You write for what seems like hours. You can barely stand reading one more paragraph. The clock keeps ticking, and it is already late. You want a well-deserved grade, yet your mind keeps drifting. You want to reach over for your phone for a second, but you have to resist. As sweat dribbles down your forehead, you don’t know what to do anymore. “How did I end up here?” you keep asking yourself. You know exactly how you ended up here. Hearing the eight-letter word can send shivers and stings down some students’ spines.
Homework.
We all know it. We all do it. We do not like it. Whether the assignment is reading a few chapters, writing an essay, studying for next week’s test, or even just completing a leftover worksheet from class, plenty of students are apprehensive about homework for many reasons.
Homework became more important than ever during high school, as it contributes significantly to your grade. Some teachers give an automatic 0 if you don’t get your homework in by the beginning of class, which can easily bring your grade down. Some classes, especially advanced classes, are merciless with the amount of homework that is assigned. “There’s always a lot of new stuff that we have to do,” sophomore Sofia Vargas commented about one of her AP classes.
Because of this, many students are often left burnt out and overwhelmed by their work, and just want to give up. Obviously, giving up won’t get you anywhere except Flunkville. You desperately want to turn that C- into an A+, but the homework may feel like too much. So we have to answer a big question: How can students get in control of themselves and prevent an after-school meltdown from their homework? Let’s find out.
“Why Is Homework Even Assigned?”
Many students ask themselves this while buried under their worksheets, so we should start by answering it. As much as students moan about getting assignments, it’s important to remember to respect our teachers, as “it’s the teacher who has the grade and evaluates homework,” Librarian Stephen Nedell commented. Teachers have to be wise about what they assign to ensure their students can comprehend the subject to the best of their ability. “I don’t just give busy work to say, here’s something to do,” social studies teacher Richard Tivnan explained.
There are various reasons teachers choose to give their students homework. Most often, it’s “for practice,” or to “[prepare] for the upcoming lesson,” as put by Elana Mayer and Meghan Fitzpatrick. In a way, homework allows you to test the waters before you actually dive into the subject. Learning in school is only absorbing the information; without applying or practicing it, the information is not going to stick, and you’re more likely to forget what you learned by the end of the week. Nedell claimed that “it can be a very useful way to reinforce learning.” Freshman Jeremiah Christalin also said it helps him “understand more stuff.”
Not only can homework help you learn the subject, but it can help you be more self-disciplined. Joshua Sellers says he assigns homework “to motivate students.” Learning to do your homework on time can benefit your study habits and “teach a certain amount of responsibility and preparation,” said. Mayer. Tivnan thinks learning to control your workload and life balance teaches “life lessons because as far as I’m concerned, this job is more about than just teaching the content.”
Homework also prepares you for the workload of college, which is especially important for high school students. The homework in college is difficult because in reality, everything is homework, and you have to kind of do everything on your own,” Fitzpatrick, who is a current college student, best put it. Homework is not just work for the sake of work; it’s work for the sake of growth.
How Homework Impacts Students
Regrettably, despite the great benefits that come with homework, there’s a reason it doesn’t have the best reputation among students. To put it straight, homework is not fun. If you come across a student who genuinely enjoys hours of tedious homework, then they either are highly intelligent and motivated or they’ve finally cracked and resigned themselves to their insane amount of homework. Possibly both. Vargas best summarized it as “I’ve never been the biggest fan of homework.” While Christalin commented, “I wish I didn’t always have to worry about school while I was at home.”
Senior Steven Rios said the class he gets the most amount of homework in is “Examining Criminal Justice,” where “a lot of the homework is research-based, and we have to summarize articles to annotate.”
Nedell revealed he also “did not like homework in high school,” and thinks “it’s better to air on the side of assigning less homework.” After a while, homework can “just become a burden,” in which it’s “no longer learning,” and something students “resent,” Nedell also admitted. When that happens, “it’s not productive anymore.” Nedell is also a former teacher, and he remembers seeing his own students and his own child as a student, and how homework was “very frustrating, especially when he was younger.”
