This is the sixth post by FedUp Mom, the mother of a fifth grader. FedUp Mom’s daughter used to attend a public school in suburban Philadelphia, but this year FedUp Mom moved her to a private Quaker school, hoping for a more relaxed environment. You can read her other posts here, here, here, here and here.
I Hate Reading Logs
by FedUp Mom
Every time I think we’ve solved the school problem something comes along to bite me in the rear. This week it’s the dreaded reading log. We found out about it from a letter the teachers sent home:
“Your child will be expected to read every night. We ask that you sign the log each night … We will also check the log regularly, in order to ensure follow through on your child’s part… Please sign the form below and return it to school tomorrow with your child.”
And now, the fun part:
“Thank you for your partnership in your child’s education.” (!)
And how does following the teacher’s directions make me a partner exactly? I feel more like an unpaid employee. Wait a minute — we’re paying them!
There was a little form at the bottom of the letter that said:
“I have read the above letter and agree to help my child by signing his/her log each night.”
I crossed this out and wrote in:
“We trust our daughter to do her reading.”
Then we signed it.
Then we sent the following e-mail to the teacher:
Teacher X: we have chosen not to participate in the reading log. We’ve experienced reading logs before and have these objections:
1.) They turn reading into a chore.
2.) They send a message that we don’t trust (daughter) to do the reading without meddling and micromanaging.
(Daughter) will do the reading she needs to do, but she won’t be logging the pages. Thank you.
I’m hoping that will be the end of it. I’m really tired of conferences and I’m sure we all have better things to do with our time.
Stop Homework 
This gets to the heart of the issue: In true learning there is an element of trust, and the best teachers inspire curiosity and nurture intrinsic motivation so children learn for the love of it.
When will our schools learn that nagging, bribing and threatening students (and parents!) does not work over the long run? Doesn’t every parent learn this at some point?
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Ugh. Reading logs. I blame Older Son’s first grade teacher for his hatred of reading. He was sitting on the fence with his reading skills in 1st grade, sort of opening up to the idea of reading for pleasure, but not quite there. He has autism and reading comprehension issues, so reading is difficult for him. She did monthly reading logs (which were not at a first grade level — they required me to write the date, title of the book, and minutes read that evening, then sign). If he did not meet his quota for the month, his name was not published in the monthly class newsletter and he did not get his free pizza coupon. I appealed to her to set realistic goals for him so he could be successful — could he read a little less and then publish his name, and I would buy the pizza? But she did not consider that fair to the other children. it was all or nothing. So he chose nothing. He could never succeed. He hates reading to this day — he’s a 6th grader. In the meantime, Younger Son is in 1st grade and we don’t actively participate in the reading logs. If he comes home and wants to mark up his reading log, that’s great. If he doesn’t I don’t force him to. So far the teacher hasn’t said anything, but its probably counting his reading grade down.
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My book, The Case Against Homework, has a whole chapter on what’s the matter with typical homework assignments, including reading logs. Here’s what the first paragraph on reading logs says:
These days, beginning as early as kindergarten, most kids are expected to dutifully log all the books they read.Reading logs can be an effective diagnostic tool ifthe teacher takes the time to read each child’s log carefully, talk to him about what he’s reading,and thus get an understanding of his reading preferences, says Kylene Beers, a senior reading researcher at the School Development Program at Yale University and author of When Kids Can’t Read,What Teachers Can Do.But few teachers have time for that. Chances are, your child’s teacher uses the log simply as a way of checking to be sure you enforce the reading requirement or as a record of what’s been read.
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I don’t remember what bunny trail led me to your blog, but I have a few general comments.
I am a former public school teacher who started teaching at age 21. I hate to admit it, but for 8 years or so, I was so clueless. I was the kind of teacher that, as a mom, I would now hate!
What did I do that was so bad? Upon reflecting, it was assigning STUPID “projects”. Most of the time, the ridiculous projects ended up being homework. Why did I assign them? Did I ever think about whether they provided any real educational benefit? I don’t know and no. What I DO remember thinking about was how great a particular project was going to make my room look! I actually thought that having all these projects made ME look like a great teacher! Ugh!
Fast forward to my having kids and subsequently making me THINK about what was important-my husband and I decided we would homeschool our children. (He’s a gifted, insightful, award winning and well-loved educator who HATES homework, as well.) I am not writing to persuade you on homeschooling, but to merely affirm that 1. extra time does NOT equal more understanding and 2. kids absolutely need to play and have down time. My 4th grade son spends about 5-51/2 hours on school each day – and this includes 2 hours of reading (which he LOVES). The rest of the time, it’s play. His scores on standardized tests are exceptional, and he is 2-3 “grade” levels ahead in all subjects.
Now, I don’t think that his (as well as his sibling’s) academic success is due is to his being exceptionally smart. I truly believe his success is due to our “less is more” philosophy, and his being given time to simply be a hard-playing, inquisitive child. I know without a doubt that his love for reading and learning would be squashed if he were to have the work load of his friends that are in the schools around us.
I am not sure where I am going with all this, or why I even took time out to comment, but I wanted to let you know that I applaud you in your efforts to curb homework and worthless, silly, time-consuming assignments (which, as you saw from my own experience, is what most homework turns out to be.). Unfortunately, there are more out of touch educators than you would care to believe. And I can say that because I used to be one.
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My heart is sinking as I read FedUpMOm’s letter and the responses. Don’t get me wrong. Kudos to you, FedUP for telling it like it is. High fives for the posts supporting you here. My disenchantment is in full agreement dutiful reading logs are nonsense, a chore, and as Sara Bennett writes in her book, in the time it takes a child to fill out a log, she could have been reading another book! Hey, who let a sane person in?. And we entrust our children to people who don’t get that, who don’t see the obvious irony?
I’ve written about reading before many times on this blog, posts far more eloquent than my tired head can muster at the moment.
I have written that my daughter is a ravenous reader. We dutifully did those reading logs in first grade before we knew any better. As homework goes, it wasn’t the end of the world, copying word definitions was our bane, but I still hated those logs. I hated them because they were time consuming and served ZERO educational purpose. Besides, what purpose did they serve? In first grade, my daughter was jotting down the book, the author, the publisher. Whenever I’d read to her, I always read the author’s name aloud, authors are important, so why the log?
As a naive mother of an only child, even I knew, early on, that it was turning reading into a chore. I know so many children who were rewarded to read, please just read five pages and I’ll pay you, it was like pulling teeth, and the resistance was surely planted in those tedious reading logs.
