Catching Up Day

In today’s society, students struggle in school when having missing assignments, thus giving up instead of trying their hardest. The moment students start falling behind, it creates a domino effect that can lead to them giving up because there’s just not enough time to fix it. Having a catch-up day could prevent students from giving up as easily and getting their work done on time. Maybe you’re thinking, “students should have already been doing that.” Well, we do try but what usually happens is, students that have a bundle of missing assignments tend to focus on that one class, then when they are completed with that one class they have these other missing assignments which builds up their stress. Additionally, they then think that the only option is to procrastinate without asking for help. Studies show that “issues such as exhaustion and anxiety outweigh their self-control and motivation. Specifically, when students need to study or work on assignments, they rely primarily on their self-control in order to get themselves to do it.”. With that being said, missing assignments could make students overthink and stress. Catch-up days could give them more hope while learning and have faith in themselves.  

There are many fair reasons for this catch-up day to exist, for example, in an article entitled “6 Reasons You Need a Built-in Catch-Up Day,” the text states,  “Less stress, Less guilt, More review, More exploration, and More sanity”. Simply putting in this catch-up day could not only make the kids have a better mindset, but could also have a big effect on their school lives. Plus with them being checked on once a week, could have them understand a subject so well that they are practically a natural at it. Personally, in my experience, I procrastinate a lot immediately when an assignment gets hard and it frustrates me. I am also sometimes too scared to ask for help. But whenever our teachers give us a day just to work on our assignments, it ends up being exactly what I need; it gives me time to focus and think, and it gives me opportunities to ask questions instead of feeling the need to rush or otherwise feel guilty. In reality, assignments can be hard and as a human being, no one wants to feel the stress and the negative self-talk when you can’t do the project right. So having that day to check in, going through the assignments one by one, and asking questions, could benefit the learning experiences in every student rather than allowing them to fall behind and lose their confidence in themselves.