Students at Deering High School Stressed as Homework Ramp Up Causes Less Free Time

By Luke Bower

Monday, October 5th, 2026

By the time the Deering High School student gets into bed late into the night, he feels excruciatingly tired: a grueling cross country practice followed directly by work, and when he finally gets home he remembers that he still has a mountain of homework for all of his classes and a summative test to study for. After finishing dinner, he quickly transitions to completing his work and studying and hops into bed. This isn’t just an extra-busy day for him, but rather a regular day in the school week. When he goes away for the weekend, he realizes that he was assigned homework for then as well, and he works quickly on Sunday to finish it in time for the deadline. 

“School takes up much of the free time I have after sports and work, which can make it difficult to ever do anything after school, especially when the homework is very time-consuming.” said George Davidson-Drexel, a sophomore at Deering High School. When asked about his stress levels, Davidson-Drexel expressed: “I usually feel moderately stressed during the school week, mainly due to homework and other school related things such as an upcoming test.” 

Iylarose Willis, a junior, has similar experiences at home, and she likes to do most of her homework before 9:00 PM. “Words start swimming in front of me [at 9:00], so I try to do homework when I get home from school or practice to get it out of the way.” She also remarked that “the balance works well enough that it's more of a background ‘don’t forget about homework’ [sort of] thing, but every once in a while I definitely get overwhelmed. Like when there’s suddenly two tests and textbook readings, etc.” 

They are both taking advanced and AP classes, so it would make sense that they would have a lot of homework, but as a result they don’t have the free time like other students have. Both also have a little homework on the weekends and agree that it isn’t hard to do. Willis expanded on this, saying that homework will “[bleed] into your weekends so when you leave for a weekend, [you] come home and go “oh shoot, I’ve still got work to finish.” Mr. Brooks, a teacher at Deering High School, teaches AP Language and Composition at the school. “In AP classes…, students decide to take a challenge, and homework [should] be tasks that deepen the curriculum or have real practice at certain skills.” Brooks also works with students to help them manage their work and make it more manageable but he still likes to "give breaks at least once per week." This seems like a reasonable approach, but, as has been seen with these two students, they still have too much homework. 

As Willis says about homework: “As you move through high school you get more and more homework and that really reflects your schedule and stress outside of school. It's one thing to have three activities in an afternoon and no homework and a completely different, and way more stressful, matter to have homework along with those three activities.”