Students Drowning in Homework

Currently, a lot of students are finding it difficult to complete every assignment they have. Not every assignment is truly beneficial to a student’s comprehension of the material presented, and therefore teachers should transition their focus on homework to classwork, assigning homework to supplement what was learned in class instead of to introduce new material. 

Many students have trouble keeping up with the work assigned to them, especially when they have heavier course loads. AP and Dual Credit teachers tend to assign more homework, as the level of the material to be covered in class is high. However, it becomes difficult for students to balance assignments when all eight teachers assign lots of work. 

“I think it is difficult trying to juggle having a bunch of AP teachers give an extreme amount of work in order to prepare for a test at the end of the year, but with all teachers trying to give an extreme workload it adds up and can be very overwhelming for a student,” senior Riley McDaniel says. “[Especially one] who doesn’t just focus on school and has extracurriculars and things outside of academics.”

When the majority of teachers give a heavy workload, students begin to skip assignments - especially because of the new grading policy - and question whether every assignment sent home is really beneficial. With formative assignments weighing only 10% of a student’s overall grade, more and more have begun to skip such assignments, but are still passing their classes. 

“I find myself skipping some formative assignments because I know they won’t really matter in the end,” McDaniel explains. “A lot of smaller assignments that teachers [give] will be for individual topics within a large unit, and at the end of the day students aren’t going to memorize every little thing in a unit [...] that won’t show up on the test anyways.”

However, some teachers strive to be conscientious of heavy workloads, and implement different policies and teaching styles in their classroom to combat student stress. 

“I don’t assign homework, I only assign classwork,” Agricultural Science teacher Joe Amey states. When asked if his assignments supported his students’ learning, Amey replied: “Yes, because it is not an overabundance, but it is enough for them to either learn more or learn what's been given to them for their future needs. It's not overwhelming.”

Instead of overwhelming our students with assignment after assignment, there should be new policies implemented to regulate the amount of homework assigned.

“I believe homework is a bad thing, I don’t think teachers should focus on so much homework, they should focus on classwork and teaching the material” Amey states.