When students at Dover-Sherborn High School break for Thanksgiving later this month, there’s at least one thing they won’t have to worry about: homework.
In a change from holidays past, the suburban Boston school district has declared Thanksgiving vacation a “homework-free weekend.” It’s the first of several planned for this academic year, and it’s an unusual change of pace for a competitive school that was recently ranked by Newsweek as the 16th best high school in the country. The move is meant to allow students to relax and spend more time with their families. It’s also part of a broader district effort to reduce stress and anxiety in an overburdened student population.
“We noticed over the past few years an increase in students feeling so stressed out and feeling overwhelmed and not able to cope,” says Ellen Chagnon, director of guidance at Dover-Sherborn. “We had to figure out something better than Band-Aiding the problem. “
The solution the school came up with is a program called Challenge Success that works with school communities to rethink attitudes about achievement and reduce student workload. Denise Pope, the founder of Challenge Success, in August released a book, “Overloaded and Underprepared,” that provides practical recommendations for schools based on years of academic research on workload and achievement. Pope’s book is a kind of manual for how to reconfigure secondary education at a time when many schools are looking for ways to dial back the intensity of high school life.
Read the entire article on the Boston Globe website.
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