A page one Sunday Globe article shares details about the day before Roee Grutman took his life and, once again, revisits the theory that academic stress was a contributing factor.
His family, who moved here 14 years ago from Israel, believes the stress of an overwhelming course load and an American obsession with elite universities contributed to his death, though they recognize there could have been additional — still unknown — factors.
In addition, his mom Galit Grutman posted this comment Friday on Village 14…
thank you all for understanding and for your support. We need to do something right away so there will not be a 4th case. We are in an emergency situation now and need to respond and act fast. You are right – Roee was an exceptional young man and although we may never know what happened, we need to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.
I don’t know why any of these teens decided to take their own lives. So I have no idea how to avoid tragedies like these in the future. But I firmly believe Newton high schools add a lot of unnecessary stress to the daily lives of teens. Not just academically, but systemically as well.
With that in mind, and in light of the fact that research has linked sleep deprivation to depression in teens, it is unfathomable that the School Committee has taken no action to change the ridiculously early morning start time at our high schools. Their failure to take action on an issue that unquestionably adds stress to daily the lives of thousands of high school teens, is simply inexcusable. It reflects very poorly on the School Committee’s recognition of problems, and their ability to address them.
“But the two high schools in Newton are trying to talk to students about ways to lower their levels of stress — outreach that began before the suicides, said Superintendent David Fleishman. The schools established no-homework weekends. Students with more than two tests scheduled on any day could ask teachers to reschedule.”
Not quite sure this is a true statement. Not sure if the Memo ever got to the Principals or the Students of the HS or the parents??. My HS student has not heard about this nor had any homework free weekends. And my Middle Schooler has on multiple occasions had 3 tests on one day and they both had homework during the February Break.
It sounds like a great idea and I am sure looks like a great quote from the Superintendent in the Globe but it is Not true.
If the School Department or City REALLY wanted to do something they should set up a group headed by this Parent/Psychologist Bacigalupe and Former Interim Superintendent Jim Marini to work with a group of Parents and Students to figure out what is going on with our children. Marini understands the community and our school system. We need someone with his compassion and understanding to help. And Dr. Baciglupe based on what he has written also fully understands the issue. Unfortunately our School Dept and Mayor are not forward thinking and our SC needs to Mandate a Task Force ASAP.
As Roee mother is pleading something needs to be done so we Dont have a 4th case. This is an Emergency Situation – How long will we have to wait for something meaningful to be done??
@Joanne:
You need to pay closer attention to Village 14.
Oh wait you did.
There is a lot of stress in Newton high schools but I disagree that this is primarily the school’s fault. It is too easy to scapegoat the teachers and administrators. I will not reiterate everything I said in the Feb 17 thread where I disagreed with some of what Dr Bacigalupe wrote (I strongly disagree that he “fully understands the issue” – but no one else does either), but there are a few things I’d like to add my earlier comments.
The homework-free weekends (or weeks) are well-publicized at Newton South (I cannot speak as to Newton North and I don’t know if it applies to middle schools). My family is very well aware of them. I just searched my email and found an email from Principal Stembridge from September 9 announcing that the homework-free weekends would be:
* Columbus Day Weekend (Term 1)
* Thanksgiving Weekend (Term 2)
* The entire February Vacation (Term 3) *
* Memorial Day Weekend (except seniors)(Term 4)
The calendar on the Newton South web site shows on the third week of February “winter break homework free week!.” It’s not listed yet for Memorial Day weekend.
The option to reschedule tests is communicated to families at the beginning of the school year and is in the student handbook, which can be downloaded from the school web site if you don’t have a copy. My child is well aware of this policy but has chosen to not take advantage of it (it is up to the student to invoke the policy and decide which test(s) to postpone). Again, I don’t know if this policy exists at the middle schools.
Freshman and sophomore years (my child is a junior) there were evening meetings at Newton South for parents to learn about course sign-ups for the following year. These meetings are only attended by a fraction of the parents. School staff who spoke discouraged students from taking “honors” (or AP) in every subject or even in most of their subjects. They encouraged us to help our students find “balance” in their academic and non-academic lives. However, they do not prohibit students from signing up for all honors and AP classes.
