With the long-awaited winter break approaching, it’s time we take a serious matter into account: homework. Does it have a place to be done over the break that we’ve deserved through and through? The extremely short answer is absolutely not.

Winter break is supposed to be a time to recover from the academic strain of the first term-and-a-half, spend time with friends and family, and above all, not do school work. We toil away at pages and pages of quadratic equations, do at least one CER a week, and for those of us who take APs, sit down for hours of note-taking and studying that goes with the class. 

That’s a lot to ask of teenagers during the regular weeks of school, but stacking a math packet, six chapters of reading with analysis questions, and piles of notes to complete during our designated time off just makes winter break glorified school.

Teachers, we appreciate your kind thoughts and concerns about us forgetting information we’ve learned over the break, but we don’t want your twelve page packet, not even that simple one pager that shouldn’t be that hard but for some reason is. No, all we want is the word itself, a break: no work, no thoughts about work, literally just a time to forget altogether about school. I promise we’ll retain the information without being assigned to read a whole textbook in two weeks.

Now, with that being said, thank you to the teachers who don’t give homework over winter break. You guys are the real ones. You’ve single-handedly risen to the top of my list of favorites by truly giving us a time to rest. When teachers say that they just want us to relax and enjoy the break, it’s the best moment of the whole school year. It’s sad that hearing we don’t have work to complete over the break can elicit so much joy because it feels like the bare minimum, but I’ll deliver the energy nonetheless.

In case you couldn’t tell, assigning homework over winter break is a lose-lose situation. All it does is make students stressed every waking hour of the precious time off, and then teachers have to deal with our tear-stained work when we come back, which they’ll have to grade. So here’s a crazy idea: no homework over the break! I know, what a thought that we should actually be given some time to rest, but everyone would benefit. Students and teachers alike would get to enjoy holidays with family without the stress of ten different assignments. Students would come back ready to learn and happy about the holidays that they got to enjoy for once, and teachers would no longer be emailed during the holidays about submission boxes they forgot to post or clarification on an assignment. Literally just peace and quiet for two whole weeks. Now that sounds like a break. •