Imagine you are sitting in class writing a paper and listening to music. Your fingers are typing away as you scratch things off of your paper. All the sudden you look up from working and see your teacher staring out at you holding their hand out. You did not see anything wrong with listening to music because it is not distracting anybody else and you are working on the paper like everyone else. She takes your headphones and you feel eyes beaming at you the rest of class so you struggle to focus. The rest of the class you do not get anything done. This is a common thing among students who believe listening to music is good for their studies. However the school rule states, “Students may have earbuds during transitions to class. However, only one may be listened to during transition time, to allow for the hearing of announcements and/or staff direction,” meaning we can only have headphones before/after school and in the halls.

          However, our own Mrs. Kirby Weaver says that, “It’s like a lot of things with teengers unfortunately the majority of people would do what they’re supposed to do and do it when it’s appropriate. But then there’s this percentage of students that would not use that privilege the way they should.” She talks about how she thinks it would be a good thing to have students listen to music during independent time, but believes some students would take advantage of that privilege. 

          Freshman athlete, Natalie Burris claims that, “I think we should be able to but only when doing independent stuff. I can only focus when I listen to classical music.” She thinks it would be a distraction because of the type of music people listen to and how much work they get done. Burris gives another reason for taking the opposite side, “I think we would end up getting less done and in more trouble because of people having their phones out and being on them when they should be listening or working.” Natalie also told me that test scores will drop because of people being on their phones while they should be working. 

          Now Victoria Gevorgiyan declared, “I focus better when I’m listening to music.” She starts on how she doesn’t agree with the rule because some students really do better when they have music and how would teachers know if someone can actually focus better when they’re working until they try it. “Now I get why we can’t like when the teachers are talking but I think we should when we do independent work.” This same thing came up with Mrs. Weaver, they both believe that listening to music during non-instructional times. We talked about test scores and how they would rise or drop if we got the opportunity to listen to music during independent work time. Gevorgiyan also said,“I think they will go up because we will focus better and get more done.” Studies show that listening to music while studying raises the chance of passing by 40% due to helping memory. 

         In conclusion, students should be able to listen to music during independent and non-instructional times because they will focus more, they will get more done, and test scores will go up.