I had spent years cultivating reading in my daughter, modeling to her how much hubby and I love reading, it was working, I was delighted beyond measure to see she was as consumed and mesmerized by gripping reading as I’ve always been, and along comes the school, trying their hardest to undo all my efforts, my modeling love of learning, inquiry and sinking tuchus and head into a good chair with a good book.
One caveat: at least the private school had its creative moments, were sometimes receptive to a reasoned discussion and the Head of School was usually welcoming and gracious to us. Welcoming but in hindsight, hopelessly clueless at times. She didn’t stop the bullying and teasing though, so we had to leave. As my daughter now asks, how good was she, really?
So we leave and enroll daughter in public school. The dreaded reading logs make an appearance again. We refused to do them. Because,get this! My daughter was already being punished for…reading! I didn’t read that right, you stammer. Yes you did. One day my husband pulled a book off our many reading shelves and Wuthering Heights came tumbling down. He’d forgotten to put the book back, daughter stumbled over it (literally), took the novel to her bedroom, me following, ready to steal it back, and read for hours and hours and hours. She’s not very loquacious but had the vocabulary of a college professor at age nine. So she read all afternoon.
I’ve written here that she’s also scrupulously honest (you’re getting the picture, right? A little “weird,” voracious reader, innocent) so when scolded, why didn’t you do this homework, she replied truthfully, I was reading. So she lost recess as punishment for reading. She was penalized because reading Wuthering Heights wasn’t a good way to do language arts at home. Better to look up words and painstakingly copy definitions, Sidebar: visual spatial right brained children do not learn words from copying out of a dictionary, they learn them by reading them, particularly in context.
Okay, along comes the dreaded reading log. Now the dippy questions are added, who is your favorite character, what do you think will happen next, do you like this book? I love that last question. No, I don’t like this book, that’s why I’m reading it. I asked the teacher why my daughter was being asked to fill out these logs. Answer. We need evidence she is reading!
I swear public school was put on this earth for my amusement.
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Reading logs should be thrown out! It only encourages students to race through the readings to get to a certain number of pages–very bad! In my opinion (and experience), engaging students in classroom discussion and allowing them to express their ideas about the readings is much more productive. Many students like to talk–why not give them an outlet, a voice? Further, spending 10 minutes at the beginning of class to write a short paragraph about their interpretations, feelings, or ideas about the text preps them for discussions and essays, and shows the teacher that the student did read. They can also use these paragraphs as groundwork for essays. Granted, it’s not a foolproof method, but I think it’s better than a reading log (for students, parents, and teachers!).
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“Your child will be expected to read every night. We ask that you sign the log each night … We will also check the log regularly, in order to ensure follow through on your child’s part… Please sign the form below and return it to school tomorrow with your child.”
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I love this paragraph. Was is this, the reading police? The intellectual KGB?
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“Thank you for your partnership in your child’s education.”
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It’s been whispered that educational staff thinks parents are idiots. Look no further than here for proof.
Thanks, FedUpMom, for refuting that. You pay them, they work for you, not the other way around. Go show them what a true partnership looks like. You have leverage in these tough economic times. They can’t afford to lose your checkbook.
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Michelle, I loved your post. Don’t make apologies for appearing pro-homeschooling. I’ve already done that here many times. If one can, it is the BEST option. I eventually yanked my daughter out of school to homeschool too and my only regret is that I didn’t do it sooner, much sooner. At the first glance of the homework log, the first bullying, and above all the at the first meeting of the new rigid humorless public school elementary teacher, that dreaded fifth grade year.
I was amazed, when we began homeschooling, at the numbers of former teachers who were homeschooling their own children! I asked them, why so many teachers here? They all said, we saw what happened behind the scenes, or, I assigned stupid busy work before I had children and I never want my child to have a teacher like me!
I hear you, Michelle. Kudos to your insights. There are many wonderful educators. But you are right.As I survey the long landscape of our school experience ( I have a junior who spent all but one year homeschooled so I do have perspective), most teachers are clueless, I’m sorry to say.
We don’t like criticizing teachers because we view them like priests, it’s not nice to nitpick. But if we begin by being brutally honest, we can make headway, find a way to dump the lousy ones and inspire a new generation of children to remake what could and should be a sacred profession (but you see, that’s the whole point. Let’s stop calling it sacred because then we can’t criticize it. Still, teachers have on their watch our most precious professions and we need to trust our young to extraordinary people. And we need to pay them commensurately.
Today’s teachers often have no idea what home looks like and assume kids get their homework done at the same clip they do their schoolwork in class. If we must have homework, abolish the word, lengthen the school day, call it study hall and GET IT DONE AT SCHOOL. DON’T send it home to me unless you put me on the payroll.
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Our most precious possessions, I meant to say!
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Everybody — thanks for the comments! Keep ’em coming!
Michelle — thank you for your honesty. I am also considering homeschooling. For the moment, though, my daughter is way happier at the Quaker school. I think we’ll stick with it (stay tuned!)
HomeworkBlues — ack! Don’t even say the words “lengthen the school day!” We’d be homeschooling for sure. Kids don’t need more time at school, they need to spend their time at school productively and then come home and do their own thing. And how much do you want to bet that even if they lengthened the school day, they’d be sending masses of stuff home?
I haven’t heard back from Teacher X yet — she’s probably stunned by my deathless prose!
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FedUpMom writes:
HomeworkBlues — ack! Don’t even say the words “lengthen the school day!” We’d be homeschooling for sure. Kids don’t need more time at school, they need to spend their time at school productively and then come home and do their own thing. And how much do you want to bet that even if they lengthened the school day, they’d be sending masses of stuff home?
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You’re right. It did seem odd coming from me. I am just so burned out on homework that I’d rather it just gone done there. Don’t bring anything home! Do it there.
But you are correct. It would still come home. They would tell you your child should and could have finished it all at school but did not so….Hello, you’re a teacher!
A better solution is, keep the school day the same length and just get it all done at school. As children get older, an engaging project that captivates their attention may on rare occasions be sent home, in high school. but it has to be rare, and only if the student wishes to embelish it at home.
How’s that for a better response? :).
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Got done there. Darn. I try to edit these things but something seems to slip through my fingers.
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Yikes. I caught another of my mistakes. I am tired…
I wrote earlier: “I have a junior who spent all but one year homeschooled so I do have perspective”
I meant the opposite. My junior spent all but one year in school, with one lone year of homeschool.
