Stop Homework

Today’s inter­view is with Kerry Dick­in­son, who has writ­ten many times for this blog includ­ing here, here, here, and here. Kerry, who has a M.A. in Read­ing, was a part-time teacher in Michi­gan before she had chil­dren. She now lives in Danville, Cal­i­for­nia, with her hus­band and 9th and 7th grade sons and is cur­rently in the process of becom­ing a licensed Cal­i­for­nia teacher. In 2007 – 2008, she helped con­vince her local school dis­trict to rewrite its home­work pol­icy. She just started her own blog.

Inter­view with Kerry Dick­in­son
by Sara Bennett

“I encour­age par­ents to be respect­fully vocal”

–Kerry Dick­in­son, par­ent, Danville, California

What prompted you to try to change home­work pol­icy in your com­mu­nity?
Last year, when my older son started eighth grade, he had a really bad expe­ri­ence with an alge­bra class and he started say­ing he hated mid­dle school. He had always had a great out­look on life and had always loved school, so I felt sad that he was sud­denly say­ing he hated it. I started look­ing back on his school­ing, and I real­ized that each year he liked it less and less. At the same time, I had a sixth grader who had been strug­gling since sec­ond grade with tests, school and home­work. I focused on home­work because I was sick of help­ing them with their projects and feel­ing like the home­work wasn’t turn­ing them on to school but, in fact, was hav­ing the oppo­site effect.

What did you do?

I got together with my friend Julie Kurtz, who also has 2 teenage boys. and who had faced sim­i­lar issues about try­ing to raise well-balanced kids in our fast-paced, high-achieving com­mu­nity. We sent out an email to 10 friends and held an infor­mal meet­ing at my home.

One of the things that spurred me was The Home­work Myth by Alfie Kohn. I dis­cov­ered that Kohn artic­u­lated a lot of the feel­ings I’d been hav­ing about edu­ca­tion and home­work. I shared the book at that meet­ing and we started talk­ing about how the prob­lem was multi-dimenionsal, from home­work, to over-scheduling our kids, to the qual­ity of instruc­tion, etc.

We decided that Julie and I should go to the Superintendent’s office with our con­cerns. We were going to focus on the qual­ity and quan­tity of home­work with the hope that the dis­trict would re-write its out­dated home­work pol­icy to bet­ter address these issues.

Before we went to the Superintendent’s office, we took an infor­mal home­work sur­vey of 100 chil­dren. When I tal­lied it up, par­ents thought that 50 – 60 per­cent of the home­work was of high qual­ity, which means that 40 – 50 per­cent of it was low qual­ity. We also asked the par­ents to ask their chil­dren to describe home­work and most had neg­a­tive things to say such as “stu­pid” or “bor­ing.” The kids described their best home­work as fun projects.

I typed the sur­vey results into a spread­sheet and we took that, along with Kohn’s book, some arti­cles I’d found on the inter­net, infor­ma­tion I’d got­ten from you at stophome​work​.com and a copy of the Dis­trict Pol­icy, which had been writ­ten in 1995.

We met with the Direc­tor of Cur­ricu­lum Instruc­tion, who was a dad with chil­dren of his own and had an appre­ci­a­tion of the prob­lem. We felt like we made an impres­sion because within a week, he got back to us, said that the Dis­trict agreed that the pol­icy was out­dated invited us to be on a task force to rewrite the policy.

I eagerly agreed to par­tic­i­pate on the task force made up of 19 par­ents, teach­ers, and admin­is­tra­tors. We met twice a month for about six months and ham­mered out a revised pol­icy. Some­times I was frus­trated dur­ing the meet­ings, but the upshot is that we have a bet­ter pol­icy than we had before which includes a para­graph about the impor­tance of fam­ily time that came straight out of Toronto, Canada’s new policy.

Were there things you didn’t get in the pol­icy?
I really wanted an opt-out option, which you rec­om­mended to me, and I also wanted a clause that chil­dren wouldn’t face puni­tive mea­sures, such as being kept in from recess, if they didn’t turn in homework.

Were you wor­ried about reper­cus­sions for speak­ing up?
It’s been kind of an emo­tional roller coaster. Some days I’ll hear pos­i­tive things from par­ents about how grate­ful they are for the new pol­icy. But then some­times I feel some­what like an out­cast at my kids’ schools. It’s worth it though, so I encour­age par­ents to be respect­fully vocal at their schools.

What are you doing now that you have a new pol­icy in your com­mu­nity?
I send out a weekly email that started with 10 friends and now it’s up to 200 peo­ple. I write about these issues, send out arti­cles that I think are inter­est­ing, and try to encour­age par­ents to email their con­cerns to the teachers.

When­ever I have con­cerns about some­thing at either or my sons’ schools, I email the teach­ers or prin­ci­pals. In the fall, my son’s school insti­tuted a Zeros Aren’t Per­mit­ted pol­icy, which required stu­dents to fin­ish uncom­pleted home­work dur­ing lunchtime. I wrote a detailed email to the prin­ci­pal about why this was such a bad idea, and the pro­gram was turned into a vol­un­tary program.

I also asked the dis­trict to change the home­page on its sched­ul­ing web­site so that stu­dents wouldn’t see their grades as soon as they log on. It may seem minor, but it helps the stu­dents and par­ents to be less focused on grades. I’ve also become an advi­sor to the film Race to Nowhere. I’ve helped to bring the film to our dis­trict, and I keep on think­ing about, read­ing about, and talk­ing about these issues with friends and teachers.

In my own home, I almost never say the “H” word any­more. I do not require my kids to come home and do home­work. I encour­age them to go out and run around or chill out. I almost never help them with home­work. If they ask, I’ll help, but I don’t hyper-parent their home­work and tests like I used to. I’ve encour­aged my older son not to add an extra class into his high school sched­ule. I think an extra hour of sleep is more impor­tant. And, I moved my lap­top out of the kitchen and into our home office. I didn’t want to model work­ing 24/7 and not give my kids my full atten­tion when they were talk­ing to me.

Posted in category Interviews, Moms (and Dads) on a Mission on June 8, 2009 at 7:01 am
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