Coming back from vacation, I found it so annoying to get homework from every single class except for one. I thought that they should have given us no homework, then built up to more, like 0 HW, then 1 HW, then 2 HW, etc. But really, I think having no homework could create a better student because having a stressful school day and then having stressful homework can make you all stressed and unable to think as well as you could if you weren’t stressed. Then, when you wake up in the morning, you can get caught worrying about whether you finished all your homework, or if you got a problem wrong. In the end, you get one really stressed out kid and a stressed out kid doesn’t think or learn as well. There should be no homework (except for some reading) for all K-8 students.

No homework could create a better student. A student on Debate said, “...many young students are known for having very short attention spans. They have already been forced to sit and learn for approximately 6 1/2 hours at school, with usually only 2 short recess breaks and lunch, and they are also very known to like to talk and chat a lot...By the time school is out, the kids just want to go home, relax, and be who they are!” This makes sense because kids are chatty and want to do what they want to do. He’s saying that, when they don’t have homework, kids relax. It’s good that kids relax because a relaxed kid is a better student because he/she isn’t stressed. Another student said that homework is, “preventing children from leading balanced lifestyles, with a healthy amount of sleep and activities to keep them fit and active. How is a student supposed to do 3 to 4 hours of homework, study for a plethora of tests and quizzes, play sports, get involved in the community, eat food with nutritional value, and get an adequate amount of sleep, all in one day? That's not possible.”  I actually can do this if I have 30 minutes of homework, because every single day after school I have an activity to do like sports, music, or a club. By the time I get home, I have to eat dinner, then practice my music and then I have to do hard, annoying homework. But if I were to have 3-4 hours of homework, I imagine that I wouldn’t go to bed until like after 11pm. Then, I would get really tired and angry because I’d have barely any sleep. On Mondays, I have to get up at 6:30, because of band, so on those days I’d practically be a zombie.

More free time diminishes stress and also creates a better student. According to some teachers, the four-day school week helps students learn. In Colorado, schools changed to a four-day week to save money and, according to a Guardian article called “What a Difference a Day Makes,” “the results show that, even for these young students, a four-day school week had a statistically significant positive impact on maths scores (around 7% extra on average), and a possible positive impact on reading scores.” It seems that when kids have longer free times, they can remember things better. If this helps students, then I think that there should be four-day school weeks everywhere (pretty much all students would rather have this, too, so the kids get what they want and learn better). A shorter school week would also help the teachers because, “A shortened week could improve teachers’ work-life balance by allowing more time for marking, planning and preparation, meaning that holidays and weekends could be times of real rest” (The Guardian). Usually, in my class, there is a teacher who has lost their voice, is tired, coughing, or is just really mean for no reason. If there was a four-day week, then that would give teachers more time to wash that all away. Teachers would be more patient and a patient teacher is a better teacher.

Less work diminishes stress and, as I have said so many times before, stress makes worse students. I think that there should either be no homework or a shorter school week. I would prefer a shorter school week because with more free days there is more time to do homework, but I would take either one. But remember, this is for everyone, because school stress also creates teacher stress, and, with a four-day school week, teachers would get a real break from telling noisy kids to be quiet.