Over the past several months, many students have been voicing their complaints regarding the high volume of assignments assigned over weekends. Particularly during winter months, where there aren’t many breaks from school, students have felt overwhelmed by the never-ending heap of assignments tests, projects, and homework.

In an effort to decrease students work load, the four-day weekend from March 17th-20th was declared a “no homework weekend.” Over this weekend, teachers were not allowed to assign any homework, tests, or projects due for the Tuesday students came back from break.

This is where students and teachers have brought up the idea of having scheduled no homework weekends once a marking period. Abby Cawley sophomore at BHS says, “I think we should have no homework weekends once a month, I love the idea of a no homework weekend, it lifts a weight off my shoulder.”

The goal of no homework weekends are to decrease the large amount of workload for students to let them have a stress free weekend once in a awhile. Many students in their junior and senior year are struggling for high GPAs and have an overloaded schedule of difficult AP and honors classes. Students today are extremely stressed and can end up with up to ten hours of homework on the weekend, this is not fair to ask of for teenagers.

This is why occasional no homework weekends are essential. According to news.stanford.edu, studies show the amount of homework given to students can affect their mental health, decrease grades, and heighten stress levels. Weekends are built in to give students time away from school and if every weekend all they have to focus on is their hours of homework it will not only be a timely burden but something they will continue to stress about and lose the ability to enjoy their only time off from school.

After speaking to Mr. Neigel, the hesitation to declare no homework weekends was because of the vast amount of teachers who were against it. “The use of homework is to reinforce concepts learned in class, read material to be used in class, and complete other activities, liking writing exercises that build student skills. Eliminating days when teachers can assign work, or arrange assessments, could impact teacher’s ability to cover all of the necessary content”.

Many teachers rely on their classes to build off the information taught in class, this is a college skill that teachers are trying to start implementing on their students. Although this is a beneficial learning method it puts a lot of added pressure to students in their spare time to comprehend everything being
taught in class, especially over the weekends.

However, Mr. Neigel said, “I think a no homework weekend allows students to unplug, relax, and catch up on sleep and other mentally healthy activities. It also allows students to spend more time with their family and friends, which also supports positive mental health”. The school is directly trying to improve mental health and stress for all students and hopefully they will be successful and follow through. All students who have spoken had positive feedback on this past weekend and sound very excited if this a possible option for the future.