Now I’ll go to sleep. Wait, I can’t. I have to cajole said junior to just stop homework, I don’t care if it’s finished, and pack it in. We had a solid week of 2:30 am bedtimes. I couldn’t stay up, fell asleep on the couch and awoke to my daughter’s typing.
If you catch any mistakes, I’m asleep!
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BTW, I forgot to mention in my post what the subject of the reading is. The subject is … drumroll, please … civil rights! Yes, kids, this week we’re studying the innate dignity of the individual person. Now shut up and do what you’re told. Gotta love education …
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I am a public school teacher at the very high school from which I graduated.
The problem – yes, singular – with public education is that it is reactionary and often reverts to the lowest common denominator.
The parents responding here are likely those parents who care enough to imbue in their children a desire to learn. I doubt few here are languishing in poverty: I doubt few here are flourishing in affluence. In short, we represent the middle road of socioeconomic status. We also represent the group most likely to take an active role in our children’s education.
But with the advent of standardized testing at the state level, public schools are – rightfully – panicking and – not rightfully – attempting to address all students with strategies aimed at ensuring that the lowest-achieving (and, by correlation, lowest socioeconomic) students have the same support at home that they have at school. Often, and I would dare say usually, this is not the case for this group of students. Each year I have at least one class period of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds along with two or more AP English classes. The difference in turn-out between the two groups at Open House is staggering. If I call the parent of an AP student about a concern, a conference will be scheduled the next day. If I call the parent of an English II Regular student, I get a disconnected phone, or an answering machine, or another live-in relative who never relays the message and couldn’t care less to do so.
Of those groups, which brings the standing of the school down? Of those groups, which will likely have more attention paid to it?
Is it right? No.
Is it understandable? Yes.
What can we do about it? Start by understanding.
Start by understanding that most public schools are trying everything they know to get all students to achieve.
Understand that most public schools would rather have a concerned parent than an evasive one.
Understand that forums such as this can have one of two outcomes: a conclave for vitriolic invective that argues in the present tense and does not work toward a solution, or a convocation of minds deliberating ways in which school and community can provide an environment for each child to learn and grow and achieve to his potential.
So don’t hate reading logs, or the teachers who give them, or the schools who produce them, or even the system that engenders their existence. Don’t even hate the parents who are not as involved as we are with their children’s education. No amount of hate aimed at everyone or everything will help any single child.
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TeacherBey — I’m not in a public school anymore, I’m in a private school. There’s no way Teacher X is dealing with the problems of the poor. Believe me, we’re all middle and professional class at this school.
And yes, we are trying to work for change, but we are also frustrated, and the chance to blow off a little steam among like-minded people is not a bad thing. And you have to understand our frustration when we’re dealing with teachers and administrations who don’t listen to our concerns.
Also, I would like to point out that coercive tactics like reading logs really don’t work for anyone. The kid who used to like to read will get turned off. The kid who doesn’t like to read will fake the log or just not bother. Nobody’s interests are being served here.
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“I’m not in a public school anymore, I’m in a private school.” Fair, but I was not specifically addressing just you: I used the subject as a starting point for my own argument.
“Also, I would like to point out that coercive tactics like reading logs really don’t work for anyone”.
I’m not sure terming reading logs “coercive” is fair. The question of whether or not using reading logs in any way is an effective instructional strategy is not really up for debate: what does the research say? Many people use only their own anecdotal observations to form their opinion, but I think it is important to read case studies and other contextualized research in order to cull a wide array of evidence.
Without looking at the research, I submit that some institutions propagate the use of reading logs to ensure parents’ involvement in their children’s lives. In some situations, this may be necessary: in your particular situation, it does not sound necessary or effective.
My broader point is this: overgeneralization in education is the biggest issue, and this stems from reactionary policy enaction. What may help students in one setting achieve to the best of their ability may not help another, similar group of students in a different setting. Also, within the same setting, one strategy may not work from year to year.
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FedUpMom writes:
BTW, I forgot to mention in my post what the subject of the reading is. The subject is … drumroll, please … civil rights! Yes, kids, this week we’re studying the innate dignity of the individual person. Now shut up and do what you’re told. Gotta love education …
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I can do you one better. My daughter was studying the transcendentalist period in English last month. No matter how oppressed I feel, I still try to work up excitement over what she’s learning. Especially in English, I majored in English and one of my greatest passions is American Literature. She was reading about Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
I talked here about our dreary sad Thanksgiving weekend when we had to cancel our vacation plans because of mountains of homework, despite a “no homework on breaks” policy at the school. I crafted an elegant passionate letter to the principal who replied that the policy is such that each teacher may assign one assignment and that they should not accelerate curriculum over break. Oh, I get it. That clears it up nicely, doesn’t it?
But that’s another story, still in progress. Following that weekend, my daughter entered an unusually intense (even for this school) week. It built to a crescendo the week before break. Let’s wear them out completely, who do they think they are, getting so much vacation? Let’s make them pay for it.
Get this. The week before winter break, my 11th grade daughter was hit with five (count ’em, FIVE) projects, all due in five days. Wait, it doesn’t end there. She also had five quizzes in that one week, two major tests, and all the regular homework which takes no less than five hours each night.
Wait, don’t go away, there’s more. She’s in one after school activity but the instructor picked that week, of all weeks, to ramp up the rehearsals each night because the design guru was in town. My daughter sent the instructor a carefully worded respectful email, how she takes the activity seriously but she is being hit with a bazillion projects all due that week and schoolwork must come first. Pretty mature of her, eh? She received a reply with a threat that she’d be taken off key portions of the show if she missed even one rehearsal.
I am getting to a point here, building up to something, don’t go away. Wait, there’s more. To add to daughter’s stress, she was going on a youth convention and needed to miss the first two days of break week. Break began Christmas eve but the international convention (in our backyard this year, fortuitously) was starting that Sunday. New school rule: all students missing those two days would need to make up all work beforehand. And we were hoping she could catch up over break. I didn’t know that when we signed daughter up for convention, I figured she’d just have to do it over vacation.
One of the projects was on transcendentalism. Daughter was to write a research report, complete with many readings and citations and then construct a poster with very specific guidelines. It was due the following Tuesday but because daughter would be out, she’d have to have it done by Friday. She was able to communicate to the teacher that she’d try working on it over the weekend and would email it. The teacher received it Sunday morning, two days before it was due.
Luckily, the teacher finally agreed to allow daughter to work on the poster over break so she would not be penalized. There was no way, given the above work load, that the poster could have been finished any earlier. Oh, I forgot. Daughter spent the first part of the weekend filming for another class so that took up Saturday. The convention starts 11am Sunday. She has to pack. Just when can she write this research paper?
