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 
here i sit,on labor day, looking for comfort the day before i send my sweet 6 year old off to1st grade,for his second year in public school. i am absolutely guilt ridden and disappointed in myself for the amount of work i’ve put my guy through this summer. not only did he receive homework packets (everyday for entire summer), i subjected him to a psych ed evaluation (thankfully my own decision and done independently), reading tutor, yes, we have to submit a summer reading log (he’s 6!!!!),and crash homwork that we just finished this morning. i lost my patience (don’t worry, i am mild), he cried…all for what? for him to complete SUMMER homework given by a k teacher who has never had a single document sent home without spelling errors. yet, my 6 year old is expected to be spelling (not just cat, dog) by 1st grade. i sent him to the beach with dad to get away from me. i plan to hug him endlessly and apologize for my behavior. i am filled with anxiety about whether he is ready or am i pushing him (for 1st). his very kind but simple k teacher suggested retention. the psych ed scores are good….in some areas, exceptional (way above 90th pecentile). i am confused, angry, and defensive that my son is smart and typical, albeit a little small for age with mild low muscle tone (which of course is connected to handwriting speed and accuracy). what is going on? we’ve tried private and now public (i am not public school minded, never attended public school). i worry that i am setting him up to fail in a system where NCLB is actually causing kids to be left behind. my gut feeling about our school is that there is a boniker mentality masked with smiles and lip service. very high test scores, lots of hard working parents who trust that they have their kids best interest in mind (because they don’t have the time to worry otherwise). not really looking for any answers, i’ve read more this year on early ed than anything. i am lucky to be a SAHM but even at this very young age trying to figure out how to balance a long school day,homework,play etc. and this on top of the fact that he is exhauted at end of school day. good liuck everyone! i am going to beach!!!
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exhausted already — your post is one of the saddest things I have ever read. Please, take your guilt and turn it into action. Your son needs to have a childhood. He needs to run and jump and play.
Make some rules for your home. Set limits to how much time will be spent on homework. Harris Cooper recommends a maximum of 10 minutes per day for a first grader. Your school district may be bonkers, but your home belongs to you. Make it a sanctuary for your child.
Please, talk to the other parents in your son’s grade. How many actually had their child do all that homework? You’ll find that a lot of them just didn’t do it, and others faked it for their child.
You know more about your child than any teacher or psychologist he will ever have. Make the “experts” listen to you for a change.
If the school district is really that nuts, you might want to start looking at your options. Is there a good Montessori school nearby? Can you homeschool? There is just no good reason to put a young child through all this pressure and anxiety.
Please, post again and let us know how you’re doing —
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I think the regular posters would agree…this site is made for people like “exhausted already”.
It’s a place for people to go for support and confirmation of their right to parent their children. The school system is not allowed to control our lives and in sharing information and resources, we can help families become stronger. Protecting our children must be at the forefront …. it’s the only hope our kids have. If we don’t support them, who will?
It was refreshing to hear from someone like “VA teacher”. Getting dialogue going is the only way. When teachers write in and only denigrate parents as a whole, my first instinct is to not respond. What can one say to someone who isn’t looking for anything but a fight? But if a teacher reads part of this blog and recognizes what parents (and some teachers too) are trying to do, then we’ve made a difference that will hopefully affect many childrens’ lives in a positive way.
