Stop Homework

In the Com­ments to I Hate Read­ing Logs, a mid­dle school spe­cial edu­ca­tion teacher wrote about the dif­fi­cul­ties teach­ers face. She calls her­self Anon­my­ous 2010, and I sug­gest search­ing for her many com­ments on that thread. Here’s her first:

Com­ment to I Hate Read­ing Logs
by Anony­mous 2010

I am an edu­ca­tor, and while I agree with some com­ments made by both par­ties on this web site, I truth­fully feel that if a par­ent has tremen­dous issues with pub­lic edu­ca­tion, they should sim­ply edu­cate their chil­dren at home. That com­ment is not meant to be mean or harsh. I cur­rently teach mid­dle school spe­cial edu­ca­tion, but I plan on stay­ing at home with my chil­dren through their ele­men­tary school years. I don’t have any chil­dren yet (I’m 26,) but I know that pub­lic school can only pro­vide so much indi­vid­ual atten­tion towards each child in one day. If I want my child to have the oppor­tunity to play, explore, be cre­ative, and have time to truly investi­gate all the ques­tions they have about the world, I will have to make it my job to stay home and pro­vide that sort of edu­ca­tion to them.

The sys­tem has changed tremen­dously since I was in ele­men­tary school.
Read the rest of this entry »

I was heart­ened to read the Com­ment posted by a teacher in response to the piece I ran two weeks ago, The Trou­ble With Kinder­garten.

I want you all to know that there are cor­ners of hope for early child­hood edu­ca­tion. I teach kinder­garten at a char­ter school in San Diego CA: the San Diego Coop­er­a­tive Char­ter. We believe that chil­dren learn best through a part­ner­ship between par­ents and educa­tors. My stu­dents learn through play and explo­ration, as chil­dren were designed to do. My job is to know each of them well enough to be able to struc­ture learn­ing expe­ri­ences that will best meet their needs. Just as in the main stream kinder­gartens I’ve expe­ri­enced, some of them read and write at the end of the school year, and some of them do not, but they all love school, have learned to nego­ti­ate and get along with their class­mates, and are excited about learn­ing. Our cur­ricu­lum is the CA state stan­dards, but our day is filled with blocks, guinea pigs, singing, gar­den­ing, clay, rain­forests, outer space, dress up, swings, sto­ries, draw­ing, and questions.

Our school, which serves chil­dren in grades K through 8th, was started by par­ents and edu­ca­tors who saw how chil­dren were being short changed by the typ­i­cal pub­lic schools. It was hard work, but oh so ful­fill­ing. If you want a bet­ter learn­ing expe­ri­ence for your child, and ALL the chil­dren, find out what you can do to cre­ate alter­na­tives. You’ll be glad you did.

On blogs​.edweek​.org, I read a really mov­ing let­ter by 3 teach­ers to the Har­vard Grad­u­ate School of Edu­ca­tion, ask­ing when the insti­tu­tion will speak out on issues fun­da­men­tal to the edu­ca­tional well-being of chil­dren and their schools.

Here’s an excerpt from the letter:

As vet­eran pub­lic school teach­ers, we are dis­ap­pointed that the HGSE has not shown the lead­er­ship it pro­fesses by speak­ing out against the unprece­dented attack on pub­lic edu­ca­tion. To be sure, there have been coura­geous voices on your fac­ulty who have defended pub­lic schools and the endan­gered idea of edu­cat­ing the whole child. We know that a thought­ful fac­ulty does not think with one mind, and that there will always be dif­fer­ences about what con­sti­tutes the most effec­tive ped­a­go­gies or cur­ric­ula. But we have not heard the HGSE as an insti­tu­tion speak out on issues fun­da­men­tal to the edu­ca­tional well-being of chil­dren and their schools.

