Many students feel like they are under a lot of pressure. A study by CNN stated that about 56% of students have listed homework as their leading cause of stress. Unfortuantely, students’ and teachers’ points of view on homework are drastically different, especially when it comes to homework on the weekends. 

According to the ten minute per grade rule of homework, each grade a kid goes up their homework time would increase by 10 minutes. So by high school students would have 90 – 120 minutes of homework. Problems arise, though, when teachers aren’t aware of how much homework students receive in their other classes:  doing math for 35 minutes, reading for an hour, finishing history work for 15 minutes – it all adds up.

Teachers seem to agree that homework is beneficial to students when it comes to grades and success. 

Samantha Narciso, a former fourth grade teacher at 1st Avenue School, Newark, believes that assigning homework over the weekend is acceptable: “The homework that I like to give is always just practicing exactly what we learned.”

Ms. Danielo, n math teacher at NPHS, agreed:  “I believe that homework is for the student to self assess, to learn from their mistakes.“So in order to improve your skills, you have to practice just like a sport.”

Danielo assigns homework over the weekends in order to help her students remember the information. She gives about 30 to 45 minutes of work each night and her students, she said, are doing great.

Homework over the weekend may seem unfair to students who have after school activities like sports, marching band, or theater, but Narciso believes homework should and can be managed by busy students. 

“I think that making sure that every student learns is more important than acknowledging that people are busy,” she said.

Danielo agrees,  believing that giving homework to students who are busy prepares them for the future. It helps students balance work and hobbies which is a great practice.   However she doesn’t do this to torture her students. She does not grade homework or make it mandatory. She assigns it to help her students get ahead and remember.

Nevertheless, some kids find it unnecessarily challenging.  

Nathan Kuo, a freshman  at NPHS, is one of them: “I’ve got a competition, a marching band competition, this weekend. It’s going to take the entire day.”

He doesn’t know if he will have time to complete his homework and compete in the competition. 

It is an expectation for students to finish their homework, and most kids do. But it comes at a price:  the price of sleep.

Kathleen Wolf, a freshman, noted that:  “Teachers say that sleep is important but then assign so much homework.”

August Narciso, a sophomore at NPHS, said that he has stayed up to “11 o’clock at night” finishing homework.

In fact research from the CDC shows that an increase in sleep and a decrease in homework makes students more happy, successful, and less stressed. However, that doesn’t mean that homework should be eradicated completely.