The problem, in my opinion, is that students get the message that getting into a “top” college is very important and it becomes for them a measure of their self-worth. This leads them to overload on academics and too much of their time is taken up with homework, studying, and test prep. I think this unfortunate message is coming from parents, other students, and society at large. It is not a message the school promotes (although some teachers may to some degree). Perhaps the schools could do more to try to blunt this message but they cannot counteract it on their own. Perhaps the schools could do more to try to reduce the amount of homework, but that is a symptom more than a cause.
The message about loading up on honors and AP classes also comes from the “top” colleges. Over February break I visited several colleges with my Newton South junior, including Johns Hopkins, which was mentioned in the Globe article as a school that Roee wanted to attend. At Johns Hopkins, as at other schools, admissions staff told us “if your high school offers AP or honors classes, you should be taking them”. I don’t think they mean in every possible subject, but that’s my interpretation. Newton high schools have no way to stop this message coming from the most competitive colleges.
Finally, an anecdote. We moved here before my younger child started high school. My older child attended a high school in another state 1500 miles away. That high school was a “nationally ranked” “magnet” (yes, buzzwords) high school for a large city school district. There was just as much homework, school started even earlier in the morning than here, more AP courses were offered than at Newton South, and there were more National Merit scholars. In our four years there, there were no suicides. The level of stress was much lower, in my opinion, than here. I think some of this is because most students were planning to go to one of the large public universities in that state – very good schools, but not in anyones “top 40” list.
Families and the school need to work together to send the message that a person’s worth does not come from academic achievement. However, it is not even clear that this was a primary issue in the majority of the 3 suicides in Newton this school year (the Globe article indicated that 2 of the suicides involved students with know mental health issues). Blaming the schools or insisting they “do something!” is not productive.
I agree with much of what Bruce said but I wouldn’t let the schools off the hook. Still, it’s important that we not look to blame anyone here. We all contributed to a situation that has our kids very stressed out and we all have to contribute to a solution.
A couple of random thoughts:
1. I think we’re incorrectly using the word “stressed.” We all get stressed. It’s life. It’s probably not even unhealthy at times. What alarms me is when kids get so anxious about their school work that they become “distressed.”
2. It is a societal problem but it does not exist everywhere. I highly doubt that kids are discussing college in ninth grade in good high schools everywhere in the country. I also find it unlikely that kids are feeling like their best friends are their competition in all good high schools in the country.
3. We — parents who demand excellent education — have created this pressure cooker environment. We might feel like we don’t put pressure on them, but we do. We put them in schools where they are surrounded by superstar kids, where they have a wide array of academic and extracurricular opportunities, where their neighbors get accepted to Ivy League schools. We don’t question their overwhelming load of homework; high school is supposed to be hard. How could they not feel the pressure to shine?
4. The high school experience in Newton — at least at Newton South — is so much about college: When should your child take the PSATs and the SATs? When should you start visiting schools? Should he take an SAT prep class?
5. And then there’s Naviance. For anyone whose child hasn’t applied to college yet, a brief summary: Naviance is a college admission tool that the high schools use to help students decide where to apply. A scattergram for each college plots the SAT scores and GPA of all students from your high school who have applied to that high school in the last five years, indicating whether they were accepted, rejected or wait-listed. It’s a great tool for determining if you fit into the academic demographic of the school, but it also screams out to students how much they are competing with their classmates.
6. I do not think Dr. Bacigalupe helped the conversation at all.
Thank you, Bruce, for stating all of this so well. I agree completely.
So lets do nothing and wait for number 4.
@Greg,
Your link refers to homework free weekends at South. Can you point to something that indicates that the policy has been adopted at North? Like Joanne, I have not heard of any such policy being adopted at Newton North and if it has been adopted, it has not been noted on the school calendar.
I don’t know about designated “no homework” weekends at North, but did find this from a “From the Principal” email from March 2013:
Apparently the policies do differ at the two schools. Both schools have their student handbooks on their web sites.
From the Newton North Student Handbook:
“Homework over vacations and religious holidays:
Students should not receive homework over religious holidays or during vacation, and should not have “major” assignments due upon return to school after a break. See your housemaster with any questions or concerns.”
(“Vacation” is not defined; I would hope it would include the 3 week-long breaks at least? I see nothing in the North handbook regarding an option to reschedule tests when there are more than two in a day as is the case at South.)