It’s also important to keep in mind that some students may fall behind in their homework if they don’t understand the subject. “Some struggle with skill level [so] it becomes a challenge for them; some of them rise up and meet the challenge and others procrastinate or put it off,” said Tivnan. There’s also a “language barrier” for English Language Learners.
Another noticeable calamity of homework is the fact that it can add to and glorify burnout. Burnout is when you get so exhausted by your workload you start to lose track of yourself, often stressing more, rushing, or neglecting personal health. An opinion article in the student newspaper at McKinley High School titled “Students Face Burnout Epidemic” revealed the truth behind burnout being on the rise in schools, as of October of 2022, about “71% of [high school] students reported having experienced teenage burnout at least once in their life.”
There’s no doubt that the pressure to keep your grades up can be a contributing factor. You have to handle your relationships, extracurricular activities, clubs, home life, and personal endeavors, all on top of homework, so it can become stressful and cumbersome. Because education is always a priority, a student’s schedule can become quite packed, and drain the energy that they need to keep on trucking.
Burnout is inevitable in every student, and senior Jaslie Fang has had plenty of it due to the homework overload, to the point where “sometimes even over break or over vacation, I’ll just wake up and think about homework and the next thing to do,” causing her “day to become so stressful.” Fang handles burnout by stepping “away for a second” and “realizing “that even though it’s important, you should take some time for yourself.” She chooses to “step away for a day or two, and I’ll resume back to my work after I feel like I’m in a healthy mindset again.” Christalin also tries to “take breaks” between work sessions to keep his mind fresh.
Despite the infamous stereotypes, there are still plenty of students who enjoy homework, which in turn seems to be a result of how much you like the subject, the type of homework, and how well you are at completing the assignment.
Vargas has warmed up to homework in response to improving her grades. “I’ve gotten more lenient towards homework,” Vargas claimed, “The homework has helped me and I understand the topics a little better.” Vargas claims to have been a below-average student in middle school. “I kind of lost my motivation to do things, and I just didn’t feel like doing work.” which led to her grades dropping. However, going to high school and handling the homework demands allowed her to develop better study habits.
It is important to realize that sometimes you have to go through a dull and egregious experience in order to succeed. You have to remember “not everything’s a happy fun time; like if you’re at the gym and if you’re lifting weights,” Nedell put it, “It can be very tiring, but you need to be in shape; it’s the same thing with homework; sometimes you just have to know work is something you have to do.”
So, how much homework should be assigned? Who knows. Thankfully, knowing the pros and cons of homework assignments can help both teachers and students manage the workload.
The Types of Homework
How much homework should be assigned is a difficult process in itself, but there are a lot of types of homework teachers must choose from. Homework has changed a lot throughout the decades, and “the culture around homework has changed a lot,” said math teacher Joshua Sellers. He explained that when he was assigned homework, it was actually “optional and extra credit.”
As we have advanced into the 2020s, more assignments have become digital, which some teachers prefer over paper. Paper homework is “a lot of wasted paper,” as Fitzpatrick put it. Christalin prefers digital homework because “I’m already on the computer a lot.” Online assignments also require less precaution as they can not be lost, stained, ripped, or crumpled, which can be “irritating from the perspective of the teacher.” “Some kids lose things very easily, so it’s easier if it’s all in one place,” Fitzpatrick also commented. It also means students cannot conveniently “forget” assignments at home, because all you have to do is click a link.
Digital assignments also have the benefit of easily revealing student progress. Mayer assigns VHL, which allows her to “look at the amount of time that students spent on a given assignment so that I can see if they were struggling with something or if they breezed through it.” She can then use student skill statistics to decide if she should “backtrack and reteach that lesson,” to help guide students further. Online assignments also give immediate feedback, so students can learn and correct their errors. Paper homework is harder to gauge progress on, and doesn’t report mistakes once they are made.