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good morning
thanks for acknowledging my post. as i mentioned, i hugged and loved my guy, explained that i was sorry for losing patience and we proceeded to finish our reading log. we packed it up along with his summer homework in his backpack and said adios. don’t worry,our home is a “sanctuary”, possibly to a fault. he has time for play and creativity. though, he did work very hard this summer. i guess my anxiety stems from the pressure he felt in kindergarten and likely will feel in 1st. my husband and i are very easy going and we do not fit into the public school model. from february thru this summer, we have agonized over the “retention” decision. there are many details to this point which if anyone is interested to hear, i will share in another post. ultimately, we decided to move him into 1st. the part that is frustrating is that i (and my son) need a clean slate…the school claims to support our decision but i believe that they just don’t have a choice. i don’t want him to be judged unfairly or assesed as if he is under a microscope. unfortunately, i have become the parent to contend with. it didn’t start out that way. anyway, 1st day of school today. as always, he went with a smile. i am a little weepy. i just don’t think that our kids should be pushed so hard as early as k and 1st. as a parent, these should be the very special years where children are free to learn at their own pace. a very good teacher friend emailed me a perfect quote that is undeniably the truth that all schools should be held to: “in order for ALL children to be treated equally and fairly, they MUST be treated differently” amen
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Dear Exhausted Already
Your child has every right to head off to school every morning with a smile. School should feel special to him, a place where he is with his friends and where everybody loves him. He has to feel as if he belongs. Testing, by it’s very nature, separates one child from another, and does everything possible to pull kids apart from one another. I never felt that way until very recently but now I see testing of young children as less than useless. I hope you’ re able to work with your child’s teacher early on so that your son will feel special. Every moment you devote to helping him be the best kid (not best small adult) he can be will be well worth it.
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I’m up way too late and found myself reading all the comments. I’ve taught seventh graders, and now I’m an elementary librarian. In the classroom I didn’t assign homework other than studying for a test or finishing undone classwork. If the entire class didn’t finish (or a majority) then we carried it over to the next
day.
And I still had a parent write me notes complaining about her son’s homework. I can still quote one of these notes five years later because it irritated me so much. “I don’t believe in homework so my son will not be doing the assignment you sent home.” What I wanted to write back was, “Lady, if you’d paid any attention to anything I sent home this year, you’d realize that I don’t believe in homework either. If you’d bother to read the emails I sent you, you’d know that the reason you son has work every night to finish for my class is that he spends his class time drawing pictures & writing notes to friends unless I’m standing right over him. Obviously he’s figured out that if it becomes homework he won’t have to do it because you don’t believe in homework.”
What I actually wrote was more diplomatic than that, but argh! I guess my point is to please make sure all this work sent home is being assigned as homework before you get
all angry with a teacher.
I know there are bad teachers out there-control freaks, those who see nothing wrong with assigning a second grader three hours of homework that requires help every night, and some just plain mean ones. I’ve worked with some. But the overwhelming majority of the teachers I know are teachers because they like children and want to help them. Believe me, I could change jobs to something that pays more, has far fewer “bosses,” and much less to worry about outside work hours. On a bad day, I’ve given it some serious thought.
Back to the original topic. I don’t like reading logs personally. It seems like busywork to me as well, & kind of pointless. The kids who’re going to read for pleasure at home will find them irritating, and those who hate to read already won’t suddenly start loving it if you add another step. But my school district requires teachers to use them. Sigh. I’d rather just have time to talk with all my students about what they’re reading. I did require my seventh graders to write up booktalks for a few books a year, asking some
of the questions other posters have termed busywork-why did you like this book-and share them in class. Because that’s what adults who like to read do-talk about books they liked with their friends. It also gave me a chance to talk about books with my students. I still do something similar with my elementary students. Parents, please don’t assume writing about books is busywork.
This almost turned into its own post. Sorry about the length! The topic hit a nerve.
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Dear Rebecca:
I’ve started reading you post and I’m going to have to table it, alas, because this week is crazy but I’ll get back to you soon with some feedback. What immediately, this stood out. You say a parent announced thus to you: “I don’t believe in homework so my son will not be doing the assignment you sent home.”
NO one here is advocating that approach. There are parents here who have written thoughtful, well researched, intelligent, elegantly crafted emails to teachers and administration, citing research and describing how homework has taken over their lives.The research that Harris Cooper has done is valid. You as a teacher should be respecting that.
I first became involved when my third grader was doing three hours of homework daily and all Sunday. For me personally, the angst and the need to advocate for my child was born of homework overload and a deep concern for the damage it was causing. The time spent far exceeded any real benefit and was causing harm. This to a child who loved to read and write and still does and raised in a home where learning, intellect and academics are top priority. We weren’t begging for less homework so she could plant herself in front of the television or video games all afternoon but because we wanted to do “homeschooling on the side” and allow her a childhood full of play, wonder and imagination.
