By Stephanie Pham
In today’s society, there is a major emphasis on financial stability, therefore a big emphasis on our education system. SAT and ACT scores are being taken out of the equation in regards to college applications meaning there is an increasing pressure on students to take more AP classes, join extracurriculars, spend their summers looking for jobs, get volunteer hours and even pursue internships. Students are also pressured to get far ahead in terms of academic excellence, seeking to get ahead through summer classes through the dual enrollment program or at other high schools.
Students tend to make plans over the summer, whether it’s vacation trips, job commitments or to get ahead academically. These summer assignments are another idle task to add on our long list of obligations. Parents, teachers and adults are always encouraging the younger generation to get outside more often and socialize with people their own age. Especially recently coming out of a worldwide pandemic, there is increased emphasis on social interactions.
The impacts of student isolation in school stayed relevant at Fountain Valley High School. So, how can students interact with each other if they’re busy worrying about a summer assignment that has little benefits?
Many students find summer assignments to be tedious and repetitive. When that’s the case, students will have no motivation to actually learn from the material.
“Only some courses and some summer assignments are beneficial. Teachers should reevaluate the assignments and the workload,” junior Phoebe Do said. “There is a limit to repetition, too much does more harm than good.”
Students are given new teachers every year, and their first impression of the teachers are supposed to be these summer assignments. With no prior interaction, students are expected to complete a long assignment that they don’t understand.
The assignments are given to us on documents with mass amounts of indigestible information. Imagine this, you open the summer assignment to see three pages of instructions, six links to five-page essays and multiple questions for study and closer reading to these texts. It can all look and be overwhelming to a student, especially during their time off.
“It caused stress and anxiety due to the amount of workload since I did them on top of summer classes,” sophomore Linh Le said. “I really only got one week of real summer relaxation due to all the work that filled up my summer and the fear that I might not finish or am not putting enough effort since I was rushing.”
Summer homework doesn’t necessarily affect students’ ability to perform at an AP and honors level during school hours. In fact, English teacher David Theriault, the ELA facilitator for the district, explained some examples of what he has seen during his years of teaching.
“What was crazy is some of my best students didn’t do the summer work…or were super busy…and they would start off with like an F or a D, you know, and they ended up being A students and they were fantastic,” Theriault says.
Now, summer assignments are not necessarily useless and probably should be given for more intensive classes. Many science classes have very specific skill sets that are completely necessary. For instance, AP physics needs to work with units, vectors, graphing, and error analysis.
When asking students their opinions on the summer assignments, some say it negatively impacted their mental health and questioned the overall value of it. Junior Breanne Luu believes summer should be reserved for students.
“It should not be students’ responsibility to spend their designated time off of school to review/learn material that should be taught during class,” Luu said. “This could cause burnout before school even begins, especially for students taking rigorous summer classes.”
Some teachers are already attempting to remove summer homework or at least decrease the amount given to students. Possible alternative solutions could be to have students physically engaging with the subject itself. For instance, students in biology could physically engage with nature and take notes of any questions or observations they have when outside. This would stimulate curiosity and interest in teenagers to make more connections to the outside world while in class.
It’s also possible to make the assignment optional for students that want to get ahead or feel that they need the extra help. Students should be the ones dictating how they spend their summer, without the nuisance of summer homework weighing over their heads. In the end, we have to ask ourselves if the summer homework is truly necessary.
