It happens on a weekly basis. On Wednesdays, students at Milford High School have 45 minutes after 2nd hour to finish up their homework, talk to teachers, and work on anything they need to. But what about the other days of the week? Students have tons of homework on non-seminar days, and coupled with their daily lives filled with after school activities and sports, friends, and trying to always go to bed early enough to get at least eight hours of sleep; when are these students supposed to get it done? Having seminar on only one day of the week is ridiculous, because many students’ time is so crunched that they need time in seminar to get everything they need to done.
Seminar is not only a time to do unfinished homework and assignments, it’s also a time to get help from teachers when if they need it. Students with little time after school to get help usually don’t get the answers they need, which are not provided in school. The students can use this time to get a pass to get help from their teachers, and better understand the subject matter.
On more than one occasion, I’ve had absolutely no homework on seminar days, but as fate would have it, every hour the next day I would have long and tedious homework due the next day. So as I stay up past midnight trying to get it done without just blindly writing answers and actually study for tests, I think to myself, “now why can’t I have that extra 45 minutes of study time again tomorrow?” But my wish falls on deaf ears, and alas, the next day is just a normal day, filled with even more to do in the little amount of time I have.
This is a major problem, because students sacrifice so much sleep for homework, when they could be doing it at school, the place intended to work on your studies. According to the National Sleep Foundation, most teens need at least nine hours of sleep each night in order to perform their best.
This is an almost impossible task when most teens have to get up at 5:30 in the morning or earlier to catch their bus or make it to school on time, which starts at 7:15, and in order to get the required amount of sleep, must go to bed at nine.
The bus schedules further prevents students from catching the right amount of rest each night. Some buses come extremely early, somewhere around 6:10 in the morning. For those students who get home really late at night, the only way to keep clean and healthy every day is to take a shower in the morning. The time to take a shower varies with every person, but most showers do take more time than ten minutes to clean your hair and body thoroughly. This means students must wake up at around 5:30 or earlier to take a shower, eat breakfast, brush your teeth, plan the outfit for the day, and make it out to the bus, hoping they look somewhat rested for a day of learning and socializing.
When sports, extracurricular activities, homework and duties to your house and family come into play, time is crunched for all students to get everything done and still be in good condition to stay awake in school the next day. Not to mention for the older students, who may have jobs that they work at for an extended period of time that prevent them from finishing their days’ work.
Sports practice lasts late into the evening, play rehearsals must be attended to the end; and both take hours after school to complete. Some students do not get home until six or seven, and most people would eat dinner and do chores by this time. If they are struggling to understand the homework that night, they’re tough out of luck, because there is no teacher there to help them and may not be allowed online until all homework is done.
This results in a simple math worksheet to take hours to complete, and by the time you’re done with everything, it’s past midnight and there’s no way anybody will be able to get nine hours of sleep at this time; and since the least amount of sleep won’t be reached, performance and grades during the day will plummet, causing even more problems the next day. See the circle here?
Some may say that students don’t need all of these extra activities after school, and that they should quit them. Sports, clubs and jobs after school may not be directly related to homework and school, but they are equally important. Sports improve teen’s health and help them to learn better exercise habits early on. This is greatly needed because of the concern for obesity in America. According to the American Heart Association, one in every three kids is overweight. This leads to many health problems later on in life if they continue to make bad choices about exercising and eating.
Most students at Milford High that have jobs are juniors or seniors, and some need those jobs just as much, or even more, than high school. These students cannot give up their jobs to have more time to work on schoolwork. The money these young adults earn goes towards their college funds, and a mode of transportation to get them to their classes in the future. These jobs benefit their education, and get them a head start in life, which is very important for a teenager growing into an adult.
Clubs after school promote making new friends and socializing, which is needed in every student’s life. Having some time away from work and school to join their friends after school creates a healthy morale and keeps students happier and willing to get up early in the morning for school.
If we were to make seminar a few days a week, say… Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, classes and teachers would see an overall increase of grades and the amount of homework that kids get done. Teachers wouldn’t see too much of a difference, because the class is only shortened by about seven minutes, which would be later used to finish the assigned work during seminar.
This also applies to making up work. If a student is sick, injured, or can’t go to school for some reason, that student misses an entire day of school, which could be the day that one test the student was supposed to take. Most students do not have the time to stay after or before school to make up this test, and some don’t have transportation home either.
Some teachers will only let you make up the test for a few days, then the option is lost, and forever will you have a test as a missing assignment, lowering your grade because the test you never got to take ends up as a zero. With seminar being more than just one day a week, students can use that time to make up these tests with ease, without having to set up a working time between the students’ free time and the teachers’, which is sometimes hard to do.
My solution to low homework grades and crunched time is to increase the weekly seminar day to a few days a week, doing this will greatly improve student’s studies and daily lives.