From the Newton South Student Handbook:
“Homework Policies:
Daily and long-term assignments outside of class are essential parts of most courses. There is a “one- night equivalent” homework limit placed on the December, February, and April vacation periods. Teachers should accommodate students’ religious obligations when making decisions about homework assignments.
For the 2013-14, the “Homework Free Weekends” policy pilot will continue. There will be four no- homework weekends, one for each term, with the understanding that the specific weekend dates must be considered more carefully to ensure limited competition from surrounding days off or special schedules.
As a goodwill gesture to students and their families, who experience stress due to our school’s rigorous homework expectations, all classroom teachers will adopt as a continued pilot South’s “homework-free weekend” program, whereby no homework will be due on the day of return after each of four specifically agreed-upon weekends (one each term). Teachers will make a good-faith effort to keep the next-day’s homework load – the day following the students’ return – at a normal evening’s level so as not to undermine the benefit from the reduced-stress weekend.
Testing Policies:
• Throughout the entire school year, at least one week notice must be given for major assessments (defined as those comprising 15% or more of a student’s term grade).
• Students with more than two major assessments occurring on the same day are encouraged to appeal to their teachers as early as possible to reschedule one of these assessments.
• There will be a one-block moratorium from introducing new topics that will be assessed (topics introduced for the first time the block before the announced test cannot be tested).”
(Note that at South, the week-long vacations are not necessarily homework free, unless they are also designated homework-free weekends as was the case for the Feb. vacation week this year. So it appears that at both schools, Feb break week should have been “homework-free”.)
The homework-free weekend policy at South is still considered a “pilot”; this is its second year. Although it’s not explicitly stated in the above policy, teachers are also discouraged from scheduling a test on the first day after a homework-free weekend (I know that one teacher who tried to do this after the fall homework-free weekend was told to reschedule the test).
I should add that my South child had a couple of long-term projects that she could have worked on over Feb. break (she did work on one). These were assigned over a week before the break week started; one was due a few days after break ended, the other was due a week after break ended – well within the policy guidelines. I don’t see this as a big deal.
I’m posting this information to try to help people get their facts straight, but I don’t think this thread should be only about homework-free weekends. Although I think these policies at South are good ideas, they are not a cure for student stress – this has to start in the home with the support of the school. However, I’m amazed by the strong negative reaction to homework-free weekends by a couple of commentators in the 2012 thread Greg linked to above.
Thanks, Tricia. I did a little more sleuthing and came upon this meeting summary from the NNHS Student-Faculty Administration meeting from November of 2013. It sounds like a student put forward a suggestion that “homework free” weekends be adopted as a formal policy.
As for the policy described in the email, I would say in our experience that the majority of teachers my kids have had do not follow these guidelines.
http://nnhssfa.pbworks.com/w/page/70597617/Minutes,%20November%206,%202013
Thanks Bruce – sorry bout the cross-post. 🙂
I was surprised by the pressure to take AP and Honors courses and get into an ivy my kids felt at South. I don’t think it comes from the School administration though. It was other parents who were amazed that I told my kids to look at public school, i.e. UMass and similar. There are a few teachers who are a bit relentless with their homework and expectations, but they are the rarity. Most are very reasonable, if not relaxed in their homework/class requirements.
It is messages like the Newton Schools Foundation sending out fundraising letters highlighting a student who got into MIT that feed the pressure. NSF could have pictured a student who got into UMass Lowell or BU. A very good schools and much more typical college placements for Newton students.
Ummm, my son started middle school this year, and I was shocked that he got homework over February vacation. Now, we didn’t go anywhere, so he wasn’t sacrificing a day of work instead of the beach. I believe in giving kids vacations (reading is fine, but no school work). I get vacation time and I use it. Kids grow up fast enough, and in college they will get plenty of homework over spring break.
There is NOTHING that my kid NEEDS to do over vacation – it is the teacher’s belief!
In addition, there is ONE teacher my son has who believes in giving out homework every night, even if is a word search (really, a word search in 6th grade). I believe that you give the kid meaningful homework, and if you don’t have meaningful homework, give the kids a night off! Give homework three nights a week that directly relates to classwork, but don’t give my kid five nights of homework, including two “fluff” pieces. I get the feeling that this teacher likes being able to give homework for the sake of having the kids do it, even if it doesn’t link back to class.
Good post Gail. Yes, there are many high schools in the country that are just as good as Newton academically and have just as much homework, but not all of these communities create the same “pressure cooker environment”.
