A number of honors-level courses at Waterford High School require students to complete summer work. These range from reading a novel and writing an essay for 12th-grade AP English to completing problem sets in AP Chemistry. Because these assignments are the first grades of the year and set the tone for the first quarter, the value of these assignments is questioned.
“Summer is supposed to be a time of relaxation, but when summer assignments interfere with that, it seems like another part of an already long school year,” Larissa Martins exclaims.
Senior Danica Agsalud is currently taking three APs this year: AP Stats, AP Government and Politics, and AP Psychology. While registering for classes, she enrolled for AP Spanish and AP English, which “both have a good amount of summer work.”
During the summer, Danica also works at Camp Dash and plays volleyball in the summer. For many students, finding the time to complete summer work for AP classes becomes a challenge. Agsalud claims, “With the two other APs I was going to take during the school year, I coincidentally dropped the classes that I think had the most summer work.”
Mr. Collins, an English teacher, teaches both advanced and honors 10th-grade English at Waterford High. He gives summer work to only his honors classes, which is reading one novel called A Separate Piece by John Knowles.
He said, “A decade ago, I would give all my classes summer work. However, the push from home has been to have a summer of relaxation, which I understand, but educationally is less valid.”
Senior Maria Campo said that she took both AP United States History and AP Government her junior year, and out of those two classes, she only had summer work for APUSH. Campo says, “I felt like it was so much more stress and no guidance.”
Campo also works two jobs during the summer at Camp Dash during the day and the restaurant, Fat Tuna, during the night, while also participating in cheer, which holds practices over the summer. She thinks that “summer work is so stressful, especially if you have a job or do a sport, because you have no time to hang out with friends or time for yourself.”
Spanish teacher Mrs. Marchese, who teaches multiple levels of Spanish classes at Waterford High, doesn’t give out summer work, but does think that summer work is beneficial. She expressed that “summer is a long time to go without doing school work, and summer work keeps students’ minds ready to learn.”
The majority of teachers feel it’s beneficial to give summer homework, but APUSH teacher Mrs. Virtue says it’s tough for her; she states that she “dislikes summer work but has to give it.”
APUSH used to be a three-semester class, starting in the spring of sophomore year through junior year. She thinks that “usually summer work is good because it sorts out the kids who are not committed to the class,” but “it is also not fair to students to give summer work because they should have their summer too.”
Since APUSH is a full course with a lot of topics to cover, it is important to have summer work to try and eliminate all of the work that would have to be crammed into the couple of months before the AP test in May.
Summer work has many advantages and disadvantages for both teachers and students because it can be a stressful experience for students. After all, summer is a time for relaxation, however for teachers, it is a necessary part of the curriculum because it allows them to cover content that they do not have time to cover as well as get students prepared for the rest of the school year.
