Stop Homework

Sasha Reynolds, the mother of a 7-year-old and a 5-year old, recently wrote me to tell me what she’s doing in her children’s school in Scotland:

I have finally approached the school my children attend with regard to the homework issues as I am on the Parent Council. I have found to my pleasant surprise as soon as I mentioned my home work concerns a number of parents agreed with me. It seems many parents are feeling the same but perhaps feel that its their fault there are homework problems and so accept the situation and don’t talk about it to others. The up shot is there is going to be a working group of staff and parents meeting to review the homework.

Here’s a great opinion piece by Ellie Herman, a television writer of 20 years who is trying to become an English teacher at an L.A. public high school.

Testing my patience
California needs teachers, so why is it so hard to get a credential?
By Ellie Herman

After nearly 20 years of working as a television writer, I made a radical life decision: to teach English at an L.A. public high school. I felt it was time for me to make a difference, to share my passion for language and literature with the next generation. Sure, I knew that the pay would be abysmal and that the teaching conditions in gang-infested, impoverished communities might be tough. But I really wanted to try, so I braced myself to keep going even if there were times of struggle, of heartbreak, of feeling inadequate and humiliated, even if there were times when I wanted to weep from frustration, even if I sweated through dark nights of the soul overwhelmed by the futility of it all.

And indeed, I have experienced all that. But what’s crazy is that I haven’t even set foot in a classroom yet.

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Today’s “Mom on a Mission” is Krisi Repp, a mother of three from Gray Summit, Missouri, with students in public elementary, middle, and high schools. A stay-at-home mother for the past 12-1/2 years, Krisi recently returned to work part-time. Here is a letter she wrote to all of her children’s teachers, right before the beginning of the school year. In an upcoming post, she will tell you about the responses she received.

Letter to Teachers in Elementary, Middle, and High School
by Krisi Repp

Hello there. I hope things are going well for you. Please understand, this letter is not being written with the intent of causing problems or to insult you as a teacher or as a school district. Instead, I hope to simply communicate my feelings regarding the subject of homework. I know that if I feel this way, there are numerous other families that feel the same way, who are not speaking out. This letter is being sent out to all of my three kid’s teachers and I understand that it may not be relevant to each of you.

As a very busy mother, it frustrates me to schedule time for homework. I have been told homework is designed to promote “quality time” at home and/or to prepare our children for their “future”. When I consider both reasons, I totally disagree! My thoughts… I feel the best quality time my kids can spend after already putting in a full “work” day, is to have time for whatever our family interests may be. I have a great interest in the health of my children and find it absurd to tell them to sit down and do their homework when they could be going outside to play (healthy exercise). They’ve already been sitting most of the day. And we wonder why many kids are overweight! As far as preparing for their “future”… after combining their full day at school and homework, both a full time college student and a full-time employee get more free time “after hours”, than school age children!

Another problem is that many kids are missing out on well-needed sleep for their health. Getting home after 3 or 4 p.m. makes it challenging to squeeze in everything and still get to bed at a decent hour. Family schedules include most, or all of the following after a full day of school…. have a snack, complete household chores (a real way of raising responsible kids and preparing them for their future), practice of a hobby or of a sport (fun/healthy exercise), dinner and clean up, attend a school or church event, time for family and/or friends, shower, etc. After, or somewhere in between, we are to find time for homework and still get our kids to bed at a reasonable hour! (Some kids need help with homework and have parents who don’t get home from work until 5-7 p.m. These parents may only get 2 hours a night with their kids, and why should any of that precious time be spent on more schoolwork)? Kids need between 8–10 hours of sleep each night, and mine start getting up as early as 5:30 a.m. Sure makes it hard to accomplish everything on our family plate, even without homework needing to be squeezed in!

My heart also goes out to you as a teacher! You too have already put in an even longer workday. Why should you be expected to spend less family time, etc. due to homework?

In ending, my opinion is that school time should be school time and home time should be home time. I do not agree with home time becoming more school time! My kids have already been away from home, at school, for 8 hours! That’s enough school time. They should be all mine after school.

Thank you for understanding my feelings. I appreciate any attempt you can make to filter out “busy” work that may be normally given as homework to my children.

My very good friend, Kate McReynolds, died last Friday after a year-long struggle with lung cancer. I became friends with Kate after I interviewed her for The Case Against Homework. During my interview, I was struck by how incredibly articulate she was. In fact, although all of the professionals I interviewed for the book–and there were dozens–were articulate, Kate was in a class by herself. I had never met anyone who talked in perfect paragraphs. But it wasn’t just that that attracted me to her. She was my age, like me had two children, lived in New York, and everything she talked about in the interview was something I had thought about before, but had never quite put together in the same way.

When the book was completed, I called Kate and invited her to lunch. I wasn’t expecting a friendship; she was just someone I knew I wanted to talk to more and someone I thought I might be interested in working with in the future. Over the next year and a half, we met often, talked incessantly, and became friends. And then, she was diagnosed with lung cancer.

I spent a lot of wonderful time with Kate this past year, and I’m going to miss her tremendously. I will miss her open-heartedness, infectious laugh, incredible intellect, her insights, and so much more. In a New York Times piece titled Perhaps Death Is Proud; More Reason to Savor Life, a new nurse reflects:

Go home, love your children, try not to bicker, eat well, walk in the rain, feel the sun on your face and laugh loud and often, as much as possible, and especially at yourself. Because the only antidote to death is not poetry, or drama, or miracle drugs, or a roomful of technical expertise and good intentions. The antidote to death is life.

