The block schedule has not reached its full potential and will never do so until some guidelines and mutual understandings are set into place about the homework web site. Homework on the homework website is either posted late or added to after class. Not most of the time, but enough to be a problem. This is a major scheduling problem for some students and an annoyance for others (including myself). The block schedule is great in its flexibility of planning. Because homework is (except for some nights) due in two days, it allows, with careful planning, for students to have long nights of sports finals, devote most of a night to studying for a large test, or just for a night off of homework (very helpful).

The homework website has the capability of ruining all of this. Don’t get me wrong, I love the homework website. It is a very viable tool, but without a clear understanding of rules (or rules in the first place) the website has a possibility to de-rail plans. When homework is posted late, say, after a student has checked the website, that student has no idea there is homework, or, if the teacher has added homework to the site, might not have done all of it. My understanding is that if the homework was not posted when you were on, you print out the page saying no homework and bring it to the teacher. However, this only works the night before homework is due. Some of us need or want to do homework the night it is assigned. One of the most prevalent reasons is so that if we run into a problem that night, we can talk to the teacher the next day for help without overly stressing out. Another is that the student does not have time the next night, for whatever reason, to do said homework. Printing out the page saying no homework on this day and bringing the page in when it is due results in “I posted the homework in plenty time to be completed” but for some of us, it wasn’t, or even if it was, it’s still an annoyance to scheduling, and a factor that contributes to stress.

It doesn’t seem like a difficult thing to post homework on the day assigned, and I’m not opposed to teachers pausing for a few seconds to post the homework in class. There needs to be set rules, and understandings of when homework should be posted by, so we can stop this uncertainty about homework; students should be able to know what their homework is the day it is assigned.