She packed for the week-long convention late into Saturday night. She asked me to wake her up at six am so she could finish the long research paper before leaving for the convention. I didn’t, choosing 8am instead. Coming up with the convention money was a hardship and now she’d be missing some of it. Thank goodness she wasn’t flying and we could drive her over. Sunday morning I had to make special arrangements for daughter to miss the convention bus so that I could drive her in.
Well, it’s Sunday morning and midway through the report, my daughter’s in tears. It’s almost noon, the bus has long left and she doesn’t want to miss the opening at 2:30. She declares dejectedly there’s no way she can finish, she’s only halfway through. At this point, she’d already worked on the paper for four hours so I felt she may as well see it through. She’d get an F if she didn’t get it in that day, may as well finish it. She made a huge push, got it done, frantically packed the last of her items and we took off in a flurry.
Thoreau is all about quiet reflection, going into the woods, communing with your thoughts and nature. The irony was not lost on my child. She noted ruefully with a tinge of humor that perhaps she ought not to do the project at all and just pen a note that she was so inspired by the writings of Thoreau, Emerson and Walt Whitman that she begged her parents to take her winter hiking in Shenandoah National Park instead.
I loved that idea and actually gave her permission to do so. I suggested we do in fact take off for the mountains and that she should compose a beautiful essay and poetry on her day in the still snowy winter woods. Throw in some Robert Frost too.
In the end, daughter did not dare. She coughed up that report and we raced to the convention. She was up till 2:30 am the night before school began to do the poster. Mike, the teacher on the other post, would chastise us all for leaving it to the last minute. Nope. Yes, it’s true, I sent daughter to the convention and then we headed north for a family wedding. But come New Years Day, daughter was buried in homework for the entire weekend. The poster started at 9pm because math and physics took all day.
Let’s contrast this transcendentalism study with my own high school experience hundreds of years ago. I was in 10th grade and my English teacher was introducing us to Thoreau. I attended a private school next door to a gorgeous arboretum. I adored this teacher and credit her for my love of language, literature and poetry. She loved what she taught and would read us poetry aloud with dramatic intonation, she gesticulated wildly, she was eccentric and dramatic and I couldn’t wait for her daily class.
The teacher cleared it with the rest of the staff and we hiked over to the gardens. It was a shimmering sparkling day in early spring. We ate our lunch in a circle and took turns reading Walt Whitman. We spent hours reading Thoreau, Emerson and Whitman together. We had lively intense discussions and then took a long hike together. She asked us to spend a half hour alone, go find a spot, and meditate. We were given a project associated with it but I remember attacking it vigorously over the weekend. I’ve always been inspired by these three transcendentalists, nature, the woods, and writing and the seeds of that passion were inspired that day at Cylburn botanical gardens.
Extraordinary teachers like that you never forget. No child will ever go back to today’s teachers and proclaim, thank you thank you thank you for spending most of my schooled years prepping for a big test, I am forever moved.
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Dear TeacherBey–Thanks for your thoughtful comments.
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I think that kids aren’t allowed to be kids anymore they never have time to play or have any fun everything is how much homework do you have I have grandchildren in kindergarden and even they have homework this is realy sad that they can’t even enjoy life at all just do more and more school work and not have time to play I feel sorry for the kids who are not realy good students they must realy have a hard time trying to keep up
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This latest comment reminds me of an exchange I read on another site:
Q: Geez! When do kids have time to be kids any more?
A. After they’ve finished their worksheets in a quiet, well-lit place!
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All of you whining parents need to cut it out. Not only am I a teacher, but a mother of two. If we never made kids accountable for their homework, they’d never do it! Do you think that when your children grow up and enter the workplace that they will write a note to their boss? “Dear Boss, I am not participating in X, Y, and Z. You need to trust me.” Please! You are setting your children up for failure. Reading logs teach them about responsibility. My children read each night. They log the date, minutes read, and write about their reading. Then I sign it. It takes five minutes! Research even shows that when students write about what they read they improve their comprehension.
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Hi, to all interested in the issue of education and the ever-hated homework. My second grader is overwhelmed by 2-3 hours worth (instead of 20-minutes proposed by the guidelines) of nightly ordeal. What is most upsetting to me that he is actually convinced by now that he is “slow and incapable to meet goals”, thanks to those teachers-dictators who should not be let close to schools.
I wish my child would be blessed with loving, inspirational, smart and truly devoted to their profession teachers, who would do their magic and make my son to enjoy his experience in school, to crave learning more and more. However so far on his relatively short path he only encountered cold and heartless adults who call themselves teachers, whose only achievement so far is: at age 7 he is ready to quit school.
And to the teacher Jen, mother of 2, – my son reads very well for his age, and what is most important – he loves reading, and I take much more pride in that fact that in him counting each night the amount of pages he reads to make teachers as you happy.
Mother of 3, lucky ex-student for having devoted teachers in my school years, from Eastern Europe, whishing my Canadian children could one day say the same about those who teach them.
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Jen writes:
Reading logs teach them about responsibility.
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They don’t. They teach children that reading is a chore, a bore, something quickly dispensed with to please, you, the teacher. I’ve watched little children, who had always loved being read to, who couldn’t get enough, who begged their parents for just one more book before bedtime, now count the minutes and the pages of required reading and announce happily they were done! Twenty minutes of mandatory reading is a joke. My daughter could go on for hours.The mandatory reading time announces to the child that reading is painful, otherwise why just twenty minutes? Most kids, before they are corrupted, would be happy to read or be read to for a lot longer but the tedious worksheets are waiting, who has time for reading anymore?
Besides, for young children, the parents are the ones filling in those dreaded logs. My six year old, with a vocabulary that would knock your socks off, didn’t have sufficient fine motor skills to fill out those logs in rapid time.
And to all those teachers who say, we need those reading logs to make sure the parents are involved in their children’s education, do you ever stop to consider just how insulting that is? If anything, the equation should be reversed where we parents should be demanding to see what our children do at school. After all, you are the ones who get paid.
To add, I once tried to tell my daughter’s teacher just how involved we parents are (respectfully, of course), and the teacher couldn’t care less. It’s not about making sure we parents care enough about our children’s education, it’s about checking off the grade book, shunting home the work to the family. And how dare we ask what you did for seven hours at school today.
Jen, you need to do some of your own homework. On homework, on teaching, on inspiring, on families. If you don’t have time, can’t be bothered, do us all a favor and gt out of the classroom before you ruin more children.
