Assigning Less Homework
By: Jett Goetz, Hannah Park, Reilly Piersimoni, Andrew Yuan
As the Academy approaches the fifth week of spring term, with resumed in-person classes for the first period of time in over a year, students struggle to keep up with the demanding workload. In an all-faculty email sent out by Dean of Faculty Ellen Wolff in response to student concerns, instructors were asked to assign less homework given the new packed schedule. Academic departments worked to integrate workload reduction policies to their curriculum.
Wolff wrote in an email to The Exonian that “strategies for revising homework expectations will vary from discipline to discipline, and will include adjustments such as: ‘homework holidays,’ reductions of homework by 15 minutes per night, asynchronous meetings, emphasizing that when a student hits the homework time mark on any given assignment, they should stop.”
“All faculty members have a keen sense of how taxing this pandemic year has been and is now on our students,” Wolff said.
In response, the Health Department chose to cancel classes last week, and instead offered chaperoned groups of students into town.
The Modern Language Department also decided to change their homework guidelines. “When the administration asked departments to adjust homework, Modern Languages agreed on the following changes: 1: that all classes would reduce homework by about 15 minutes (to 40 minutes rather than 55 for reserve classes, and 55 minutes rather than 70 for non-reserve) and 2: teachers would have one asynchronous meeting per 2-week cycle,” Modern Language Instructor Katherine Fair said.
“While I cannot generalize about our entire department, many of us have noticed that students are more tired and stressed out this spring than in previous terms,” Fair added.
History Instructor Alexa Caldwell noticed similar trends in classes. “They seem incredibly beat down and I am working with them on how to complete their homework in a semi-low stress way,” Caldwell said. “And if that means Harkness needs to be substituted for a little more teacher scaffolding and guidance… that is the approach I will take to finish out the year.”
“In reaction to the email, I have reiterated to my students the time allotment they should be spending on history and cut it almost in half. 70 min of reading is a lot. If they can spend 40-45 reading efficiently, they will have plenty to talk about in class,” Caldwell continued.
Compared to previous terms where students took classes either completely or partly online, many students agree that there has been either no change or an increase in workload.
For remote senior Josh Poulos, the workload has increased greatly, though he attributes that to the newly packed schedule. “Previously it's been like an hour, maybe two max on homework a night in the previous couple of terms, but this most recent one has been three or four [hours], possibly longer if I have assessments stacking up,” Poulos said.
“I usually have around two hours of homework, but depending on the day it could be up to three or four,” prep Hansai Tsai agreed. As a student who recently participated in remote learning from Taiwan, he was able to compare that to his in-person learning experience. “When I was online I was not able to consistently study in a normal time, so I would study around 2 am since I was twelve hours ahead.”
Some students believed recent policy changes were effective.
Upper Mady Murray noticed only a decrease in homework in her Latin class. “We recently had a discussion [with Ms. Morris, my Latin teacher] where she was like… let's decide, I can assign you five less lines of the Iliad per night. The test would still cover the same amount of lines, but it would just mean you would have less homework every night,” Murray said. “And we… decided that is what we'd like to do. I think she responded really well to students saying ‘I have so much work.’ And she also said, look, you know, if your Latin homework is taking a really long time, I am okay with you coming to a stopping point, not translating the rest of the lines and just telling us that,” Murray said.
Upper Jose Vivanco said, “my teachers have mentioned to us that they will change the amount of homework load, and they have in the past few days. Some other of my teachers have actually made an asynchronous block during the week, or given us a reading block so we can get ahead of our homework and our work. So over the past week there’s definitely been an improvement.”
Senior Yulian Ye also mentioned a decrease in work. “My assignments have been a little more relaxed recently. I’m not sure if it’s the classes I’m taking this term per se, or if it’s something to do in the way my classes are being set up,” Ye said. “I think overall there’s been a greater sense of class-driven learning where we do more discovery in class rather than homework, which now supplements the learning we do in class rather than making up the majority of the learning I did in certain courses.”
Upper Aryana Ramos-Vazquez expressed her thoughts on her Mandarin class, which will have one asynchronous class. “For my Mandarin class, we're now doing one day completely asynchronous, which is nice, cause it's less class time [and] theoretically more time to focus on other things, which is nice mental health wise, but the asynchronous work that you get is not a small amount,” Ramos-Vazquez said.
