Over the next few weeks, senior Luke Graves has to write 15 college essays, collect teacher recommendations and meet with his college counselor — all on top of a heavy course load.
Churchill and Wootton both give students two homework-free weekends to combat high stress levels and provide extra time to work on college applications. Whitman should offer its students one homework-free weekend in the fall to give seniors a time to get college applications done early and another in the spring to give students a chance to study for advanced placement exams.
Wootton principal Michael Doran first implemented no-homework weekends three years ago to reduce students’ workload. The main idea was to encourage each grade to focus on other school related requirements during their homework-free weekend. Juniors can take an SAT and ACT diagnostic test, and seniors are offered in-school workshops on college interviews and college applications. Freshmen work on student service learning hours, and sophomores focus on standardized test prep.
Short term assignments often take precedence over college applications, and many seniors don’t realize how quickly college deadlines approach. Freeing students from homework for just one weekend a year would give students a chance to get non-academic obligations done.
Homework-free weekends would also give students time to simply have fun. Churchill is also prohibiting homework over Homecoming and Prom weekends this year so that students can enjoy those events without having to worry about school. Homework-free weekends would improve overall morale around school.
“I don’t care what high schools do to give their students some time, but we do need to,” Doran said. “I came from England, where we work bloody hard, too. I think every now and again giving students a break is a good thing.”
Exhausted Senior • Nov 16, 2011 at 10:05 pm
It’s not necessary, it would just be nice.
I agree with the article that came out today, allot a day for teachers to work on recs and students to work on essays.
Out of curiosity, what could go wrong? Why would it hurt to try, even if some or most teachers don’t keep it?
Lisa Leslie • Nov 15, 2011 at 1:28 pm
2 kool 4 skool
Jaded Senior • Nov 14, 2011 at 9:01 am
Honestly, I don’t think the class workload is as much the problem as what the author mentioned with “Short term assignments often take precedence over college applications, and many seniors don’t realize how quickly college deadlines approach” – this is true for EVERY long term assignment. I do think seniors should be given more than one weekend off for use on college applications, visits, etc. I never had problems with SATs, test prep, or SSL (and I honestly think that anyone who has problems earning the paltry 75 hours is simply not trying hard enough, because I haven’t actively searched out activities EVER and yet have 700 hours).
What Whitman really needs to do is simply provide more assistance for seniors struggling with the app process. I remember hearing about the “It’s Time!” packet and getting it in, thinking it was almost late, and then a month later some kids still hadn’t been told that they needed to turn it in. Seniors need to have group meetings with their counselors – I recall doing this in sophomore year only – where they can ask questions and be told exactly what needs to be done. The one in-class session counselors go around giving was too late and crammed for time. I had to ask four different people to clarify what needed to be given in to the transcript office and was still confused. The same goes for teacher recs, in fact. I talked to peers that hadn’t yet requested them in November, when you’re really supposed to ask at the end of junior year! Counselors need to get us this information and they are lagging and not giving people all the info that they need. Perhaps this is because they’ve done it for so long and now feel that some things are obvious, but we have no clue where to start and hello! This decides the course of our life! Please don’t be blase about it!
Back to the original article, I think it would be very nice but not necessarily needed. It’s the rest of the process that needs to be enhanced.
Whatever • Nov 4, 2011 at 9:18 am
Too bad most teachers completely ignore homework “free” weekends. This is especially true in honors/ap classes.
Tupac (!) • Nov 1, 2011 at 6:08 pm
This article, along with its comments, articulates a fundamentally flawed sense of entitlement that I hear all around Whitman.
It is very obvious and highly publicized that some classes, like many APs, have enormous workloads. Other classes, like many honors or on-level classes, have little or no significant workload.
As students, we have the right to choose classes to sign up for. If you sign up for a difficult class because you like how it looks on a transcript, then you must accept the work! It’s a two way street.
As for college applications, I would say the same thing. If you want to apply to 15 schools, that’s your choice, but you must also accept the work.
It’s not fair to act as if the school system is obliged to give you more time to finish the work that you created for yourself. The responsibility goes to you and only you.
If you feel squeezed for time, make more time. Get up at 6 on weekends and get to work!
George • Oct 29, 2011 at 6:23 pm
I was a senior, and I lived! Time management isn’t a part-time gig. and at Pyle my Homework-Free weekends were among my most homework-filled…
Exhausted Senior • Oct 28, 2011 at 5:31 pm
But iggy we go to Whitman, the school where people say “OMG I read The Overachievers!” when you tell them you go to it. It’s not one of those schools in Waiting for Superman where the kids can leave in the middle of the day and no one cares, half my teachers wont even give me a grade until I turn in a sick note. The US isn’t near the bottom because of pressure-cooker schools like Whitman where an 800 on the math section of the SAT is in the 94th percentile while it’s 99th in the rest of the country. That being said, yeah SSL isn’t that bad and we really do stress ourselves out, but that doesn’t mean a day off wouldn’t be nice 🙂
iggy • Oct 26, 2011 at 12:11 am
I don’t see it so black and white as everyone else. I think we load ourselves up with activities – from extracurriculars (athletics, clubs, etc.) to spending hours online (surfing, texting, playing with fb) to painting our toenails, etc., etc. If you subtract all that stuff, time spent doing homework and writing essays is far from all consuming.
SSL is hardly a burden, either. Earning the required 75 hours over 7 years is less than 1 hour per month. The same figure is true no matter how late you come to MCPS.
The article ends with saying time is needed for just fun. But we already use time for reasons of our own choice – that’s the reason our lives feel so compressed, not homework! You want to appreciate all-consuming homework? Spend time in Asian or European countries where education is much tougher than in the US. There’s a reason why the US ranks near the bottom of first-world countries in education.
Parent of a senior • Oct 25, 2011 at 6:46 pm
As a parent of a senior, I totally agree that there should be time allotted for students to take care of their college preparations. There seems to be no lightening of the senior load in classes, no understanding of the extra demands of visiting colleges and preparing applications, or studying for the SAT.
I think this piece goes well with the other article students taking Adderol to enhance their school work… What are we doing to our children if they feel they need to take drugs to keep up??
Please give these kids a break – everyone talks about the stress load but there’s no real support – and this op-ed reflects that.
Exhausted Senior • Oct 24, 2011 at 4:22 pm
This article is 100% correct. If every other school is doing it, we are at a disadvantage because that’s time they’re getting to perfect their essays that we are not. As a senior, I am getting really sick and tired of having to prioritize various assignments so that instead of putting effort into learning required material like reading World packets, I’m stuck putting it into busy work, spending two hours hand drawing a Hamlet shield (because that’s so much more educational than printing the pictures) so that I can get a decent grade in English. If we had just ONE homework free weekend to work on the 10 college essays due next Tuesday, it would be a lot easier to put effort into regular school work that would otherwise have to be rushed. My friends in private school have the 31st off as their senior skip day and they had another day off just to work on essays. Why shouldn’t we get the same advantages as other schools?
George, are you a senior? We’ve spent the past 3–nay, 11–years working on time management, how about we continue perfecting this particular skill at a less stressful and frankly awful time of our lives? Also if teachers weren’t following it than the administration should have enforced it better, I mean even Pyle gets homework free weekends!
George • Oct 23, 2011 at 9:51 pm
Haha, for real? I think of Andrew Jackson’s quip: “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it!” This used to be a thing at Whitman, but teachers wouldn’t follow it. Time management and planning are important skills too.