Towards the end of the 2023-2024 school year, I met with Ms. Howland, one of HWRHS’s adjustment counselors, to discuss the results of the April 2024 Mental Health and School Based Supports survey. Before beginning, Ms. Howland made it known that her thoughts and opinions were representative of the entire counseling department, not just her own belief system. From this interview, three basic truths emerged. The first truth is that the student body, as a whole, is quite stressed, due to immense social and academic pressures. The second truth is that most teachers question whether homework has any benefit when it exceeds a certain amount. The third truth is that student schedules are not currently structured to support students’ mental health and, therefore, need to be revamped.
Basic Truth #1: Students at HWRHS Experience Intense Social and Academic Pressures
Ms. Howland and the counseling department are genuinely concerned about the student body’s mental health, and are not surprised that 67% of students on the survey reported that they did not look forward to coming to school due to social and academic pressures.
Ms. Howland states, “I think that school is a lot of pressure for kids. I think even though they feel like they belong here, maybe they still socially don’t feel super comfortable. It’s really hard.”
Academically, Ms. Howland is uncertain about the source of this pressure: “It might be coming from colleges or from outside sources.”
Regardless, both Ms. Howland and the counseling department feel it is imperative that they provide students with some much needed perspective about their academic grades, as students wrongly assume that their grades or GPA are the only measures of success.
Ms. Howland says, “I wish that we could explain to kids that you don’t need to go to a college with a big, fancy name. Everybody has post high school plans that will work for them eventually … .The world doesn’t ever ask what you got in your English class.”
Several students who responded to the April 2024 survey indicated that they would welcome mandatory check-ins from the adjustment counselors. Though Ms. Howland explains that the counseling department cannot really make check-ins “mandatory” — a word which she finds a bit too “strong” — they plan in the near future to do check-ins.
In fact, Ms. Howland reveals that the adjustment counselors already started last year. “I had the seniors. Ms. Trimby and Ms Barbados started with the freshmen, and then we were going to try to figure out how to divide up the other grades.”
Whether students then follow up with the counseling department is up to them, but Ms. Howland explains, counselors are no longer content with just saying, “Hi, everyone. This is where I’m located”; rather they are now “going to try to pull kids and meet with them.”
The hope is that students will begin to feel like they are surrounded by adults who genuinely care about their emotional well-being and will realize that they are not an anomaly. It is both normal and expected for students to feel overwhelmed by high school pressures. They just need to know that they have a built-in support system here at HWRHS.
Basic Truth #2: Teachers Know Excessive Homework Is Counterproductive
Nevertheless, emotional support alone is not enough to quell students’ ever-growing academic anxiety. As the April 2024 survey indicated, students are withering under the copious amount of homework that is being regularly assigned. Is the faculty recognizing this issue and trying to actively find a solution?
According to Ms. Howland, the faculty does, indeed, notice and is actively trying to find a solution. Ms. Howland reveals, “The faculty has talked about homework over and over – in terms of how much we should be giving [students]. Is it effective, is it appropriate, is it helpful?” Though the faculty has not yet come to a conclusion, they mostly agree that “the amount of homework that happens is probably not beneficial.”
Unfortunately, faculty cannot find the time to meet interdepartmentally to set guidelines on homework. As stated by Ms. Howland, teachers are not going to carry out homework changes unless there is time to implement a school-wide policy change.
Basic Truth #3: Students’ Schedules Need To Be Revamped To Support Mental Health
As stated by Ms. Howland, the school counseling department truly wants to alleviate students’ anxiety over academics, but they know that students are resistant to meeting with them during Powerblock or classes because of the academic pressures they face.
Ms. Howland points out that the counseling department has, therefore, discussed the benefit of supplanting HWRHS’s Powerblock with a lengthier study hall. This way, counselors could have more access to students who are currently feeling too pressured to miss an academic class or Powerblock to meet with a counselor. Ms Howland explains, “Powerblock is the answer to study blocks for us and it doesn’t work efficiently because kids have to do AP classes during Powerblock, they are supposed to meet with their clubs during Powerblock, student government [happens] during Powerblock: all these things happen during Powerblock.”
