As I’m going through homework assignments for all 8 of my classes, I’m also struggling to handle the pressure of being a junior, and being the oldest daughter. I inevitably crash, and ask myself: “ If I was in school right now and COVID did not exist, would I be as swamped with homework as I am right now?”. It’s a seemingly simple question, that has led me to a multitude of answers.

 From a student’s point of view, we usually tend to believe that we receive too much homework. This is especially for juniors and seniors that have to factor in college applications, and SAT’s on top of homework.  To get other students’ perspectives on the matter, I did an anonymous poll on my Snapchat. I asked the question “ Do you think you are receiving more homework online as opposed to what you received when class was held in person?”. 237 out of 348 students voted “yes! I believe we are getting more homework”  some even went on to explain on how “ we are juniors with a sophomore mindset”, “ a lot of the concepts being taught we never learned, and we are being graded on the scale of those before us that were taught certain criteria. “, “I can’t handle online school already and then adding AP’s and home life while trying to maintain a decent sleep schedule and social life keeping in mind that junior year is the most important year of your high school career, is very damaging to my mental health.”

And I personally agree full-heartedly with what’s being said. As a teen in this day and age, it is arduous to keep up our mental health while always in front of a screen. I spend about 5-6 hours on Zoom with teachers in the morning, and the rest of the day is used for online clubs and homework. Teachers tell us not to spend so much of our time online, but then they pile up assignments, which most of us can’t handle because we were never given the chance to learn how to handle the workload last year. Having school online is stressful itself, but when you add the never-ending amount of workload we receive, it’s hard to remember that we’re still kids, because we’re working like adults.

From a teacher’s point of view, they don’t believe they are giving too much homework, I asked Mrs. Watson; my sports medicine teacher, if she believed she was giving her students a lot of assignments and she stated, “ my class has less homework because we have a more efficient way of getting things done.” After asking her I decided to get a range of testimonials by asking 3 more of my teachers, 2 of them AP teachers. Mr. Connell says, “For us, you’re reading fewer texts and doing fewer things with them. If we were at school, You’d be annotating everything, doing questions for everything, AND doing the writing. We’re mainly focusing on the writing and decreasing the number of questions you’d be doing. Not sure about other classes.” Mr. Spencer says “I’m not sure if the volume is more, but for many students, much more of the content has to be self-taught with no shoulder partners to ask simple questions. And, factoring in the delays between emails/text/GC comments from teachers a simple problem becomes much more drawn out and therefore takes longer.  Simple typing skills can slow the processes down significantly for some people.  The huge difference between someone who types 80 words/min vs 10-20wpm.” Finally, my french teacher Ms.Smith states “I think it depends on who you ask.  What I hear from colleagues is some are giving the same amount, some less and some more.” Clearly, it all depends on who you ask. Some teachers believe they are actually decreasing the workload, while students feel it’s being increased.

After hearing my teacher’s testimonials I realized that it’s not that we are getting more homework, it’s the fact that we are receiving these assignments online. Since it’s online, it’s easier to forget assignments and to feel overwhelmed because our once resting place is now where we go to school. It makes students feel that if we were back in school physically, we never would’ve gotten as much homework as we do now. 

How about you? Do you think students are getting more homework Now that it’s online?  Or do you just think getting used to our new norm is going to take a little longer than we thought?