That reflection sums up perfectly what I would say I learned from Kate this past year. And that’s an incredible gift.

In Kate’s last article, “Children’s Happiness,” published in the Spring 2008 issue of Encounter Magazine: Education for Meaning and Social Justice where she was Associate Editor, she wrote:

If we were to look squarely at the ordinary unhappiness of just one child–that is, if we pondered it until we had achieved the deepest understanding of his or her experience–what would happen? I believe that, like my son’s middle school teacher, we might be brought to tears. We might recognize that forces behind our own unhappiness, how we ourselves have suffered from unremitting pressure to make the grade and the subsequent narrowing of all that was meaningful to us. If we then let compassion overtake us, we might do something remarkable. We might, for example, take a leave of absence to give ourselves more time in the present. We might adopt a more modest lifestyle that balances work with devotion to our deepest values. We might, in other words, decide that the happiness children naturally seek is the most important thing in life–for them and for ourselves as well.

I’ve been hearing from a lot of parents (mostly moms), who sent letters to their children’s teachers and/or principals in the hopes of starting a dialogue about homework. I hope the letters, which I will be posting off and on, will inspire you to also start a dialogue in your community.

The first letter is by Diane Hewlett-Lowrie, who has worked for 20 years in a variety of environmental education positions in Scotland and the U.S. and she currently lives in New Jersey. You can read Diane’s earlier guest blog entries here and here.

Diane’s son’s second-grade teacher explained the weekly homework in a newsletter to the parents:

“Students will act as news reporters and choose a subject to write about. They may gather information from a variety of sources such as TV, the Internet, magazines, or personal experiences. Students will compose a short report in their own words to read aloud to the class during Weekly News Presentations on Thursdays. The forms will be given out on Monday and will be due in class on Wednesday (2 days to complete) doe proofing. The reports should include a picture (drawn and colored by the student, a photo or clipping) on the back with a caption.”

In addition to the above assignment, the second graders have daily math, spelling, reading, and reading logs.

Diane wrote the following letter to the new principal of the school.

Letter to the Principal
From Diane Lowrie

Welcome to our School District!

I am the mother of one of your new 2nd-graders and look forward to a productive and fulfilling year.

First, the good stuff! I work for “Parks” as a regional educator/interpreter. This means I am a resource for the state park naturalists and historians and help them with planning, exhibits, festivals, program development and also provide training opportunities for them. I also have the flexibility to work, on a limited basis, with schools on environmental programs. Last year, I brought Woodsy Owl and 400 tree seedlings to the Primary School, taught an after-school program about worms and composting, and helped out the summer camp with programs on birds and birding. With the anticipated passing of the national “No Child Left Inside Act” (which encourages more environmental education in schools), I just wanted to let you know that I can serve as a resource, or a conduit for other resources regarding environmental education should you need it. (I was also a second grade teacher in Jersey City!)

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If you’re a regular visitor to Stop Homework, you know that I often write about what parents are doing in their own communities to challenge homework policies and practices or, better yet, have parents write about their experiences themselves. Many journalists visit Stop Homework to get ideas for stories, and they ask me to put them in touch with my guest bloggers. The journalists then write articles which spur more parents to take up the issue. So please remember to let me know what you’re doing.

Here are wonderful stories about guest bloggers, Frank Bruni of Toronto, Canada, and Kerry Dickinson of Danville, California, both of whom were frequent guest bloggers last year. Kerry was also featured on a local NBC11.com show (Click on “Parents wonder how much homework is too much” in the category sidebar) and is about to be interviewed for a piece in Parenting Magazine.

In the upcoming school year, they will keep us informed of how the new policies are working. You can read Frank Bruni’s guest blog entries here and here and here. You can read Kerry Dickinson’s guest blog entries here and here and here.

I won’t be posting again until September, but I will be answering email, so please feel free to write me with your questions, concerns, and requests for speaking engagements. If you’re looking for an end-of-the-year gift for your children’s teachers, consider giving The Case Against Homework. When teachers and administrators read it, they think about, and change, their homework practices.

This school year, Stop Homework received funding and became affiliated with The Alliance for Childhood. Through Stop Homework, I’ve been interviewed for dozens of publications and radio and TV shows in the U.S., Canada, South America, and Europe; I’ve spoken with hundreds of parents and educators and helped many of them advocate for change in their communities; I’ve organized meetings among heads of schools to start dialogues on homework reform; and I’ve helped educators figure out ways to change their policies. If you need help of any kind, be sure to let me know.

Here are just a few the highlights from 2007-2008:

One of my favorite education bloggers, Donalyn Miller, has a recent post on the problems with the Reading First Program. In case you don’t make it all the way through this post, this is her conclusion: “We don’t need another reading program; we need to go back to the first reading program—connecting children with books. This should always be our bottom line.”

Reading First Puts Reading Last
by Donalyn Miller

On May 1st, the Department of Education released the preliminary results of Reading First, the federal program which provides grants for initiatives which improve the reading achievement of at-risk elementary school children. The initial findings of the DOE study indicate that students participating in Reading First perform no better on reading achievement tests than their peers in other instructional programs. Instead of re-addressing the flawed premise on which Reading First was built, the 2000 Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read, policymakers ask for more money to fund this failing federal program and beg us all to give Reading First more time.

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