“Break”-ing Backs

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Winter break is a time for family, a time to take vacations and a time for, nominally, a break from the stress of school life. For Junior David Brake, it is merely a prolonged homework assignment.

Brake is taking two AP level courses along with an honors English class as well as playing basketball on the varsity team.

He commented on the stress that comes with trying to balance work with his plans over break, “Just basketball and family life is tough enough to balance by itself, but with homework, it is just too much.”

Brake, along with a plethora of other juniors throughout CHS, will have to try and pack in the infamous author project into the two weeks they have for vacation.

Although this project is spanned over three and a half months, with the amount of homework in other classes, along with sports, the feat to begin the project during the regular schedule is almost impossible to accomplish.

Brake, for example, gets home every weekday with the exception of finals week, at around seven o’clock from basketball practice, he proceeds to do all of his homework, which, on average, takes him about four hours to do.

If he doesn’t take any breaks to eat or rest, which is obviously unrealistic, he will be finished by 11 o’clock. Based on data from WebMD, the least number of hours that a teenager should get is eight and already Brake is up an hour too late for that. So, on an average night for Brake, how would he possible afford time to do homework not due until after winter break is over?

Another student slammed by this overload of homework is junior Gabby Boeger. Just over winter break, she explains her load of homework, “Lets see, I have to read two history books, write an essay on those books, read three more books for English, and finish three critical analysis [of the books].”

I should clear this up just in case any teachers or administrators do not understand, but these are teenage kids. It may sound crazy, but they need time to relax, time to be with their families and friends. They are not machines and if book atop book atop book is piled on them, they can and will break.

A teacher may be able to justify the homework they have given with a simple “they chose to take a challenging class” or a “you could crank it out in two or three days,” but it lights a fuse inside of me when I picture a student locked in their room doing homework as their punishment for challenging themselves.

There is nothing wrong with giving homework over a long break, but I believe I am speaking for much of the student body when I say, there needs to be some sort of limit.