STUDENTS REBEL AGAINST TEACHERS WHO ASSIGN TOO MUCH HOMEWORK!​Administrators are unsure about how they will handle the uprising.

By Dara Daninger ‘27


When North Cross teachers are confronted with mental abuse claims from students, they deny everything. 
“Everynight I have at least 20 hours of homework,” reported an anonymous student. “This is torture!!” 
Another student claims that “the extreme amounts of unnecessary work is physically taxing too; last week I almost sprained my wrist from carrying all of my enormous textbooks!” 
There seems to be a common theme shared between many students attending NCS Upper School, that is the shared idea that high schoolers are overworked in school. Each of the students interviewed mentioned sleep loss due to the amount of assignments given in a single day, which then affects their attention span in class throughout the next day. Due to the excess amount of complaints from students, I decided to interview their teachers as well to get both perspectives. One of the teachers interviewed stated “ As a highschool teacher I have signed up to deal with plenty of students’ shenanigans, though I did not sign up with the idea that I would be attacked with claims of abuse from my students. I have done none of the sorts and all of these claims are completely untrue.” Of course the responses from students to teachers denying these claims was not handled lightly. In fact, it was quite the opposite with the students planning the demise of their teachers who assigned them excess amounts of work. So, the following week after the news got out about the teachers’ responses a student-led protest took place where the majority of the student body refused to attend school for the next week. Though this peaceful protest brought nothing but peace. Instead, it resulted in the students who refused to protest and attend school to be bullied into staying home from school as well as the GPA’s of the protesting students to plummet. 
After a week of protest, the school board decided that something needed to be done. So, all of the students that had been staying home from school protesting homework had been threatened by expulsion for any student that continued to protest and not attend school. While this solved the problem of chronic absences, students were still enraged with the amounts of school work that their teachers continued to give them.
So, when peaceful protesting doesn’t work, these students decided to use aggressive tactics. This student recalled an encounter with a teacher where they got into a physical altercation over excess amounts of homework. One of these students involved in these protests decided to stand up for themselves in class one day by telling the teacher that, “I didn’t finish my homework because you assigned me too much work!”, after the teacher continued to deny claims of too much homework assigned the student became enraged. “I don’t know what happened in that moment… one minute they [the teacher and the student] were having a conversation and the next they were in a full on fist fight!” This quote was taken from a bystander to the physical altercation that took place that day. According to the student that started the fight “I only started the fight be
cause of all my homework, I just got so fed up. I couldn’t take it anymore!” While some may point fingers at either involved, both the student and teacher both had a part in perpetuating the altercation. After this incident the protest fizzled out as students realized that there was really nothing that they could do any more extreme that would catch the attention of the administration that may change something. 
 This article is meant to bring awareness to teachers about the way students  suffer from the work that they assign. Many high school students will attest to the fact that they are overworked in school, and when they attempt to reason with their teachers and educators they are often shut down and ignored because they are merely students.

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