Homework: just the sound of the word causes some students to shudder. High school teachers often pile on homework assignment after homework assignment every night, often making demands which students and parents complain hold very little academic value.
Too much homework has proven to rob students of sleep and contribute to high levels of stress and anxiety. This homework also prevents teens from pursuing extracurricular activities or exploring their interests outside of school, which could harm them when applying to colleges. However, amidst the busywork, one valuable project has been Project Citizen, and through this year-long project, juniors Maly Marsters ’16, Laila El Agizy ’16, and Vanny Charleson ’16 have decided to address this very homework issue.
Project Citizen is a nationwide curriculum designed for students in grades K-12 to take a passionate stand about a community issue and consequently utilize their political voices to make a change. This project is a huge part of Ridge’s curriculum for the Honors Government and Economics classes during junior year. Students form groups around a local issue they want to change, research the issue extensively, and eventually design an Action Plan, for which they attempt to garner public support.
El Agizy shares, “The current problem with homework is that it is too much, and the majority of it is busywork. Through our extensive research as a result of being assigned this problem, we have come up with the solution of block homework, which we hope will eliminate the aspects of busywork and stress.”
With their project, El Agizy, Marsters, and Charleson hope to conquer the overwhelming amounts of homework each night through the implementation of a “Block Homework Schedule.” This proposed solution would assign specific subjects to specific homework days, similar to the current testing days here at Ridge. This policy would require all English teachers, for instance, to assign homework on Mondays and Thursdays, and all Social Studies teachers to assign homework on Tuesdays and Fridays. The group believes that this will significantly reduce the amount of homework on a given day. Additionally, the policy would require other restrictions on homework, including restrictions on assigning homework and short-term projects simultaneously in the same class.
Homework is crucial for students to successfully understand material learned in class. However, because teachers at Ridge assign too much nightly homework, the homework actually produces an opposite effect of what was intended. Not only does the group hope that their proposal will address the mental health concerns in students, but they also hope to provide students with more time after school to participate in extra-curricular activities and explore their interests.
Marsters states, “We all know that teenage stress and anxiety is a problem. Our goal is to let the public know that there are easy solutions to this issue; with support from students, staff, and parents, we can use the homework block scheduling to decrease the stress level at Ridge and make it a more positive academic environment.”
So far, the trio has been very active in its attempts to gather support from students, staff, and parents. Exercising their political voice, the group members recently sent a letter to the Board of Education enumerating their concerns with the current policy and proposing their new solution. Additionally, in the next few weeks, they will publish a website, which will detail the homework issue, the proposed solution, and the action the group hopes to take to implement this solution.
Please contact the group at [email protected] for more information on their project or to share your support.