I’m just taking a wild guess, but I don’t think there are many students out there who celebrate and rejoice when they get a new batch of homework assignments come Friday, seventh period .  And personally, I’ve never really been a big fan of lugging homework home any day of the week.

“We shouldn’t get homework on weekends because it's a time to spend with family and friends.  We spend the whole week at school and doing homework and need some time to relax,” says senior James Klapper, “this would [ensure] that we are fresh for the next week.”  That’s legitimate.  Friday I typically don’t even look at my homework, Saturday I may give it a second glance, but it never really gets done until Sunday night (don’t lie, you all do it) -- which  leads to another tiring, groggy Monday . It becomes a cycle.

 But looking at this in an alternate light, some people simply just don’t have the time for this extra work. “Students have other activities besides school on weekends to take care of and sometimes we're too busy doing that other stuff to get to homework,” says junior Courtney Spahn.  Its not necessarily that these students are intentionally avoiding their homework , they’re just busy! Oftentimes, students’ weekends are full with little  wriggle room left  for homework.

But I digress. So you have homework this weekend and you don’t want it. Homework isn’t just going to disappear and there is no such thing as the homework fairy (my apologies to those of you who haven’t heard).  However, the question remains:  why do students get loaded with homework on the weekends (and in general) anyway?

I soon discovered that the reason is not because teachers love to torture their students or that they’re evil or anything. “Homework in general is to reinforce what I taught in class and for practice,” explains English teacher Ms. Logsden, “Unfortunately teachers can’t usually accomplish everything in forty- five minutes and have to send some work home.”

 It’s not that teachers love to give out homework every chance they get. Homework is also more work for teachers, since they often go through and grade these assignments. They probably don’t like it much either.

So, think about it.  Does homework really help students?

            “In my Spanish class, we used to get homework every night and it really helped me absorb it,” remarks senior Owen Shemro.

So maybe homework isn’t such a horrid idea after all. Yeah, regularly students will find homework more of a pain than a gain, but its only there to help you master what you need to learn.  Who knows? You may actually appreciate the homework later on as an effective tool translating your teacher’s “blah, blah, blahs” into words that make sense.  Now there’s a thought!