First Monday

This coming Monday is the first Monday in February. As suggested in The Case Against Homework, and in this blog every month, I recommend that every parent send a note to her/his children’s teachers, administrators, or School Board members on the first Monday of every month.

Many of the emails I’ve received from parents recently have talked about the sheer volume of work their children bring home every night. Why not make this Monday the time to discuss overload? If you’re not sure what to say, take a look at the conversation on pages 209-210 of The Case Against Homework. To get the conversation going, you could just write a short note to the teacher or administrator requesting a meeting. Here’s an example from page 208 of The Case Against Homework:

DEAR TEACHER/ADMINISTRATOR: [After writing some kind of pleasantry]: We’d like to come in and talk to you as soon as possible. Just to give you a heads-up, homework is cauing a lot of stress in our home and we’d like to sit down with you and figure out a way that we can alleviate it. We look forward to having an open discussion with you.

And, don’t forget to email me or write a post in the forums and explain what you did and the results.