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Jen — I could write a book in response to your comment, but the book has already been written. Please, read our esteemed Sara Bennett’s Case Against Homework, and follow it up with the Homework Myth by Alfie Kohn. You like reading, I hope?
In the meantime, have some respect for us parents who are raising our kids the best we can. We want our kids to enjoy learning. Yes, there are unpleasant chores in life that must be done. Why should we go out of our way to invent more?
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As a teacher – you need to understand that MOST parents don’t read or have their kids read. Do your job and we won’t have reading logs. Do your job and we won’t have to have conferences. Do your job and you won’t come and blame the teachers for your child not being at or above their educational level.
Quit being lazy and sign the damn log – then we can focus on the kids who will never get the help they need from home.
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by the way FEDUPMOM, Civil Rights? Find a book about it and read it. You will actually learn what that means, oh and I’ll sign your reading log.
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Dear A Teacher;
I’ll try to get past your snarky derisive attitude and respond respectfully to the points you raise. And I should tell you I didn’t start out this way. When my daughter began kindergarten, I was always highly respectful, considerate, accommodating, always volunteered to help and deferred to the teacher as a professional.
I am sorry to admit that as I survey the long landscape of my daughter’s school experience (she’s a high school junior), the numbers of teachers who have reciprocated that respect I can count on the fingers of one hand. If that. At least several of the high school teachers do treat me better. But I will say that I have finally found my voice. I have discovered a way in which I can be respectful but firm and I don’t back down.
There have been a few teachers who are worth their weight in gold and I would do anything for those teachers. They have made a true difference. But why are there not more? Alfie Kohn says NCLB chased the best ones away.
Please allow me to address your concerns, Dear Teacher. I’m separating our comments by these >>>>>>>>>>>>.
We’ll start with your first statement:
As a teacher – you need to understand that MOST parents don’t read or have their kids read.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Therefore? Please google me on this blog. Reading is my daughter’s passion. In the time she filled out the log in first grade, she could have been reading another book. She had book after book taken away because she was reading in class. She got punished for not finishing her homework, reading instead. You still need proof she’s reading?
And because Johnny won’t read, why should we suffer? I do not understand this logic. You are telling me our family needed to suffer through reading logs because the other kid didn’t read. Forgive me, I’ve heard this argument before and I still don’t get it.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Do your job and we won’t have reading logs.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I’m assuming you are addressing the wide public out there and not me or FedUpMom, for example. Aren’t you listening? My daughter would read all afternoon and evening, if she could. We would have to hide books. When you say, do your job, what do you mean? She’s reading! We’re doing our job! You mean as long as Johnny won’t read, you will punish the readers?
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Do your job and we won’t have to have conferences.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I didn’t realize we had conferences because I wasn’t doing my job. I thought they were so the teacher could let me know how my daughter was doing at school. The whole child. I knew she was an ace at academics. How about the social front? Was she being teased? Was she isolated? Was she remembering to turn work in on time? ADD, you see.
I’m sorry you see the chance to meet with parents as a burden. I know you have to haul some moms and dads in because they are clueless about their child’s education. Like that dad who didn’t even know the names of his child’s teachers.
But that’s not us! That’s not the people on this list. Aren’t you paying attention? We hate homework precisely because we are so deeply involved with our children. We want time with them. Just this evening, I’ve already taken away the newspaper twice, the novel three times and halted a political discussion my daughter was having with her dad. And you still don’t think I’m doing my “job?” Since when is my “job” your unpaid aide, anyway?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Do your job and you won’t come and blame the teachers for your child not being at or above their educational level.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
My daughter is several years above grade level. Do we have problems? You bet. Twice exceptional and all that. Please tell me you know what that means.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Quit being lazy and sign the damn log –
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You truly think we are lazy and that’s why we won’t sign the damn log? Oh, dear, you have not been listening. Doesn’t instill confidence. Didn’t we tell you we don’t want to sign logs, we want to read to our children?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
then we can focus on the kids who will never get the help they need from home.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
And completely neglect the ones who are.
Respectfully submitted,
Singin’ the Blues
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The parents complaining here are the very parents teachers call “helicopter parents” – they hover and rescue. These kids never learn responsibility and only hear you complain and thus complain too.
Ask yourself – What are you teaching your children? What example are you setting? Is there more talk than action?
Gripe all you want – but you are turning the next generation into lazy complainers. You think that all children need to be free thinking all the time. Guess what – it is not like that in the real world. You can’t keep a job or function in a relationship if YOU are all you think about.
Suck it up – and if you think homework and reading logs are so bad…go back to college, get a teaching degree, pass the state required teaching tests, spend a year or more on probation (rather than 90 days like most professions) and BECOME A TEACHER. Then after all of that – deal with complaining “helicopter” parents, lazy irresponsible children, gifted kids you feel guilty about because you can’t give them what they need because you are only allowed to teach to the lowest level in the class – but meet the grade level required lessons, tons of paperwork and NCLB laws, meetings, lesson plans, endless IEP meetings, grading papers, kids’ friendship drama, drugs, sex, sexual harrassment, drinking, required professional development, watching for the signs of abuse, spend your weekends and summers preparing for what’s next, then top it off with one of the lowest salaries for the level of education you have.
Oh – and maybe at the end of the day – you will reflect and remember the few kids you did make a difference in their lives.
Then wake up and do it all again – because you love the kids and seeing them have a break through. Or maybe in a day you will actually see what you taught being applied by the kids. But – probably not and maybe not for years to come.
And if you don’t have the time to do that – go into politics and make changes that will help teachers actually use all that time to teach and send less homework home.
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I was afraid you wouldn’t listen, that you wouldn’t read my whole post. Sadly, I was right. You didn’t read it. Therefore, I can’t respond. We seem to be talking past each other.
Also, I don’t complain in front of my child. This blog doesn’t show up on my history.
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A Teacher — do you want your kids to enjoy learning and have a positive attitude toward life?
I’m actually trying to make your life easier. If you didn’t have to assign and supervise and collect unnecessary homework, you’d have more time for more important things.
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A Teacher, I reference you on the other post, the one about denying recess. I’m putting it here too so you can see it. I hear you vis a vis NCLB.
HomeworkBlues says:
Commenting on FedUpMom’s post, above. We really need to be having this dialogue, how principals protect bad teachers. Because it overshadows the good ones. We need to be having this discussion in the larger society and we are not.