According to Ms Howland and the school counseling department, “The schedule itself doesn’t actually support students’ mental health, to be honest.” Without a study hall, which would be equivalent, time-wise, to one whole course, counselors just can’t gain access to students in need and students can’t get a much needed break from academics. As Ms. Howland explains, “If we had study halls or some version of that,..it would give [students] one break a day automatically,…one block of the day where they didn’t have an academic course, so even that alone, that would take some pressure off.”
Research and data amassed from other schools bolster Ms. Howland’s thoughts on study halls. Principal David Chambers of Cantwell Sacred Heart of Mary High School in Montebello, California, for example, has seen firsthand the positive impact that study halls can make. Though Cantwell Sacred Heart of Mary High School is a private school and thus faces fewer restrictions than a public school like Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School, it still yields valuable lessons about the importance of in-school homework time for students. Just a few months after Principal Chambers implemented study halls in his school, he saw his students’ overall GPA rise by .5% and the number of honors students increase from 32% to 50%. The Education Resources Information Center’s Institute of Educational Science has found that study halls can reduce impending homework by 50%. Such a reduction could give students a bit of breathing room and allow students to pursue an after-school extracurricular activity without having to endure the same amount of stress that they are currently experiencing.
At present, however, study hall is not a possibility. As noted by Ms. Howland, “There’s a rule about how many minutes [the faculty] is supposed to spend teaching, and study blocks don’t fall there. But, we know that there’s lots of other high schools that have study blocks, so I don’t know how to do that while staying in the Mass Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) frameworks.”
Ms. Howland is referring to DESE’s Structured Learning Time Requirements (27.04), which states that “all schools should ensure that every secondary school student is scheduled to receive a minimum of 990 hours per school year of structured learning time.” The Massachusetts Department of Education’s handbook explicitly asserts that traditional study halls, in which the counseling department sees real potential to lighten students’ workload and free up students so they can seek counseling if needed, would not count towards those 990 required, yearly hours. Adding a study block to each student’s daily schedule would then seem to pose quite a challenge.
Nevertheless, as Ms. Howland pointed out, several other public high schools in Massachusetts, like Natick, Weston, Shepherd Hill, Algonquin, Marlborough, Brookline, and Franklin High Schools, who are held to the same DESE standards, have found a way to implement study halls into their school day. So, why can’t Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School follow suit?
Restructuring Students’ Schedules or School Weeks Could Yield Positive Results
For the sake of students’ mental well-being, the Hamilton-Wenham Regional School District needs to reevaluate whether students’ weekly school schedules work. First, the school district should reassess whether their once-weekly half days are advantageous. Not all MA school districts have half days once a week for teacher workshops. Are these half days truly viable? Would it be more effective to give students one study block a day than to retain these weekly half day workshops?
Furthermore, is the high school using these weekly half days wisely? Could they not, for instance, use these days to discuss and set guidelines or regulations on homework? Is this not a time when all departments congregate?
HWRHS administrators may also want to consider turning one of its electives into a guided study hall (GSH) in which a teacher would actively provide assistance on homework. A GSH may fall under DESE’s Structured Learning Time Requirements since a teacher is not only present but also engaging with those students in need of help. If a GSH was offered as one of two mandatory student electives, it could provide students with that much needed time to either complete some homework in school with a teacher’s guidance or meet with one of the adjustment counselors.
There are other options, as well, that could help students’ attain optimal mental health. For example, many states, such as Oregon, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado, have adopted four-day school weeks. Would a shorter school week ease some of the academic pressures that high school students experience? Would it give students more time to live a more balanced life?
Districts make their own school schedules, so they could implement such a change so long as they meet MA requirements of 180 days of classes and 990 hours of instruction; but, to meet the state requirement, summer break would have to be reduced to just four weeks. It is, however, still worth considering as a means to help students feel less overwhelmed.
Students’ mental well being needs to become the school district’s top priority. In that vein, it is essential that the district reconsiders its weekly school schedules to accommodate students’ needs for more time to complete assignments and meet with teachers and counselors during school hours. This could mean one study block or GSH a day or a shortened school week. All possibilities must be considered so that students can flourish both inside and outside of school.