However, it is also incredibly easy to cheat online by simply copying and pasting. Mayer says the biggest drawback of assigning digital homework in Spanish has to be “Google Translate.” It is so easy to get away with it, but it also harms you in the long run. The point is not to get the questions right immediately; it is to practice what you do know and grow from there. Making mistakes helps you slow down and recall what you learn. There’s no growth if all you need to do is copy and paste text into a translator. Sellers also mentioned math websites like DeltaMath and IXL can also be finicky and “nit-picky” if you don’t use the correct notation, so the right answers can still be wrong. This could vex students.
Also, it is way easier to get distracted on your Chromebook or phone than if you have to write out the assignment using pencil and paper, and “I think that sometimes it gets in your brain better.”
Tivnan, who describes himself as a “traditional and old school,” teacher also prefers assigning paper homework. He thinks that “when it’s on the computer, it’s too easy,” which is a byproduct of “cut and paste, googling stuff, and internet AI.” He noticed that students after COVID especially had a “drop in actual production,” and when he “made the switch back,” to mainly paper assignments, he got “way more production.” The fragile state of paper homework may also be a good opportunity to “teach organizational skills,” like sorting through your papers in a binder.
The type of homework that benefits students most is impossible to figure out because all students prefer different formats of the same thing. This is why some teachers would prefer it if “students had options to do homework,” and chose the one that best fitted their abilities or “connects to their interests,” whether it be drawing a comic book, presenting a slideshow, or submitting an essay. Not only would it be less repetitive, but you would have more fun with it.
Pass It In!
An important fact about homework is that it has to be passed in at some point. Some classes have students pass in their homework more often than others. Sellers estimates his Math 2 Honors class has a “completion rate around 90%,” while his Statistics CP class only has “a completion rate of 60%.” Tivnan’s AP government class does spectacularly with passing in their work, which he presumes is due to the fact that “they are mostly seniors [and] a few juniors,” so “[they’re] academically driven, I mean, these kids are going off to top-notch colleges”.
One of the most familiar problems with homework that every student has encountered is procrastination, the infamous strategy where you “make something tomorrow’s problem,” even if tomorrow happens to be the day it is due. Senior Mina Nguyen said that she “usually” does homework “every day and then on the weekends, I procrastinate and leave it up to Sunday night and do it the day before.”
Nedell suggested that “if the student does not feel connected it can feel like a drudgery.” When you do not connect enough to complete the assignment and have a goal, you’re less likely to put your maximum effort into it, and your grades won’t reflect your intelligence. It is especially hard to connect to homework when it is interrupting your free time. “School can be work, and when [students] are out of school… you feel you should be free,” only to run into “another chore, added Nedell.
It’s especially harder in our modern world, where there are “a lot of distractions that kind of, just, throw me off,” as put by Nguyen. After all, if you ask a high school student if they would rather play video games, chat with their friends, eat some food, or write a single paragraph of an essay, they will laugh in your face. Sometimes, “stuff going on at home” can be too distracting and busy for students, as Christalin mentioned.
We all know one of the biggest distractions can be the little cellular devices we carry everywhere, every day. It is an endless world, but also an endless distraction. Mayer suggested that “you should not be multitasking, doing things on your phone,” while doing other activities, as the time can quickly pass by, and before you know it, half an hour has gone by and you still haven’t finished the assignment.” It is important not to focus on the devices too much, as they are designed to suck you in. Phones are not inherently a distraction as long as you use them responsibly. It is best if you mute your phone throughout the day, and turn it off while you are working.
Another huge obstacle in homework is poor punctuality. So many students either submit incomplete, minimum effort, or late assignments due to rushing, which can take a hit to their grades. A late assignment now and then probably will not hurt you, but consistently being untimely may cause problems in the long run.