Right now, bad teachers, a la Michelle Rhee, are the ones who can’t bring stubborn test scores up. That is NOT what I am talking about here. A Teacher from the other post, we are in your corner about how corrosive NCLB is and the havoc is has wreaked on your profession. You need to be getting on Susan Ohanian’s web site and sign up for her almost daily list serve.
No, I’m not talking about raising test scores. When the entire emphasis is not to inspire and teach but to raise test scores, what does that do for the child whose scores are already high?
I’m talking about teachers who don’t understand children or families, who don’t seem to enjoy the very material they are teaching, punish because it’s all they know, and as an expert on education, a friend, a teacher characterized it to me, are petty dictators. These are the ones we need to be getting rid of, lest they give the entire profession a black eye.
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Dear Teacher,
I disagree that we are “helicopter” parents. We are teaching our children to think for themselves and to take charge of their education and learning. At the same time, we also teach them to be respectful.
I understand your frustrations at all of the requirements imposed on teachers and they come through loud and clear in your writing. Perhaps you can find some other teachers who share your frustrations and join with them to voice your concerns. There are teachers around the country who stand up against the demands placed on them by standardized tests, who refuse to administer state tests, who won’t assign homework regardless of their school’s regulations, who find a way to engage every student in the class, regardless of the child’s level, etc. No one is saying it isn’t hard. But just as parents need to stand up for their children, so too do teachers, administrators, and everyone else who comes into contact with children.
And if we hate reading logs because we see that they are making our children dislike reading, then why shouldn’t we let the teacher know. There are plenty of kids who will dutifully fill in the reading log (or their parents will do it for them). But if our research shows no educational value to them, and our kids don’t like them, then we have a duty to step in.
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If the schools want kids to read, then they need to provide them with more library time. That is what got me reading when I was a kid – the ability to go to the library several times a day. Instead, libraries are being cut.
When I had assigned summer reading, me, the kid who would fill a shopping bag full of books several times a week at the library, I procrastinated and wouldn’t read anything because I HAD to read those three books, most of which I had read before the high school summer reading requirements.
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I can’t resist adding another ironic homework story to the mix:
At my daughter “Rosie’s” conference several years ago, with furrowed brow the teachers told me that Rosie tended not to adhere to the directions. For Exhibit A, they showed me a picture of a shield divided into four parts. They explained that each quadrant was be completed in a certain manner, and at the bottom of the page, the child was to write a sentence explaining each. Well! Instead of writing the sentence at the bottom, Rosie gave her characters speech balloons so they could explain the design for themselves. Not only that, but other students like the idea and, to the teacher’s dismay, used it themselves. Perhaps some of you recognize this popular activity. It was a personality shield.
I quickly determined that, if the teachers didn’t see the irony, it was possible that pointing it out to them might not do much to advance Rosie’s status. And, overall, Rosie adored one of the teachers. I suppose our children learn some resilience, and they should be well prepared for a future on the assembly line.
Maybe we should consider starting an online Hall of Fame or Museum of Stupid School Projects.
I do think there are many teachers who are truly trying their best and have the best of intentions, but just as we tend to parent as we were parented, we “teach” as we were taught. Our system of educating our children is in need of a transformation. Culture change takes a long time.
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Maybe we should consider starting an online Hall of Fame or Museum of Stupid School Projects.
Did you know there’s a section of Chapter 6 in The Case Against Homework called “Cardboard, Glue, and Pasta: The Homework Hall of Shame.”
That doesn’t mean I can’t start one here. Send me your stories. As soon as I have a few, I’ll post them.
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I love it. The Homework Hall of Shame. I remember that chapter well.
Yes, let’s start a Museum of Stupid School Projects!
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response: “But few teachers have time for that. Chances are, your child’s teacher uses the log simply as a way of checking to be sure you enforce the reading requirement or as a record of what’s been read.”
I think that is a very unfair statement. The books that the children in my class read are ones that I send home, and they are on their reading level. I don’t grade them on whether or not they read the book each night. We are requried by our BOE to do reading logs, so I feel as though I am making it attainable by sending home the books that are appropriate for each student. I spend a lot of time going over the information and reading and responding to the parent feedback about their child’s reading. Then I target some of the skills that the parents noticed, along with what I notice and base Individual lessons and activities around those skills. So I take offense to that comment, because I do spend a lot of time looking them over, talking to the child about the book, and yes, many of them will say no, they didn’t like the book. We talk about why and they are able to choose other books, books that I purchase, and take them home. (ps. I have been teaching 8 years and I do not make much over 40,000, with a partial masters.)
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to Kat:
I was so upset when I read your post. In your case, I agree that the reading log was inappropriate. Your son’s teacher should have made the reading attainable for him, and although I don’t believe in rewarding those who read and those who don’t, he should have been recognized for his efforts and acheivements. Teacher’s such as that, give teacher’s like myself and the millions like me out there a bad name.
I hope that you know that most teacher’s would not do that, and that meeting the kids where they are comfortable is what we strive to do.
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Homeworkblues: “Now the dippy questions are added, who is your favorite character, what do you think will happen next, do you like this book? I love that last question. No, I don’t like this book, that’s why I’m reading it. I asked the teacher why my daughter was being asked to fill out these logs. Answer. We need evidence she is reading!
I swear public school was put on this earth for my amusement”
I don’t think asking those questions is a good indication of whether or not they are reading, evidence, as you put it.
Unfortunatly teachers are in a tough situtaion in many school districts. standardize testing, yes I said it…the dreaded words. Teacher’s dislike them as much as parents do, I can say this with assurance. We feel they are too difficult,unfair, timely (we could be doing other fun things!) We feel they are an uneeded stress. We AGREE; however, we are forced to give them and like them, kids are forced to take them, and those “dippy” quesitons are on them. I guess you could say that we would like to keep our jobs as well…because, contrary to popular belief, we can get booted out of our positions faster than you can bubble in a circle.
Let me end by saying that not all testing is bad. There has to be a concrete way to assess children, and there are very appropriate ones out there, that do not ask those rote questions.
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I think a happy medium must be met. If homework is given and it serves a logical and functional purpose, then I don’t see where the complaint is. If homework were given on a need to give basis, which means not every evening, not on weekends, and not on breaks would that be a satisfactory solution?
I feel like this website brings to light an important and very debated issue. I have enjoyed reading the posts, and although I will debate my feelings against many of them, I see a lot of logic, feel the frustration and agree with many points being brought up.
I also feel as though a lot of complaints are being voiced, but where are the solutions? This website is a chance to come up with solutions and make differences. The potential is here to brainstorm ways to change the system, to work together and come up with plausible solutions.
