Photo courtesy of sophomore Karl Karsh.

  No student at San Luis Obispo High School is new to the idea of homework. Teachers will assign homework every weekday and sometimes even on weekends. There is a debate among students and teachers alike if homework is beneficial or not.

  Expressions wanted to interview a teacher who doesn’t assign homework to take a look at their thought process and see why they decide against it. After a good amount of research, the teacher Expressions chose to interview was Applied Math and Algebra II teacher Steven Arata.

Expressions: When did you stop assigning homework?

Math teacher Steven Arata: Two years ago, right before COVID-19. Our department as a whole decided for any non-AP classes to assign no homework.

Expressions: Why did you choose to stop assigning homework?

Arata: A lot of students didn’t have the support structure at home to answer some of the questions we’ve been going through. 

Expressions: Did all of the math teachers stop assigning homework, or is it just you?

Arata: During the 2019-2020 school year, department wide, we stopped assigning homework. That eventually got cut short because of COVID-19. What ended up happening was we all went to distance learning and started assigning homework again because we had gone asynchronous.  

Expressions: Have you gotten any backlash for not assigning homework?

Arata: The backlash that I’ve gotten is when parents have gone ‘Well, how is my kid supposed to practice?’ When we explain to them that we still give out the Suggested Practice questions, and more importantly, we still spend time reviewing those when a student has a question, the parents go ‘oh, okay.’ The biggest concern is where those points go now that they aren’t in homework. Now that’s encapsulated in the classwork category.

Expressions: So far, do you think your students have been performing better or worse based on not assigning homework?

Arata: From what I’ve seen so far, students are performing a little bit better. This is mostly because they end up understanding that Suggested Practice is actually a resource. It’s not just “Hey, I need you to finish fifteen problems”, it’s “Do you want to do better?”

  Although it’s a controversial topic, after talking to Arata, is seems understandable that not assigning homework can be beneficial to students.

By giving the option of Suggested Practice Problems instead of assigning homework, not only do students have less stress put on them, but they have the opportunity to want to improve their performance on their own terms.