Everyday after school for around four to six hours, I spend my time completing tedious homework assignments on information I already have learned. This is the routine for many students at Grady High School. Specifically, it creates a problem for students who are involved in  time–consuming clubs and sports. The primary cause of this dilemma is the type and amount of homework given out by teachers.
There are two distinctions that can be made about the homework. These distinctions range from the type of homework and its purpose or what the student gains by doing it. One type of homework is done to review learned topics and maintain a certain grade in the class. It is important to understand the distinction between these two types of homework, because it leads to the root of the problems facing the students of this generation.
The “busy work” type of homework includes work that was classwork but turns into homework and work that is given as homework so often as to not cross the student’s mind as something to do. For example, a crossword puzzle would fall under this category.This type is often disregarded because it will not be taken as a grade and students recognize this and, more often than not, make a conscious decision to not do it at all.
The other type of homework consists of work that is intended to be done for a portion of the student’s grade, it is actual homework.
When teachers give homework that is of substance and will lead to student productivity, engagement, and learning, there is no problem. In fact, the majority of students that are in my classes will do their homework and actually learn the content within the homework.
Nevertheless, there are always a few days of the week where there is a class that will give a plentiful amount of homework that does not pertain to anything that will help the student, as the work was covered in class.
As students we often forget to do this work, don’t do it, or go online to find the answers. This is because it takes up too much time for little to no reward. This is “busy work” homework.
The problem with this type of homework, besides it being disregarded, is that when it is paired with the workload of other classes or the extracurriculars that take up time, the outcome for both the student and the teacher is poor. Sometimes, I have been punished in soccer, the sport that I play, for being late or not coming to practice. In varsity sports, students are expected to
For the students, there are many solutions to this problem. One solution is to skip sports practices or other extracurriculars after school which results in a loss of playing time or falling behind. Another solution is to work for as long as possible on the work until one gets tired. However, this leads to sleep deprivation and loss of concentration the next day.
While these are solutions, none of them seem to be ideal. An acceptable solution is to have both teachers and students come together and collaborate on reasonable types of homework and an acceptable timeline for when it should get done. This could lead to less work being done last minute, and more time for extracurriculars and sleep.