Not all teachers are bad, not all Public Schools are bad, the generalizaton needs to be curbed. How can anything be accomplished when the validity of teacher’s is being squashed. What teacher would want to work with parents who trash the proffession and belittle the career? Recognize the good ones, or become one of the good ones.
Be proactive, rather than reactive.
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Heather — I have never seen homework assigned on a “need to give” basis, at either of the schools my daughter has attended (one private, one public). What I see is standard boilerplate homework assigned because the teacher must assign something.
When you say “need to give”, are you open to the point that different kids have different needs? So, for instance, the child who is completely proficient at adding fractions shouldn’t be sent home with the same worksheet as the child who doesn’t understand how to add fractions. I haven’t seen homework assigned this way either.
In your discussion of how you work with your students on reading, I would like to add that some kids are intrinsically motivated and independent-minded. Kids like this need their own intellectual space where they can think their thoughts in private. For them, the constant discussion between parents and teachers about what they’re reading and how well they’re doing can become an intolerable intrusion, and turn them off to the reading that might have become a real source of joy.
Yes, there are good teachers out there. But the system is so deeply messed up that even good teachers wind up doing things that are not in their students’ best interests, for instance standardized tests.
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FedUpMom, you put it so succinctly and clearly, I have nothing to add! Kudos.
But here I am, adding! Heather, my child is visual spatial. She doesn’t learn words by painstakingly looking up each one in the dictionary and then copying it down on a piece of paper. This exercise alone took two hours in fifth grade. But this was a kid with a vocabulary close to that of a college professor who loved to read. Why torture her? That Monday exercise became an exercise in torture. For daughter and parents alike. Why put her through that?
It may be hard for a teacher to understand why some tasks that come easily for some children are torture for others. Mainly because that’s not how her mind learns and this child knew it. She was smart enough to understand it was a waste of time, time better spent writing a novel.
Don’t get me wrong. I see plenty merit in looking up words. When we homeschooled, when she wasn’t hit over the head with all that copying, she suddenly announced she wanted me to blanket the house with dictionaries. So that when she read and came across a word she didn’t know, she’d look it up. Without all that cajoling, I constantly caught her looking up words! The beauty of unschooling! Kids are hard wired to learn. Lose the dire message (it’ll only get worse in middle school!), stop scaring them straight, I couldn’t imagine ever saying that year, if you don’t do your words, you don’t get to go outside, and you’d be amazed at what children can accomplish in the right environment.
During the homeschool year, on days we weren’t running out on a field trip, we started each morning with a refreshing walk. I threw in all sorts of hard words, we made sentences together, we laughed, we walked, we are both passionate about words.
What happened to education today? Why did it cease being fun? Heather, I know you’ll blame it on NCLB and you are preaching to the choir. But why didn’t your union do something, why didn”t you sign the Educator Roundtable petition? Why aren’t you doing something about this oppression? As Sara says, it’s hard, but you have to do something.
Every time my daughter showed passion in something at that public elementary school, along came a teacher to dash it. She created a masterpiece? She got chided, if you hadn’t worked so hard on X, Y would have been in on time. Never comprehending that X captivated her and Y did not. And it’s not just a matter of picking and choosing. Yea, I know kids have to learn to be responsible. It’s that she threw her all into X because she’s creative and in somewhere in the haystack of endless busy work, was a diamond she could sink her teeth into.. Isn’t that what elementary should be all about? Exciting, inspiring and building life long learners?
This is a kid who eats words, who lives for words and reading. One day she just sprinkled the word quintessential into a sentence when she was eleven and I almost cried inside. What we were doing was working!
Okay, Heather, you can’t take my daughter on a two hour walk through the frozen woods to dissect the finer points of Shakespeare. But I can! If I privately tell you my daughter learns words best in context, through endless reading, believe me! Couldn’t you whisper, if you don’t tell anyone, I’ll excuse your daughter, she clearly doesn’t need it, better you two should take that walk.
But her homework takes up every spare second. She’s neither walking with me and learning words nor benefiting from the wrong kind of homework. After all that time expended, how much has she learned? How much does she retain on six hours sleep in high school? But her fifth grade teacher just scoffed and spewed some old canard about following directions and being a failure at life later if she didn’t listen to Big Bad Teacher. Why do teachers think the real world operates like school?
It took my daughter’s eye doctor to tell her what a gift she had, the gift of reading. My ten year old needed glasses that year and clutched a book as she was being examined. The doctor noticed it and remarked, “your voracious reading is not the best thing for your eyes and now you are myopic. But what a gift you have, the ability to sustain attention this way, to read the way you do! Never stop reading!”
It took an eye doctor to make this point. All her teacher ever did that year was pick on her faults, my daughter never once got any recognition for her verbal abilities. Mind you, I didn’t need an award or a ceremony or points. I hate that. We don’t need Accelerated Reader or accolades. What she needed desperately but never got was, “I see you love to read. Tell me what books you like!”
That’s ALL she needed, that’s it, a kind word from an adult at the school, a connection, validation.
But no. Because dare I say it, this teacher couldn’t imagine reading being this enjoyable. She saw it as a chore and her raisen d’etre was not to inspire or light a fire but to beat the child into compliance. Every teacher must want to be remembered. Oh, we remember her, alright. But not in the way she would have intended.
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FedUpMom wrote above:
Yes, there are good teachers out there. But the system is so deeply messed up that even good teachers wind up doing things that are not in their students’ best interests, for instance standardized tests.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
This is the seminal point. Yes, Heather, there are some good teachers left. But the system is so deeply messed up. We here have some excellent ideas on how to fix it. But the system is so intrinsically sick, so mired, so enmeshed in bad policy and harmful practices that even good teachers are caught up in the dogma.
Heather, I am sad that if you so much as veer from the tight script handed you, you will lose your job. But I am saddest of all for the children, their grace and beauty as they stare at you, who come into this world innocent and with each day, discover the wonderful world around them. When they are little, they want to know and lean everything, their questions are incessant, they never stop playing, asking, questioning, learning, they are fascinated about the world around them.
They could be our future, they bring us hope and newness and with each fresh generation, we have in our power to nurture these amazing little human beings, to listen and guide them, we offer experience, they offer hope and newness, and we work together to create a brave new world (not to sound corny).
Instead, today, for some odd reason that still escapes me, we do everything in our power to drum it out of the unique gifts they bring the world. That so many children are disaffected from their learning today, that they are not permitted to play in the woods because it’s more important to sweat over yet another tedious worksheet, that they have lost their sense of wonder and discovery, that so many children are diagnosed with depression, anxiety and ADD, that so many young people become cynical, who see each year of school as merely a stepping stone to the next year, that is the true tragedy in this tale.