Mayer believes there are “many factors” that cause tardy work, and that the biggest one is “time management; if you have a lot of things to do, knowing what is and is not a priority can be very hard.” Mayer is forgiving on late assignments, only dropping 10% of points and allowing it to be submitted two weeks late at most.
However, some teachers are less lenient than others, so being late by a day can really cost you something. How lenient teachers should be about late homework is a difficult question to answer.
“Unfortunately, fairness and equity are not always the same thing. We also have to take into consideration people’s unique situations,” Mayer commented.
Homework Strategies for Astute Students
Now that we understand the whole deal with homework, it is time to return to the question from earlier: How can students get control of themselves and prevent an after-school meltdown from their homework? There are plenty of ways!
First of all, time management is key. “Budget a time and figure out when you’re going to sit down and do it,” said Christalin. Take advantage of the “Blue-Gold” day schedule. Christalin “usually” finishes his homework “a day after I get it.” Complete homework assigned on Blue days on Gold days. If you go fast enough, you may not have to catch up on the weekends.
Some students, especially forgetful ones, may also benefit from “an agenda book system,” suggested Tivnan. Agenda books are “little books with the days in them, and you can write your assignments,” so you can keep track of all your work in one place.
Also, try to find a good place to work on homework. If you tried to focus on writing an article for journalism while in your messy room inside a noisy house, you are probably going to end up distracted. Find a place you can regularly use to do your homework, like a quiet space outside or in the library. Most students also try to “finish it at school,” which is why some teachers offer time in class to finish homework. Sellers tries to dedicate the first 20 minutes of class to catching up with Mathia, and the last few minutes to working on the new worksheet.
Earlier, it was established that phones can be a problematic distraction, but you can also use your phone wisely to work on your assignment, such as listening to an interview transcript or “setting reminders to help me finish on time,” which Christalin uses.
One of the best ways to complete your homework on time is to avoid overestimation. Students tend to exaggerate how much workload they actually have, so they are more likely to avoid it. If you’re worried that your homework is going to take 3 hours to complete, chances are it actually will take less than two hours if you keep up a good pace.
You can also break up your homework into manageable chunks instead of an entire unbreakable bar. Say you have three chapters to read, notes to take about recent articles, a science worksheet to complete, and Spanish vocabulary you need to recite for an upcoming test, all of which are due by the end of the week. And it is Sunday. Sounds like a completely unmanageable handful, but that only is if you try and do everything all at once.
Pause and focus on one task at a time. Nguyen likes the “high priority [class assignments to] get done first and then lower priority classes get done last.” Start with the hardest tasks before the easier assignments, as it will make the work easier over time. Let us say that you have the hardest time doing vocabulary reciting, are decent at reading, and are excellent at science. Start by practicing your vocabulary to the best of your ability. Once you get decently far with it, continue your work by reading or notes. End it off by working on the notes. And you do not have to complete each task completely! Take your time and break each task down into more chunks.
One of the hardest things to do with homework is admitting you cannot do it on your own. Do not be scared to ask for help, whether it is from a friend, a teacher, or a counselor. Some students do their homework with their peers to complete it faster. “Late at night, I’ll Facetime one of my friends and we’ll have a study group,” Fang explained. Just do not get “help” from an AI generator!
Whatever tactic you use to complete your homework faster, remember: it is not about completing with flying colors; it is about absorbing the material, learning new things, and keeping up with the demand.
Conclusion
If there is one thing to take away from this article, it is that homework is an inevitable fate of every student, regardless of their age, grade, or desire. What really makes homework such a debated topic is the question of how much it helps students. Homework is assigned to improve students, but how it impacts them is complicated. Homework can be terrible, spectacular, alright, intriguing, or boring, it all depends on your attitude. Teachers try their best to give you a great education, so respect them by handling your homework.
In the end, no matter what you think of homework overall, we can all agree that the best part about homework is…
Finishing it!