These issues include:

The over-testing of stu­dents, begin­ning as early as 3rd grade, and the mis­use of sin­gle, imper­fect high– stakes stan­dard­ized assess­ment instru­ments like MCAS;

The expan­sion of char­ters through fund­ing for­mu­las that divert resources from those urban and rural pub­lic schools charged with edu­cat­ing our most chal­lenged children;

The strip­ping away of art, music, crit­i­cal think­ing, cre­ativ­ity, expe­ri­en­tial learn­ing, trips, and play periods-of joy itself-from schools so that they might become more effec­tive test prepa­ra­tion centers;

The use of state cur­ricu­lum frameworks-and soon, pos­si­bly, national stan­dards –to nar­row and stan­dard­ize our schools, an effort that only encour­ages increas­ing num­bers of afflu­ent mid­dle class par­ents to seek out for their chil­dren the same pri­vate schools that so many “reform­ers” have already cho­sen for theirs;

The cyn­i­cal insis­tence that all schools be equal in a soci­ety whose social and eco­nomic poli­cies make us increas­ingly unequal;

Merit pay pro­pos­als that deny and under­mine the essen­tially col­lab­o­ra­tive nature of teaching;

And finally, the sus­tained media vil­i­fi­ca­tion of hard-working, ded­i­cated pub­lic school teachers.

These depress­ing devel­op­ments have inten­si­fied over the past fif­teen years. They vio­late the first prin­ci­ples of humane and pro­gres­sive edu­ca­tion, as we under­stand them.

Read the entire let­ter here.

I received an email from a third grade teacher in Mesa, Ari­zona. With her per­mis­sion (I never post emails with­out explicit per­mis­sion), I share it with you.

As a Fam­ily, We Always Set Rea­son­able Lim­its for the Amount of Time We chose to Devote to School-related Activ­ity
by a Third Grade Teacher

For the past 15 years home­work has been a frus­tra­tion to me. I teach third grade and truly resent the expec­ta­tion that I will plan edu­ca­tional activ­i­ties for my stu­dents to com­plete out­side of the school day. This is time that could be much bet­ter spent work­ing with my learn­ers. The only real ben­e­fit that could result from home­work in early grades is pos­si­bly to develop con­sis­tent study habits kids will need later on. With a lot of help, the learn­ers may be able to start break­ing down larger tasks into man­age­able parts. Since most par­ents feel pretty strongly they want home­work, I advise them to use a timer and set it for 5 min­utes. When it goes off, the activ­ity is to be put away. On the other hand, it is gen­er­ally a good thing to avoid pro­cras­ti­na­tion, so stu­dents are also sup­posed to use begin­ning time man­age­ment and develop a sched­ule based on their other activ­i­ties through the week. Really though, for kids up through grade 4, read­ing aloud and being read to is still the gold standard.

My own two chil­dren have spe­cial needs, so we never expe­ri­enced the bor­dem fac­tor. But what I have told par­ents with this con­cern is this: If your stu­dent con­sis­tently rushes through work then it has clearly not been attended to in the stan­dard I require in class. To me it really doesn’t mat­ter how much work a stu­dent can com­plete within a study ses­sion. But what­ever they do, it should be with focused atten­tion and best efforts-and the stu­dent should remain on some learn­ing task through­out the assigned time period.

As for my chil­dren, the same rule applied. As a fam­ily we always set rea­son­able lim­its for the amount of time we chose to devote to school-related activ­ity. And some­times this had to be mod­i­fied. I do want to share this with your par­ents who suf­fer home­work tears and frus­tra­tion. Below is a sum­mary of what I have writ­ten and turned in to my prin­ci­pal and every one of the chil­drens’ teach­ers (who also hap­pened to be colleagues):

Dear Teacher,

We value your ded­i­ca­tion to your class and applaud you for main­tain­ing high expec­ta­tions for stu­dent achieve­ment. We have read and under­stand your home­work policy.

Note that per our child’s IEP sup­port ser­vices rec­om­men­da­tions and in response to our family’s need, we wish to advise you we may not always elect to com­plete requested assign­ments or home­work, espe­cially on weeknights.

