with a bachelor’s degree in Spanish.

Q: What made you want to teach a world language? 

A: I was an ESL student because I did not know how to speak English at all. I fell in love with the English language and I thought to myself that it was a great opportunity to teach my own language to others.

Q: Favorite Movies/TV shows? Why are they your favorite? 

A: My favorite TV show is That 70’s Show, Friends or How I Met Your Mother. I love them because they are comedy shows and also because those shows helped to learn the language.

Q: Do you have any hobbies?

A: I love to play video games, tennis and to read.

Q: Any Personal interests? 

A: I love games, hiking, exploring new places as wellas learning new hobbies and skills. 

Q: If you were stranded on an island, what three things would you bring and why?

A: I would bring a ball, so I could play and feel like the days pass faster. I would also bring a flare gun and a lighter.

Q: If you could eat dinner with anyone in history, dead or alive, who would it be, where would it be and why? 

A: Probably Nikola Tesla. He is a physicist that I admire a lot, although he was kind of cuckoo the last days of his life. We could have coffee in a coffee shop where we could have a long conversation. 

Q: What keeps you motivated every day? 

A: This is a hard question, and I think one thing that keeps me going is God and my students. I thank God for my life everyday and for the purpose that God has given me, which is to teach. 

Q: What countries have you been to?

A: I have only been to three countries: Mexico, USA and Canada.

Q: Where is your favorite place to be?

A: In an airplane. And it is not because I love to travel, but because I love to learn how to pilot airplanes.

Q: Do you like sports? If so, which sports?

A: I do like sports. I like tennis, boxing and mixed martial arts. 

Q: Favorite fictional character? Why? 

A: Iron-Man. I love how he is always worried for humanity and also how independent he is. 

Q: Favorite food? 

A: I love ramen. 

Q: What is your favorite memory? 

A: It is difficult to decide, but if I had to choose I would say that playing video games with my family and spending time with them.

Q: Any big plans for the future?

A:  I do not think I have any big plans for the future at the time. However, I look forward to whatever life puts in front of me.