High School students need a break. Six in a half hours everyday from Monday to Friday with work and extracurricular activities is draining. Myself and other highschool students are overwhelmed and stressed out, due to the amount of pressure we are under to pass school while maintaining a social life. We can not catch a break, and the added homework we receive from our teachers does not help.

Homework may help students; however, highschoolers are assigned too much, causing us more harm than good. I have 8 classes for semester 2, and receive homework from about 6 of them at least 2 times a week. Some teachers do not understand that they are not the only class assigning extra assignments, and it puts us in distress causing us to rush through it, cheat, or just not do it, which ultimately defeats the purpose of it. 

We are always told to get involved and try new school activities out while we are in highschool. Most kids decide to participate on sports teams which involve hours of practice. When I was on my school's track team, practice got out at five o’clock for five days a week. I was exhausted and wanted to shower and sleep as soon as I got home, but I would always have homework to complete. 

Mackenzie Muehleip explains how a study showed that “homework on high schoolers included high stress levels, a lack of balance in children’s lives and physical health problems.” Students come home and do their homework but may be up for hours, after already sitting in a classroom for most of the day. Sitting in one position everyday can make some people have bad posture as well. Some students also come to class and sleep through it. 

You can tell that they are exhausted because they have too much on their workloads.. I feel that sometimes I do not get enough sleep on some nights because I prefer to do my work later, but sometimes it is so much work that I do finish until after midnight. Through Education explains how “68% of high school students reported getting less than 7 hours of sleep on the weekdays.” It is suggested that we get 8 to 9 hours of sleep, but it just isn’t achievable with the amount of work we do. 

Most teenagers have a job while in highschool. They are only supposed to work a certain amount of hours so that they can maintain good grades, but it is still hard. Many of my friends get out of school just to have an hour to go home, change, and continue onto work. They start to fall behind in school because they are not getting time to do their homework. Then when the quarter is about to close, it is often too late to bring their grades up. 

We start to realize how far we have fallen behind and try to play catch up, but sometimes it just does not work. We also are so focused on trying to achieve good grades that we do not really learn anything since we are trying to rush through completing our work. 

Many of us are trying to live these last four school years peacefully and think of our next plans for life. However, we end up being very stressed and overworked. I believe that teachers are assigning us too much work which destroys our mental and physical health. Teachers, we have a lot on our plates already, and receiving homework each night just stresses us out even more, so please stop, or decrease the amount of work you give us.

Works Consulted

Lee, Katherine. “Schools Need to Stop Giving Out Too Much Homework Now, and Here's Why.” Through Education, 14 January 2020, througheducation.com/do-schools-give-out-too-much-homework-now-yes-they-do-and-it-needs-to-stop/. Accessed 3 May 2022.

Muehleip, Mackenzie. “Do Teachers Assign Too Much Homework? – The Spyglass.” The Spyglass, 26 October 2018, ghsnews1.com/2147/opinion/do-teachers-assign-too-much-homework/. Accessed 3 May 2022.