We acknowl­edge our choices may result in miss­ing assig­ments neg­a­tively impact­ing out­come scores. We under­stand that you are required to eval­u­ate stu­dents against grade level stan­dards. You have our full sup­port to record our child’s progress accord­ing to your pro­fes­sional judgement.

Today’s guest blog­ger, Jeff Val­ure, a math teacher with 12 years’ expe­ri­ence, the last 10 at a pub­lic mid­dle school north of New York City, is the father of two boys, one of whom just started nurs­ery school. He’s upset to find out that his local kinder­garten assigns home­work four nights a week and is “dread­ing” next year. Jeff has started a peti­tion for a homework-free week to coin­cide with TV Turn-Off Week at home​work​free​.org.

A Math Teacher Speaks Out – Why I Stopped Assign­ing Home­work and Am Peti­tion­ing for a Homework-Free Week
by Jeff Valure

The past few years I’ve been exper­i­ment­ing with my lit­tle guinea pigs – er – stu­dents. Three years ago I decided that so much time was spent on home­work, check­ing it, read­ing answers, going over prob­lems, that I would be able to get much more done in class if I did away with it. After all, I get a pre­cious 46 min­utes a day with these kids. Do I want to spend that time on book­keep­ing or do I want to inter­act with them in a more edu­ca­tion­ally pro­found way? How often do you get to work with the guid­ance, aid, and encour­age­ment of an “expert” in the field? Why waste that time?

Of course my stu­dents are used to home­work, they barely grum­ble when they get an assign­ment over the week­end. The idea of not hav­ing home­work is as scary as it is excit­ing. There are lots of uncer­tain­ties. Will they be able to keep up with the course­work? Will their grades be impacted? How will it affect their per­for­mance on stan­dard­ized tests?

Read the rest of this entry »

The other day, I was thrilled to receive an email from Jason, a 4th grade math and sci­ence teacher in Hous­ton, Texas, who told me that, after doing a lot of research and think­ing, he had decided to make home­work optional in his class. This was quite a turn­around for the Jason who posted sev­eral com­ments on this blog last spring. (He also posts as ACP Texan.) In one of his early Com­ments in March, he wrote:

I teach 4th grade math and sci­ence. Much of what I teach is basic skills. As any ath­lete or musi­cian will tell you, devel­op­ing basic skills is about prac­tice, prac­tice, prac­tice. If I assign my class to com­plete a sheet of two-digit by two-digit mul­ti­pli­ca­tion prob­lems for home­work, I do not care what their moti­va­tion for com­plet­ing it is.… [T]the stu­dents will be bet­ter at the skill after hav­ing com­pleted the work.

By May, he was really grap­pling with new ideas and he wrote in one of his Com­ments:

I want to assure you I do not have an ego attached to any of these ideas. I’m com­pletely will­ing to throw away every­thing I’ve always thought and try to do bet­ter. I’m still new to this teach­ing thing so I was kind of oper­at­ing on the, “just do what has always been done and make it through the day” approach. Now that I’m fin­ish­ing up this year I think I’m ready to make some changes in the way I do things.

Jason told me that this sum­mer he did more read­ing, includ­ing The Home­work Myth, Under­stand­ing By Design, The Trou­ble With Boys, A Frame­work For Under­stand­ing Povertyand Get­ting To Got It. “As a result I asked my prin­ci­pal for per­mis­sion to make home­work optional for my stu­dents this year. To her credit, she had read Rethink­ing Home­work and was very open to new ideas. Of my 45 stu­dents, only 5 par­ents responded ask­ing that the home­work con­tinue to be sent home. Here is the let­ter that went home with my stu­dents at the begin­ning of this school year”:

Dear Par­ents,

I have asked per­mis­sion from my admin­is­tra­tion, and have been granted the free­dom to insti­tute a home­work pol­icy for my classes that is more aligned with cur­rent research. I have done this for sev­eral reasons:

