By Catelyn Di Leva
Opinion Editor
Advanced Placement Biology teachers Jessica Bledsoe and Yoon Hearn and Advanced Placement Chemistry teacher Teresa Nielsen implemented a new homework policy for their classes, where homework counts for less to no points in an effort to reduce student stress and help students prioritize their workloads.
The Social Emotional Wellness Committee, which consists of Costa staff members, parents and students, caused some teachers to create this new policy to address student stress. The new homework policy is not department or school wide but implemented based on each teacher’s preference. The committee’s last meeting took place on Oct. 17 in the district conference room. Both Nielsen and Bledsoe are members of the committee.
“What is happening at Costa is not just at Costa, but many other high performing schools throughout California,” Nielsen said. “The committee began to think about things that could be implemented at Costa to help improve the emotional well being of our student body.”
Click here to learn about how the nation has been trying to combat student stress.
AP Biology teachers Yoon Hearn and Bledsoe are still assigning homework but creating a later due date where the class will discuss the homework assignment but the teacher will not collect and grade it. Therefore, students can prioritize other classes homework that is due sooner but still work on their AP Bio homework, Bledsoe said.
“Ms. Hearn and I created our policy so [the classes] will collaboratively come up with the answers so students can have their work done,” Bledsoe said. “Students can finish other assignments for other classes prior to the discussion.”
Bledsoe and Hearn hope to promote students to take initiative for completing assignments that they know will help them better understand the material even if it may not affect their grades, Bledsoe said.
Click here to read about the growing amount of student stress.
“We also want to reduce student stress at this campus,” Bledsoe said. “[Having multiple assignments for different classes] due in the same day is stressful and we want students prioritizing the most important assignment.”
Nielsen’s main intentions for the new homework policy is solely to reduce stress and promote a healthier lifestyle that she wasn’t seeing in students before, she said. Nielsen believes that many students are up past midnight working on homework, leading to a stressful, unhealthy lifestyle.
Photos: AP Biology and Chemistry implement new homework policy
“I started thinking that if my child was not able to eat dinner with the family or do things as a family because he was too busy with homework, then that would frustrate me,” Nielsen said. “I know students have sports and other activities and students also need to be healthy and sleep.”
Several homework assignments for AP Chem such as labs will still count as 25% of a student’s grade since they are an important factor of the class and AP test, Nielsen said.
“The new policy is definitely a reduction of large homework assignments,” said Nielsen. “I found that I was assigning worksheets that students did understand how to do the work but they had to spend time filling out the whole thing which is very time consuming.”
According to Bledsoe, the feedback she has gotten from students says that the policy reduces their anxiety because they don’t have to worry about writing something down that is incorrect and they can work on other subjects with the extra time.
Bledsoe and Hearn are still counting points at the end of the school year for homework but Nielsen is only counting classwork like labs.
“Feedback has been a mixture from students,” Bledsoe said. “Students have said it has helped their stress levels reduce but also say they lack motivation to actually complete the homework assignment.”
According to Nielsen, she plans on using this policy for the rest of the school year and even next year whether or not it works in her class. If the new implementation does not work this year, Nielsen will try the new policy again next year to see if it works with a different class. The AP Bio classes have not decided yet if they are going to keep using this new policy, Bledsoe said.
“I don’t think the new policy will be beneficial or helpful because the homework will not count and students won’t learn as well,” AP Chem student Elena Olsen said. “By not having homework my grade will not be helped with homework which I need.”
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