Once upon a time, in the great year of 1994, my mom became with child. It was there while he was still in the womb we made our connection. When my mom was about 6-8 months pregnant, I began to pray for him. I was in love with a person I had never seen or heard.
That baby grew up. I made that baby my best friend, despite us being 3 years, 11 months apart. I remember trying to teach him the ABC’s while I was in kindergarten. He learned very quickly. I can still clearly remember teaching him the basics of multiplication of zero and one while he was in kindergarten.
he became my buddy. We did nearly everything together. From our earliest years you could find us playing basketball and football together. I made him my best friend.
When he tried out for the basketball team, I practiced many hours with him. He was barely 4 feet tall, and I was 5 feet. I remembered once in a pickup game I blocked his shot nearly 20 times, yet he still never gave up. He became better than me in most subjects including science, and math. He can honestly beat me most times in a basketball game.
Thats cute Brent you say to yourself, so what the point of this story.
Well you see, my brother is now a freshman in high school, and I, a freshman in college. He goes to school every morning at 6:45 am for cross country practice. Then he usually spends an hour after school working out or going to tutoring. Then from 5:30 pm to nearly 9 pm he spends doing homework. He then usually wakes up around 5 am to finish that homework.
As a full-time college student I get HALF the homework he does. He goes to school 8 hours a day, I go to school 13 hours a week. In 2 years i will graduate with an AA, in four I will have my BA. While my younger brother will graduate in four years with a high school DIPLOMA!!.
Teachers, does he really need all that homework to “prepare” him for college? I never see him! We rarely play ball together anymore, we barely talk like we used to. On Saturday’s he has Cross country meets and on Sunday church. Can you tell ME when i get to see him.
Yall have him for 8 hours a day or technically 5 hours a week. I graduated from Stevens with over 10 hours of college credit, yet I NEVER got the amount of HW he gets. Is there a reason you are doing this to a freshman? Or do you forget he has another life outside your class?
I know this does not apply to all teachers but from what he brings home, i know it is many.
I am asking you to cut down on the amount of HW you assign. I still love my brother, and miss the days of playing ball with him. Please just even one night a week would be fine, because that little baby in the womb, grew up and became my best friend.
All that was cute! jk
Is he making straight A’s? I think the amount of HW being assigned is the same, maybe he is a little more dedicated. As with most sibling relationships; there is a serious and non-serious one. Consider advising him to try better time management. He needs to see spending family time as equally important as academics and sports.
Yes he is making good grades. He is in all honors, pre-ap classes. But he is only a freshman. Now when he is a junior, or a senior sure, load him up, but until then, I think his teachers should cut back to maybe 3 hrs a week or so.
The only thing I can say is, “such is life!” School has always been changing since I have went. I get requests all the time asking me if I have Microsoft Word from people that need it for their first-graders! I have never seen so much homework given to such young grade schoolers. Its not just a high school thing. My advice is to cherish the times little time you might get to spend with him because as you get older life gets more complicated. What I mean by this is you and him will eventually work a job, date a girl, get married, have children, etc. All these things will pull time away from both of you hanging out, but the hard part is over, you are already good friends. For siblings, that is one of the biggest obstacles out there. I haven’t talked to my brother since my early 20′s and I am 36, but we were never close. Maybe dinner will be the only time to hang out, make it work whenever you can.
If time with your brother is still a challenge, you may want to start running in the early morning hours as one of your new life challenges (inspired by the Carey movie). The hard part will be keeping up. No, the hard part will be to continue to breathe and talk at that pace. Good luck to the younger brother in the Regional meet! He is blessed to have a wonderful older brother as a role model and friend.