Ramos-Vazquez also expressed the additional stress of college application prep. “This entire year, I've just generally been getting a lot less sleep than I have been,” Ramos-Vazquez said. “But specifically this week, I got [less sleep because] I had a math project, a Chem hand-in, Chinese homework, English homework, and [the ACT]. I think uppers, [with CCO] and all this other stuff on top of everything, it's really not a vibe.”
Other uppers shared similar concerns. “I think the fact that it’s my upper spring has added a lot more stress,” upper Fawaz Omidiya said. “With COVID and the school’s movement back to our ‘old’ structure, I feel like there’s been a lot of adjusting and increase in homework which can get a little overwhelming,” he said.
Omidiya did not notice a noticeable decrease in homework. “I wouldn’t say that workload has decreased in the past few days,” he said. “I still have multiple major assignments for this week, and although a couple of my teachers have given slightly more time, I haven’t felt any overall changes in workload.”
Prep Lucy Will mentioned that the spring term has a greater workload than previous terms, and is heaviest on the weekends. “I spend about four hours on homework every night,” she said. “I have more big assignments to do over the weekends than I do on the weekdays so the overall homework amount is a lot more.”
Upper Celine Gu similarly experienced an increase in homework load. “I find that I have significantly more homework than when we were online last winter,” she said. “With more class meetings over all and less frees, it’s been a little overwhelming to handle my workload. I think it’s been a lot easier to fall into a cycle of lack of sleep and low productivity from staying up really late at night for days in a row to do homework.”
Upper Michelle Park believed the homework load this term “is actually pretty similar to the homework load in the winter. The problem is that, because it's in person, there are a lot of other commitments and a lot of other activities that a lot of students are required to attend, which makes it difficult for us to try and balance the homework load that we had winter and fall term with all of the in-person activities that are going on currently,” Park said.
In attempts to spread out the packed schedule, every other Wednesdays were designated as no-class days since the beginning of the spring term. However, after a few weeks of this modified schedule, students' reactions are varied.
Prep Audrey Zhang is grateful for the free Wednesdays, which seem to have lightened the burden. “I usually have what feels like much less homework and stress on free Wednesdays. Since the schedule changed, I have spent about 1-1.5 hours on work spread through the day which is low stress and manageable,” Zhang said.
For some students, their no-class Wednesdays are taken up by commitments. “On no class Wednesdays, I'm basically booked from 12 and on,” upper Michelle Park said. “And because there’s no-class Wednesdays, people always want to meet on no-class Wednesdays.”
For many students, the workload has not changed in the past few weeks. “It seems around the same right now, but a couple of my teachers have decided to do one asynchronous class a week, intending that to allow flexibility within our schedule and a bit of a release,” senior Grace Gantt said.
Upper Zara Ahmed shared similar thoughts. “My teachers are doing what they’ve been doing all term… I can understand, though, that they are really trying to make up for lost time with the fewer-class schedule we had for the past year or so, so I think we've been double compounded by a need to catch up and also deal with going back to regular class scheduling, making students feel really overwhelmed and stressed.”
Many students report feeling higher levels of stress this term than in previous. “I am definitely a little more stressed during spring then I was during fall/winter partly because in-person classes started, and partly because I feel like this term is never ending, especially since we got no spring break,” prep Vedika Amin said.
Senior Haruka Masamura found her classes more demanding than anticipated. “We thought senior spring would be a lot lighter in workload and a lot easier, but it’s certainly not really so,” Masamura said. “I don’t want to say I wish it was easier, because the classes I’m taking are all meant for seniors so they’re definitely going to be harder, but it’s just harder than I thought.”
Some students reported missing out on extracurriculars due to the overwhelming load. “I'm lucky that homework doesn't negatively impact my sleep, participation in sports and music, or even my social life. My only problem is I often have to sacrifice attending club meetings that happen on weeknights,” prep Cee McClave said.
Ahmed expressed sadness that the immense workload sometimes distracted from other enjoyable aspects of Exeter.“This year, though, I try a lot harder to socialize, but because I work ahead and use my time really well, a lot of my friends are constantly busy with their own work. Of course, sometimes we do get to genuinely hang out, but it sucks that people in my grade are so busy to the point where socializing feels like it's never prioritized,” Ahmed said.