Musical week has just passed for a number of students and as winter sports begin, students are beginning to worry about their homework load. This isn’t new. Advanced Placement classes, on average, assign an hour or more of homework a night. Multiply that by two or three, and that’s over four hours of homework a night – not including any other classes a student might be taking. This is ridiculous.
Teachers need to realize that students don’t have the time or resources for multiple hours of homework. I realize that all teachers think that their class is more important than any other class, but chances are that students will pick two classes to pass and give up on the others because they don’t have time to complete their homework. Teachers need to cut back on the homework they give out, and respect that the students in their classes also have part-time jobs and multiple extra-curricular activities.
Some would argue that any student in an AP class should expect it because it’s a college course, and they should accept their responsibility there-in. I argue that an AP class is not a college class. It is an Advanced Placement class or an honors course. AP classes give students the option to get college credit in a high school setting. That’s right. A high school setting.
That means that teachers have to understand the strain they are putting their students through, and understand that we are at school from seven in the morning until at least four in the afternoon. And as I stated earlier, many don’t get home until much, much later. In college, students attend up to three classes a day, each about an hour long. A student could plausibly start class at eight and be done by one.
Even with a part time job, this gives students the time to deal with the heavy workload. Teachers can’t give hours upon hours of homework while using the excuse, “this is a college class,” because it’s not true. We’re in high school, and I personally wouldn’t mind if teachers remembered that occasionally.
As many can attest, I don’t sleep. I wasn’t even IN the musical this year and I didn’t get home until after 10 on any given night. I go to sleep after one, and I rarely get all of my homework done. Some would argue that I get what I deserve – but everything I do counts. It all goes towards college, which is the goal of almost every AP student with a million activities.
So teachers, please remember that this is still high school. We have other responsibilities, and we don’t have the time that a college student has to do our homework. We aren’t dumb, but we aren’t Philip Kaul either. Teachers, your class is not the most important. We will not give your class extra attention, because chances are that we’ve been asked to give that same attention to all of our other classes. AP classes are college courses in a high school setting, and as a teacher, that means recognizing what that setting is.