Imagine a world with little to no homework per day, how easy and stress-free each day would be.
Well sorry, keep dreaming.
Though Carlmont won’t be getting rid of all homework, the staff and Governance Council are developing a new homework policy that could very well reduce the amount of homework a student has each day.
The homework survey asked various questions that would help the faculty understand what students thought of homework and how effective it is.
Senior Nico Camerino, who achieved a weighted GPA of 5.0 last year said, “I had 6 AP classes last year and about an hour and a half of homework per night. I think the homework amount for advanced classes is good because AP is a college level class, so its expected for a student to be prepared. Homework isn’t that bad if you can space it out.”
Many Carlmont students also participate with extracurricular activities, which can interfere with homework schedules.
Camerino, who is a part of the Otters swim club and the Carlmont swim team, said, “I took advantage of free time I had, I did homework at lunch in the library, and I made sure that I had most homework done by the time I had practice. It’s about time management.”
The survey also wanted to find out what the students thought were the positives and negatives of homework.
“The positives are that you learn the material and practice it, but too much homework often leads to too much stress and it becomes overwhelming at times,” said junior Matthew Hong.
According to Governance Council Chair Genevieve Tep, the homework survey’s main purpose was to monitor the work load of students and collect data in order to help shape the new homework policy.
“Mrs. Gleaton has gotten a lot of communication of concerns about homework overload from the parents and students of Carlmont, so we decided to take this issue to Governance council to reach out to everyone and find out the quality and amount of homework for the students. Doing the research will take a while, and we’ll provide a summary of the homework survey to the community and gradually develop a new homework policy,” said Tep.
The development of Carlmont’s new homework policy is a long process which includes a lot of research in order to achieve accurate results. Generally, the homework policy will look to reduce homework and set limits on teachers’ assignments.
The new homework policy is expected to be established and come into effect during the 2015-16 school year, according to Tep.
