Stop Homework

Today’s inter­vie­wee is Paul Richards, who is in his fifth year as prin­ci­pal of Need­ham High School in Need­ham, Mass­a­chu­setts. Dur­ing his tenure, he has stud­ied and sur­veyed stu­dent stress and tried a vari­ety of mea­sures aimed at reduc­ing it. The father of a kinder­gart­ner and first grader, Richards is leav­ing Need­ham high at the end of the 2008 – 2009 school year to become the high school prin­ci­pal at the Amer­i­can School in Lon­don. (Take a look at the school’s web site where you can read the Need­ham Stress Reduc­tion Committee’s mate­ri­als. They have com­piled a very com­pre­hen­sive resource list.)

Inter­view with Paul Richards, Prin­ci­pal of Need­ham High
by Sara Bennett

” Schools need to look at their own practices.They need to edu­cate teach­ers, par­ents and stu­dents on the cul­ture of stress.”

–Paul Richards, prin­ci­pal, Need­ham High, Need­ham, Massachusetts

Is stress really a prob­lem for high school stu­dents?

Yes. In the twenty years since I was a high school stu­dent, the demands on stu­dents’ time have increased dra­mat­i­cally. The prob­lem is cre­ated by the cul­ture. Many parts of school cul­ture in sub­ur­ban schools are very pos­i­tive and show def­i­nite links to achieve­ment. But there’s an under­side to it which affects both the phys­i­cal and men­tal well-being of our students.

The affects are indi­vid­u­al­ized. For some kids, it can be aca­d­e­mic stress – too many AP classes, too much home­work, too much com­pe­ti­tion. For oth­ers, it can be the over­sched­ul­ing after­school – home­work com­pet­ing with piano lessons or sports or com­mu­nity ser­vice. For some kids, it’s social stress.

At Need­ham High, we’ve cho­sen to focus entirely on aca­d­e­mic stress because that’s our busi­ness. At the same time, we’ve been very clear that the par­ents have a big stake in reduc­ing the stress. Many stu­dents will say that the pri­mary stress comes from their par­ents’ expec­ta­tions, namely name-brand col­leges, high grades, and resumes full of accom­plish­ments and activities.

What is the school’s role in cre­at­ing stress?
Schools need to look at their own prac­tices to see how they con­tribute to the amount of stress stu­dents face. They need to look at the way they use grades, rank­ings, GPAs, how much home­work they assign.

What kind of steps have you taken to reduce stress?
We stopped pub­lish­ing the school honor role in the news­pa­per a few years ago. We’re rewrit­ing our home­work pol­icy this year. We’ve helped stu­dents with their sched­ules. When stu­dents sign up for courses, they map out their week, includ­ing how many hours they’ll be in the class­room, hours of home­work, hours on extracur­ric­u­lars, hours on per­sonal hygiene, etc., to make sure they haven’t over­loaded themselves.

We’ve had sev­eral par­ent assem­blies, we’ve spo­ken to 8th-grade par­ents, and we’re going to have a com­mu­nity forum to share techniques.

The stu­dents devel­oped a con­tract that they have their par­ents sign so the par­ents won’t look at the elec­tronic grade book. Our sys­tem allowed par­ents access to the elec­tronic grade book and some par­ents were a lit­tle too close to it, mon­i­tor­ing their children’s progress every day.

We’ve talked to the par­ents about why they shouldn’t micro­man­age, about how it’s impor­tant for the stu­dents to become respon­si­ble over the course of the 4 years so when they go to the col­lege they can han­dle it and not be at their par­ents’ doorstep. These days, even grad­u­ate stu­dents and adult employ­ees are com­ing back to their par­ents for help. We need to end that.

We’ve also been very active in pro­vid­ing stress man­age­ment tech­niques. We part­nered with the Benson-Henry Insti­tute for Mind Body Med­i­cine, which runs pro­grams in schools want­ing to teach kids stress man­age­ment tech­niques. Last year, 150 sopho­mores and juniors took part in their work­shops. This year, they worked with the entire sopho­more class.

And, our pri­mary goal has been to move towards standards-based learn­ing. That’s con­sid­ered good prac­tice – mea­sur­ing kids against stan­dards rather than seat time or home­work com­ple­tion. One of the ben­e­fits is it deem­pha­sizes grades, and that’s a part of the stress equa­tion. Some teach­ers have started grad­ing with rubrics, which still trans­lates to a bottom-line grade, but deem­pha­sizes the 20 or 30 grades in a term, where every sin­gle piece of work counts.

One thing prin­ci­pals can do is deter­mine what our rela­tion­ship will be with the Col­lege Board. Some schools have dumped AP courses so that they can cover mate­r­ial in more depth. Still, we are stuck with state-mandated tests and, as a school, you have a legal and eth­i­cal oblig­a­tion to cover the mate­r­ial that’s going to be on the test.

When stu­dents feel that their edu­ca­tion is authen­tic, and when they have a good rela­tion­ship with their teacher, they report feel­ing less stressed by the work, even if there’s a lot of it.

Any part­ing thoughts?
The sink­ing feel­ing in my gut is that we’re pro­duc­ing a gen­er­a­tion which can per­form very well on what we give them. They can study for a test and regur­gi­tate the mate­r­ial, but the cre­ativ­ity, the indi­vid­u­al­ity, the inno­va­tion, con­tinue to be pushed aside. My sink­ing fee­ing is we’re pro­duc­ing a gen­er­a­tion that will have the wrong skill set for what soci­ety really needs.

Posted in category Interviews, Success Stories, Teachers Speak Out on June 5, 2009 at 8:07 am
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