The Breakdown
With Ben Fader '21 Editor-in-Chief
Even over a quarter of the way through the 2020 virtual school year, many students continue to express their displeasure with the current workload. The teachers are expected to give out only 2-3 hours of asynchronous work per week, yet students are still unhappy and even ask for change?
For students taking all of their classes at Howard, they should be averaging between 8-12 hours of asynchronous work plus 12 hours of synchronous class time per week. Junior Sam Brothers says that she has “around 4-6 hours a week… and the workload keeps getting bigger,” whereas Senior John Collins says he receives “textbook work every day and one quiz a week.” These two students both have less than what teachers should be handing out, meaning that guidelines are being followed. |
ELLICOTT CITY, MARYLAND, 11/29/20- A lot of homework for the virtual school year has been assigned in textbooks, with students unable to receive packets and worksheets from school. BEN FADER/ LION’S TALE
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Now that we have the numbers, let’s put this into perspective with a normal school year. In person, school is five days a week with around six hours of synchronous learning each day. This works out to 30 hours of just synchronous work each week — already a larger number of hours than total work that students are receiving on the current virtual schedule. When you add projects, studying for tests and quizzes and homework in a normal year, it only leads me to ask once again: Why are students complaining now? With a lot less work than normal, I cannot wrap my head around how students are unhappy. Sam Brothers mentions that “when we were in school we would do assignments in class instead of homework. Now it all is added to homework which puts a lot more on me.” Although there is more asynchronous work now, the six hour time window during the day in which work can be completed still exists, simply shifted later. In fact, there is more time than normal to finish all of the work. On top of extra non-class time to complete work in the virtual school days, students are also getting more sleep. With the first period starting at 9:00 virtually, it is nearly an hour and a half later than the 7:25 start in person. This extra sleep time means students are more rested and have more energy to take on their work for the day. This advantage of the virtual schedule offers yet another reason to not complain about the current workload. Most students apparently do not realize that they have a lot less work, since they created a petition protesting the workload. It received a couple thousand signatures in the first month of school. This petition only resulted in the administration having teachers ask the students about the workload through polls. In reality, the course load that we have currently is perfect and fair, especially since we only have four classes per semester, differing from the usual seven. After the month-long hiatus from school in the spring, we returned for a joke of an ending to the school year. No school work, almost no quizzes or tests and hardly any learning at all. This school year was then followed by a summer of mostly nothing, as people continued to be limited in activities away from home and many remained in quarantine. As young adults, it is extremely important to keep our mind active rather than just sitting around and doing nothing. This lack of work given to students in the initial COVID-19 time period has made us soft, creating an almost unanimous attitude within the student body questioning the more-than-reasonable amount of school work.