Students should not be assigned as much, or any homework after school. Students have a lot more work than most people think, as they balance understanding and remembering school work, after-school activities such as sports and volunteering, part-time jobs and homework.

 This is a lot of work on anyone’s plate, but especially for high school teenagers (ages 14-18) to balance their everyday life. Students attend school for nearly seven hours each weekday having six to eight classes to learn about and do homework for. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the average student spends almost seven hours on homework each week (NCES), which is about one and a half hours daily.

 The Alaska Sleep Clinic states that students usually go to sleep from 11 P.M. to 1 A.M. Assuming a student goes to sleep at 11 P.M. and gets off of school around 3 P.M. that leaves eight hours of free time during their day to manage their sports, activities, jobs and friend and family time.

One of my fellow students, Claire Nardella, who works at the Covington Aquatic Center, says that her shift is three hours during the week, while her sports practice lasts up to two hours. The total number of hours she spends on work and sports practice is five hours every day, leaving only three of the eight left for family and friends and homework. Nardella also said that she spends an average of one to two hours on homework  every day. This leaves one hour for family time, meals and socializing with friends. According to Piedmont, hanging out with friends and family can “[improve] your cardiovascular health”, relieve stress, and can “improve your psychological well-being”  (Piedmont).

There are some pros to having homework, such as helping memory retention, but in many cases, the cons of having so much homework outweigh the pros. It is also arguable that not all students have after-school activities such as sports, however, it is not fair to the students who do, and have too much work on their plate. During an interview with Spencer Seim, he stated that he has around “two hours of homework every day after school”. 

He also said that he enjoys time with his family and friends and makes time for them every day. He sets aside around four to five hours per day for visiting with the people he values. His schedule leaves him only three hours to do his homework. Seim told me that he doesn’t do sports because he doesn’t have enough time to, along with all of his homework, chores and quality time. 

This even further shows that students, even those who don’t do after school sports and activities, may also not have enough time in their day to juggle their school work.