You’ve just gotten home from a 7 hour school day and a 2 hour sports practice. After showering, eating dinner, and cleaning up around the house you check your phone… It’s 9 p.m. Time to do that homework you’ve been dreading. The next three hours are spent on finishing delta math problems, taking three pages of reading notes, and doing your document analysis. All the while, you’re frantically checking the time to make sure you submit it all to canvas by 11:59 p.m.
Unfortunately, having so much homework and not enough time to do it all is a reality for many Summit students. Teenagers live very busy lives and it’s hard to manage activities outside of school, whilst keeping up with homework and maintaining good grades. And honestly, the expectations to be constantly on top of it all are extremely unrealistic.
“It’s really stressful to know that when I go home I have all this other [homework]to get done,” says Sophomore Kaia Chopra.
It’s hard to understand why having so much homework is necessary, especially given the amount of time we spend at school every weekday. Why are some teachers unable to give up class time to work on assignments? Students shouldn’t have to sacrifice even more of their time for school. If you ask almost any Summit student you’ll find that they spend about 2-3 hours per night doing homework, if not more. When you crunch the numbers… that’s almost 10 hours a day dedicated to academics.
“We spend 7 hours a day at school, I feel like we don’t need to spend any more than that doing schoolwork unless we don’t finish in class,” said Chopra.
According to the National Society of High School Scholars, having “over two hours of homework a night can have detrimental effects on students’ stress levels and create a lack of balance in their lives.” This is clearly an issue for students at Summit, as many of them have had to spend more time on school work than on activities that improve their mental health, like spending time with friends and being active.
“I’ve been really stressed and haven’t been getting enough sleep since school started,” said sophomore Hazel Donnelly, who has been staying up late at night in order to finish her homework and other assignments.
And she isn’t the only one. Many students end up sacrificing their sleep schedules for school, and for junior Maty Hornbeck this has become a routine.
“I get home from water polo at 9pm and stay up till around 12 or 1am doing homework, and then during the weekends I end up sleeping in till 1 p.m. to catch up on sleep,” described Hornbeck.
The Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends that teenagers get at least 8-10 hours of sleep each night. And to make this a reality, Summit students would have to be going to bed around 9 or 10 p.m, which isn’t an option for those who want good grades and who are involved in activities outside of school (which is almost all of us).
However, despite the lack of time students have, some teachers argue that homework is necessary for building particular skills and that there isn’t enough time in class for teaching and class work.
“If we spend class time doing reading then there is less time for interaction between students and less time for my teaching” says teacher Frank Brown.
Summit Librarian and Capstone teacher Eila Overcash agrees, saying that homework is necessary.
“[Oftentimes] the homework contributes directly to what we’re doing in class the next day, for example, reading a chapter or writing something.”
Our Summit teachers do have a point. Some homework can be beneficial to students’ learning.
“Students typically retain 50% or less of what they hear, read or see in class; additional engagement with course content helps increase that retention,” read an article by the University of San Diego.
So while it’s obvious that teachers can’t simply get rid of and stop assigning homework, there has to be a way to reduce the amount being given out. That way the stress and anxiety that summit students are consumed with can lower. But for now Summit teachers recommend that students create schedules for themselves and learn to prioritize their work.
