Transitioning from in-school learning to online learning has been difficult for many people. The students’ workload that comes along with this transition has seemed to increase and has been hard to stay on top of.
On April 8 the Pleasant Valley eNews sent an email to parents and students in regards to high school online learning. Within the email it stated an “What’s expected from my student?” section which named a few key details on how the student should participate in online learning.
Students are expected to participate in lessons Monday through Thursday, engage for two hours a week for each course, check each Google Classroom for each course daily and check their school email daily.
Many students are feeling overwhelmed by the amount of assignments their teachers are giving and sometimes they feel it is hard to keep up with. In fact, many of the students are finding themselves doing assigned homework over the weekend and spending more than two hours completing assignments each day.
Senior Maddie Einck believes the conclusion of the school year is turning out to be very stressful. “With the semester coming to an end, I have multiple papers and projects due and [I] must prepare for the upcoming AP tests on top of my everyday work load,” she stated. “This means almost every week day, I spend four [to] six hours doing some kind of school work.”
Senior Sara Hoskins’ schedule only allows her to do school work three days of the week. “On these days I spend about three [to] six hours on classwork,” she stated. “The work isn’t hard, but it can be challenging at times when you don’t have a teacher to call over for help.”
Many students also have to work during the week so they are finding on the days they have to work, it is especially hard to keep up with everything. Hoskins is one of the many working students. “I am working at least 30 hours a week and this makes it hard to find time to sit and do my homework all at one time,” she stated.
Senior Jake Bradley thinks the amount of homework is not the only factor making it difficult for many students to get all of their assignments done, it is also the location where they have to do their work. “Now that we are home it’s harder to get it done because there are so many more distractions,” he explained.
He also finds it very easy to overlook an assignment because of how many there are. “Most of the teachers post the assignments on the same day and it’s easy to forget about one,” Bradley stated.
The school needs to realize many teachers are assigning a lot of work that in total, is taking more than two hours a week to do and more days of the week to complete. These times are hard enough as is and the excessive amounts of homework the students are assigned is not making anything easier.
