by Linden O’Brien-Williams

It’s a Tuesday night around 7:00 p.m. I just got home from a long day at school without frees and then another three hours working. I give myself about 30 minutes to relax, get a snack and play around on my phone, then I power my phone off and lug my backpack and netbook up the stairs to my desk. 

I open up my planner and see all the lines filled up with hastily written homework for each of my seven classes. Looks like today was a big day. My planner looks a little something like this:

• World Lit: read ch. 1 – 5 + START PAPER!!!
• Chem: vid lect + lab report
• Spanish: finish project & memorize sentences

… You get the idea. Without any frees during the day, I didn’t even get a chance to put a dent in my math homework. So I sit down to start the four-plus hours of homework that await me.

So many of my school days go like this, with each teacher assigning their own problems, projects or chapters. Put off one night’s homework and in the blink of an eye, you’re suddenly 10 chapters behind. When I have limited frees each week and other commitments like work, debate or sports, that three or four hours of homework gives me less and less sleep each night. Add in dinner, family time and a shower and I won’t be in bed until around midnight. 

Sure, it may sound like complaining, but I have to get up and repeat this cycle five times a week. Surely something – communication between teachers maybe – could be done to take some of the weight off students’ shoulders. 

The problem isn’t that I have too much homework. Normally, those three or four hours average out to an hour or less per class each night. I know at a college preparatory school like STA, I’m going to get a lot of homework. The problem, though, is when I have two papers and a test on the same day, not to mention the project due the next. These bigger assignments are not only time-consuming, but add a lot of  stress to students’ busy lives.

I understand teachers have to keep up their schedules and can’t just move test dates as they please. But, start with projects and papers, for example. If a history teacher knows that an English class has a paper on Friday, maybe they could hold off on assigning the project or make it due, say, Monday.

A little bit of communication between teachers and their classes would help. A little bit of communication between teachers of different subjects would help. If teachers took these small steps, not only will the students have the energy to stay caught up, but little by little, their stress will be relieved.