Yes, Heather, there are some good teachers. You are one of them. I once asked a friend in utter desperation, how on earth did these women ever become teachers? My friend responded. I truly believe many but not all, enter the profession because they love children. Bu after some years, the system completely chews them up. They go from nice to vile.
And those are the good ones, Heather. We need to acknowledge here that there are many many bad ones, the ones that never started off idealistic and passionate in the first place. The ones who went into the field, not because they love and understand children and how they tick, but because they couldn’t think of anything else to do. There are plenty of those and as long as principals keep protecting the awful ones, they will continue to give your profession a black eye.
If some of us are frustrated and angered by some teachers we’ve encountered, it’s not because we are being needlessly whiny but because we have good cause.
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In conclusion, the best way to sum up today’s educational climate comes from a 17-year old homeschool girl, as she explains why she left a GT program after 7th grade;
“I never worked so hard, to produce so much, to learn so little.”
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homeworkblues:
yes, we definatly can agree on the fact that if a child is able to add addition homework is not necessary, if a child masters all of their spelling words on monday’s pre-test then they should not have the homework or need to take the post test, and if a child is consistently writing sentences or solving word problems accuratly then there is no need to be redundent, but I do feel that there is a need to enrich and build. For example if they can add money, then suggest activities such as food shopping and seeing who can add together the two products faster, or playing a game with counting the change at the store…things like that…mandatory no, but suggestions that, perhaps some parents wouldn’t think of, I don’t see a problem with that.
I think that redunency will foster boredom, which can lead to all sorts of issues that aren’t necessary or good for any parties involved.
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I admit, I only read ½ of the posts.
First, I am a high school teacher that hates giving homework. When I did exactly what “A Teacher” said to do (changed careers and jump through all the hoops and become a teacher) I promised myself I would not do an assignment unless it was something that satisfied me intellectually. After seven years of teaching at three of the better schools in California I can honestly say that 70 – 75% of the kids I have in class lack the intellectual endurance to be stay inquisitive. At the first sign of confusion they quit. Most do not want to learnEvery task I ask them to undertake is greeted with the following questions, “How much is this worth? When is it due? Do we have to do it?” Finally, in frustration a few weeks ago, I decided that the entire week would be spent filling out dittos and looking up words and writing down definitions. I was sadly shocked at how much they LIKED the new curriculum. Their sentiments could be summed up with “Thank goodness we didn’t have to think. We could just do the work and get the points.”
I could not have been more bummed out. When I asked a colleague about it, their response was, “they have been preconditioned to dittos from grade school. I’ll bet that was your easiest day of teaching ever.” Yep. It was.
I work hard (and am known for) creating creative thought provoking course work. If a student comes up with an idea on their own, a different way of approaching the work, I always encourage them to go for it. 9 times out 10, this same kid completes nothing. Their initial enthusiasm lacks the academic discipline to finish the task. A few years ago I learned an important lesson. Students need a goal and a rigid framework to be creative. Yes, a rigid framework, academic parameters that allow the student to produce original work a specified “rules.”
I actually learned this from two sources. First, a student brought in some of his uncle’s art work. It was a 3 dimensional dragon, perhaps 14 inches longs and 3 inches wide that was constructed completely from gum wrappers. I was in complete shock. It was breathtaking. Turns out, his uncle landed in prison 8 years ago and, with zero prior art experience, started to create it, and a few other pieces, from the material available. If he was given all the art supplies in the world, he would simply not been able to create anything so amazing. He would have tried this and that, run into a creative obstacle, then quit and moved on to something else. But, given a strict set of material and the choice of occupy your mind or go crazy, he produced something great. The second lesson was that Shakespeare did the same thing with his sonnets. The strict form required a amazing about of linguistic creativity.
In the end, I see it this way. If you cared enough to spend 15 -20 minutes reading and replying to information on this post, you are not the problem. Your children and students will be fine. You are all doing the right thing.
BTW, I have two super-genius children of my own. My wife and I both teach and I am completely fine with my daughter writing in her reading log. I ask her to do one thing: connect your reading with a real world or real life events. She spends no more then five minutes reflecting and writing then we talk about it, I sign it and she is finished with her responsibility. The younger one reads to us nearly every night and we sign her reading log when she is done.
My advice? If you and your child do not want to do the homework, then don’t. BUT, do not expect your child to receive straight A’s or ask the teacher to excuse them from the work. Education is about learning. Sometimes learning to complete an undesirable task IS the education.
I love teaching, but I hate ½ of the crap I have to do each day. But, that is the job. If I want a paycheck, I do it.
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I just reread my own post. Sorry fo the typos! I should have been more careful. Hopefully your children will have a better teacher than me! 🙂
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Education is about learning. Sometimes learning to complete an undesirable task IS the education.
I love teaching, but I hate ½ of the crap I have to do each day. But, that is the job. If I want a paycheck, I do it.
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You know, I’m not against kids completing undesirable tasks. I make my daughter put her laundry away and practice scales on her viola, even though these are not fascinating projects and she doesn’t always want to do them. But I am confident that these tasks are worth doing. The laundry needs to be put away so we don’t have mountains of laundry around the house, and she needs to practice scales to improve her viola playing.
What I object to is the undesirable task that has no benefit. The reading log does nothing but make my daughter dislike reading, which she otherwise loves. Nothing good comes of it that would make it worth the unpleasantness it brings.
If we could reduce the unpleasant crap you have to do, you could be a better teacher, right? If we can reduce the unpleasant, and unnecessary, tasks our kids do, they can be better students.
BTW, my daughter told me that for the latest book, the teachers said that there’s another reading log, but it’s optional for the kids who did all the reading last time (which of course includes my daughter).
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After seven years of teaching at three of the better schools in California I can honestly say that 70 – 75% of the kids I have in class lack the intellectual endurance to be stay inquisitive. At the first sign of confusion they quit. Most do not want to learnEvery task I ask them to undertake is greeted with the following questions, “How much is this worth? When is it due? Do we have to do it?”
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That pretty much says it all. This is where the good students, who did the homework we’re objecting to in elementary and middle school, wind up by high school. These were once bright, curious kids who wanted to learn about their world. Now they’re a pack of paper-pushing drones. Wouldn’t you like to see that change? If we can give kids their childhood back maybe you’ll see inquisitive, engaged high school students.
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