I'm teaching school and, if you read my blog regularly, you know that I feel like I am drowning in work. Grading and preparing are taking multiple hours every day. But it isn't only teaching that is overwhelming me.

My sixth grader is taking a middle school history class. He has more work in that class than I remember ever having for a class. There's reading, which is less than a college course. Then there's answering questions. Those take about as long as my high school class's questions. Then there's the timeline. That wouldn't be so long if he wrote faster, but it takes about an hour each time there is an assignment. And that's assuming he's excited about doing it. Then there's the short info search and paragraph he has to write about one thing on each timeline. Also the art he has to figure out and draw for each paragraph. Then there's the five source research report he has to do on a historical American. He also has to do an Audio or video presentation with that. In addition there is a book report, requiring a historical fictional novel to be read and reported on.

Maybe we've just had it too easy before, but this seems like a lot of work.