Last spring, STA junior Maggie Cussen registered for AP American literature, AP US history, AP biology, honors pre-calculus, college Latin III and social concerns. Although she was aware of the difficulty of her classes, she said her summer homework caught her by surprise: 2 novels, 15 textbook chapters, 5 sections of Latin grammar and 5 tests within the first week of school.

‘I expected [extra homework] for the AP classes I was taking,’ Cussen said. ‘But I still thought it was a lot.’

When principal for academic affairs Barbara McCormick examined a schedule like Cussen’s, she was amazed.

‘I don’t even have words for that,’ McCormick said. ‘Did you even have a summer?’

According to McCormick, teachers at STA assign summer homework because it engages students over the three-month break. Most teachers require students to read or review material and come prepared for a test within the first week of school.

‘Students work hard while they are [at STA], so when they get to summer, they should be in their leisure state,’ McCormick said. ‘I see [students] working on some of this and if it’s a review, it’s a review, but if it’s all new material, I really feel there is a missing element, which is the educator.’

According to AP biology teacher Renee Blake, the administration strongly encourages teachers to assign summer homework. Blake said that while it may be unfair, it is often essential to keep students from falling behind.

‘With the AP level, the college board requires that we cover 50 chapters in a year,’ Blake said. ‘The only way we can get through all the material is to do some of it over the summer.’

McCormick acknowledged that STA is a college preparatory school and if students choose upper-level courses, teachers should expect more from them over the summer.

‘[When] students fall into the category where they are hitting three or four of those [upper-level] courses, they really have to dedicate much of their summer in order to do it right,’ McCormick said.

However, McCormick said that students can only handle so much homework in one summer. She hopes to eventually introduce interdisciplinary summer assignments to teachers so material may be used for multiple classes.

‘If we could do more interdisciplinary thinking about the assignment, we could really find something that applied to all courses,’ McCormick said. ‘I understand we are college prep, we gotta push, gotta have high performance, but I think we have to do it realistically.’