1. It has come to my atten­tion that home­work often encroaches on “fam­ily time.”
2. I under­stand that par­ents, after a full day of work, may not want to spend the lim­ited time they have with their chil­dren act­ing as task mas­ters to see that the home­work gets done.
3. The frus­tra­tion, anx­i­ety, and fight­ing that often results because of home­work out­weighs any ben­e­fit home­work might have.
4. Research indi­cates that group home­work (same home­work for all stu­dents) may have lit­tle to no aca­d­e­mic value at the ele­men­tary level.

Here is how the pol­icy will work:

· The dis­trict math and sci­ence home­work will not be sent home except by par­ent request.
· Whether a stu­dent com­pletes or does not com­plete the dis­trict home­work will have no impact on their grade.
· There will be no rewards or neg­a­tive con­se­quences for com­plet­ing or not com­plet­ing the dis­trict math and sci­ence home­work.
· All stu­dents will receive an “S” under the con­duct head­ing “com­pletes home­work.”
· All dis­trict math and sci­ence home­work will be avail­able for down­load on my web­site at all times.
· On occa­sion stu­dents will be asked to fin­ish, at home, assign­ments that were not com­pleted in class.

The post that has gen­er­ated the most Com­ments ever is I Hate Read­ing Logs by FedUp Mom. If you scroll through, you’ll notice that teach­ers have chimed in, some rethink­ing their own home­work prac­tice, oth­ers defend­ing it. I was par­tic­u­larly struck by the open­ness of a teacher from Vir­ginia, who found the post while look­ing for a read­ing log, and ended up rethink­ing logs altogether.

I also thought the teacher made a very good point about the impor­tance of keep­ing all dis­cus­sions between teacher and par­ent as cor­dial and as respect­ful as possible.

I’ll Make My Read­ing Logs Optional
by a Vir­ginia Teacher

I acci­den­tally came upon this web­site when search­ing for read­ing logs to give to my stu­dents this year for home­work. This blog has really made me rethink the valid­ity of the entire idea and really home­work in gen­eral. Read­ing the com­ments from so many frus­trated par­ents has been insight­ful, because I hon­estly never thought about how home­work can invade a child’s home/after-school life. I applaud the par­ents who advo­cate for their kids and the tremen­dous weight home­work can put on their shoul­ders. As a teacher, I want par­ents to feel like part­ners in the class­room and hav­ing con­ver­sa­tions like this one can only help kids get the best edu­ca­tional expe­ri­ences pos­si­ble. The last thing I want to do is to stress my stu­dents out, so I’ll prob­a­bly make the read­ing logs optional.

One thing I noticed by this site is a dis­tinct divide between teach­ers and par­ents and while I do think dis­cus­sion is impor­tant, it seems to get hos­tile. There are huge assump­tions being made on both sides. I think teach­ers and par­ents BOTH need to have a gen­eros­ity of the spirit. I am not, and have never been inter­ested in doing harm to any stu­dent in my class — that’s not why I teach. In the same way, I don’t think con­cerned par­ents are try­ing to “ter­ror­ize” teach­ers. There has to be mid­dle ground on which teach­ers and par­ents can both feel validated.

I think this is impor­tant to keep in mind: Teach­ers have kids for 7 hours a day for only 9 months. Par­ents have kids for a life­time. Par­ents are a child’s first teach­ers and par­ents know their kids the best. I believe good, effec­tive teach­ers honor this. It is very sad to me that so many fam­i­lies have expe­ri­enced such neg­a­tive expe­ri­ences with pub­lic schools, espe­cially because kids and their opin­ion of school and learn­ing are caught in the crossfire.

I will def­i­nitely have a dif­fer­ent mind­set about home­work going into this new school year.

Take a look at this blog by a Read­ing teacher who has to watch her own high schooler slog through the very kind of assign­ments we all know are worthless.