Photo by Ben Townsend

Students will no longer have to worry about homework over Thanksgiving Break, among other district holiday breaks.

MISD high school administrators compromised plans to improve guidelines involving homework in the spring of 2015. The idea aims to enable students to better organize and budget their time.

Academic Associate Principal Erin Frye helped contribute to the district’s discussions over its concept of homework. Elements of the homework guideline were altered such as how and when homework could be given, and it’s designed to give students more freedom while holding the student responsible.

“Hopefully it will help students budget their time,” Frye said. “This guideline enables students to not carry any stress.”

The idea of “a window of time” is the basis for the policy change giving students two days to complete homework. Pre-AP and AP classes may be assigned homework up to three times per week, while regular courses may receive homework twice per week. Teachers designate which two or three days of the week homework is due. This benefits students balancing extracurricular activities and academics such as John Giles, 11, who plays football.

“The beginning of the school year was always the most difficult,” Giles said. “I have to juggle football and schoolwork and those two days help quite a bit.”

“I think it’s better than what we had in the past, because then it sometimes presented more challenges for both teachers and students,” Ms. Frye said. “It would also make the flow of the classroom awkward, that only certain days were assigned for homework in certain subjects.”

This new guideline sets a slight disadvantage for teachers in certain subjects that build up day by day such as math. Math teacher, Julie Gross, has temporarily come up with a system to apply her class to the guideline while maintaining the natural flow of a math class. Through frequent communication with the students about due dates, late work and manually creating a schedule for homework, Gross continues to work on a system to fit these changes.

“I believe that it might change a few times before the year ends to make sure that it works for the students, that I’m following the policy and that it’s easy on me,” Gross said.

Another change doesn’t allow teachers to give assignments over major holidays such as Thanksgiving, winter holiday and Spring Break.

“That’s the biggest positive on the student side of things for sure,” Frye said. “I think it’s a mental and physical break from school.”

The breaks are scheduled into the year to be beneficial to help students regroup their focus and spend time with family.

“I love the new rule because it allows me more time to do what I want, instead of having to sit down and do a project for class,” Giles said.