Students and parents need to be able to talk about college in a “healthy” manner – it’s important, but very soon after it’s over, no one will care what college you went to. What’s really important is what you do with your life after college. Getting into college is competitive, but should not be a competition with your fellow students.
That said, talking about college in 9th grade is not necessarily a problem in and of itself. After all, when we discussed college with our older child, we did not ask our four-years-younger child to leave the room. The younger one was in 7th grade and “tagging along” on some college visits with the older one.
I sense that Newton South avoids speaking much about college to freshmen and sophomores, and Naviance passwords are not given out until junior year. I assume this is to decrease anxiety over college. However, the college process at Newton South “kicks off” with Junior parent night (was Jan. 22 this year) and getting those Naviance passwords, so it becomes a really big deal. At the very-good-out-of-state high school my older child attended, Naviance passwords were given out freshman year, and it’s not such a big deal. I preferred the earlier approach, but I can’t be sure that would be better in this community.
We live in a community brimming with professional parents, lawyers, bankers, doctors, teachers,.. all who have achieved to a very high level. The children of these high achievers cant help but feel like they somehow must measure up.
Give the kids a break. let them enjoy life a little. If they bag their homework let ‘them’ take responsibility for it. It’s their life, much as you wish you had some control over it. There are alternatives to college, and there are measures for success and good health that academic excellence doesn’t account for.
And who is paying for “Naviance”, the kid ? The schools ? Where does the pressure come from ?
@Blueprintbill,
The city uses the Naviance system to transmit student transcripts and teacher recommendations to colleges. Students receive access to the Naviance system and there create lists of schools that they are applying to. As mentioned earlier, the system also compiles data for 3 prior years so that if a student is interested in a particular college they can see how many Newton students applied to that college, how many were accepted and what the average GPA’s and SAT/ACT scores were for students accepted by that institution. It provides something of a benchmark.
With reference to whether or not Newton is unique in the amount of stress that kids feel here, there have been studies by UCLA which suggest that about one-third of college freshmen (190,000 surveyed) reported feeling overwhelming stress during their senior year of high school.
See: http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/high-school-notes/2013/01/28/tips-for-parents-to-help-teens-de-stress
http://www.heri.ucla.edu/monographs/theamericanfreshman2012.pdf
First of all I feel terribly for the families involved in this and other tragedies.
My experience at NNHS starting 10 years ago was that most of the pressure came from parents. Yes the school taught towards college (which has its own issues — furthermore I believe the anti-military attitudes end up hurting many students, especially thise with financial issues), but everyone knew who the kids who would panic if they got below an A were due to parental threats.
My parents collectively attended 3 Ivys for 4 degrees and are pretty successful. That didn’t stop me from joining the military or getting a BS from Umass or my brother from getting an associates from a community college before moving on to a state school to work towards his BA… my time at NNHS was not all that stressful, and I did well and had good relationships with teachers.
The one thing I will say is as I witnessed and still hear about, the schools absolutely do not have bullying under control. For most they graduate and move on, but for a very few its too much.
Its also worth pointing out that 10s of thousands graduate from NPS and move on with their lives, stressed or not. I believe its incorrect to blame the schools for being a causal factor in these rare terrible incidents. If a parent sees that in their child they should be working at home and with the school to address it.
Maybe things have changed a ton the last 6 years but I tend to doubt it.
Blaming Newton school academia for these tragedies is beyond ridiculous. Why? Try going to an inner city school. Half these kids don’t know where their next meal is coming from. That is what you call “stress.” Not daddy coming down hard on doing well on SATs, or dealing with homework on February vacation.
Are you kidding me? How are we even entertaining these ridiculous accusations that the competitive school culture in some way contributes to the tragedy of a child taking their own life. If a child is taking his or her life, something much more serious and profound is going on in their life, and those reasons should be examined. If this was a case of bullying, then that should be examined. Kids face adversity every day, and suffice it to say most kids facing life-threatening adversity don’t live in Newton. But saying that the schools are too hard on the kids academically is a joke of a statement.
To echo the previous poster, 10s of thousands of graduates have been churned by this city’s public schools, and have undoubtedly gone on to great careers. I realize that many people in Newton vote for politicians that propagate the Nanny State, but please folks, get real.