Please don’t pull trivialize our problems. They are real and real reform is needed here. Parents and children are major stakeholders in the homework debate. Their voices need to be heard in order to create this so-called partnership. I see you flying off the handle instead of listening. Precisely what you are asking your parents NOT to do.
And we have names. We are not “Lady.”
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Dear Rebecca:
My abject apologies. I jumped the gun on this one. I did what I decry teachers here doing to some of us — not reading our positions fully, jumping to hasty conclusions about us and taking our points out of context. I typically read a poster’s entire comments before remarking so I have a fuller picture of where he/she is coming from. But this is a busy day for me and I promised myself I’d stay off the internet or only stick to my work.
Your comment about that one parent caused me to assume about you that any time a parent speaks up, whether they do so intelligently or not, is labeled an uncooperative mother and anti-education. It reminds me of when my husband and I met with the teacher, our debate was reasoned and thoughtful, we made the case of how much reading she is doing at home, we needed to delicately convey the homework was too easy and that was why she was procrastinating on it, and we really needed that 5th grade teacher to listen to our concerns. All she did was purse her lips and state, “but she still has to do her homework,” making us feel that she had not heard a single word we’d just uttered.
Rebecca, I see you are more reasonable and that you understand not all parents are like that, not all kids are like that. You write: “In the classroom I didn’t assign homework other than studying for a test or finishing undone classwork. If the entire class didn’t finish (or a majority) then we carried it over to the next day.”
Trust me, I’d “kill” for this amount of homework in 7th grade but it’s unheard of in gifted programs. My daughter was seriously sleep deprived that year because it was still dark when I dropped her off at school, thanks to unwieldly early start times that began in middle school. Imagine being that exhausted every day, only to come home and know you have another five hours of work waiting for you. She’d walk in, listless,head straight up to a room we set aside for homework, and hole herself up there for hours and hours.
So you think, she’s really worked hard all week, paid her dues, now give her the weekend off, she’s earned it? No. As one high schooler confirmed on this blog, our children don’t look forward to weekends. And my daughter admitted she hates holiday weekends because it’s just one more day of homework. She’d rather be in school than stuck home all day trying to complete mega-assignments.
You can imagine why I was so worried. This is no life for a child! She attends academic summer programs and does extremely well. I asked what she attributed to her homework success (and I cringe at my own term here, homework success. This program doesn’t even call it homework and neither did I during our homeschool year,. That word was too loaded and I banished it.). She replied, “study hall is two hours.” I can do two hours!
When it’s two hours in high school, a student can tackle it, even eagerly. When the child knows it’ll take seven hours, they procrastinate. As a professional we were working with years ago told me, “Think of it as an adult. No adult wants to come home from a long day at the office after an exhausting commute with a briefcase stuffed full of work. Yes, adults bring work home too. But not every day, every weekend, every holiday. And those who do are called CEO’s. They get paid handsomely for all that blood sweat and tears. And notice many of them burn out. And our kids are not adults. Rinse and repeat. OUR KIDS ARE NOT ADULTS!!! Therefore, they should not be given adult responsibilities.
But Rebecca, you’re not quite off the hook here! You continue to write: “I guess my point is to please make sure all this work sent home is being assigned as homework before you get all angry with a teacher.”
If unfinished homework is sent home and it’s not on top of daily homework, then there may be some justification for it. But my daughter has ADD and was refused accommodations. You may not be able to imagine how hard it is for a child to come home with new work and all the unfinished classwork as well. One ADD expert calls that parent persecution! He asserts that when a child isn’t finishing at school, it’s a school problem and the school needs to look into why that the child is not finishing.
Your example is of a child who is “goofing off” and is disrespectful because his mother has given him a pass to treat schoolwork frivolously. But that doesn’t describe every child. When a well behaved smart earnest child does not finish, and the disrespect and goofing off does not apply, you need to look deeper. It is the school’s responsibility to examine why that is.
In our case, the teacher knew why because we told her! And she was still sending all of it home. The school was not helping, not uncommon when the child is gifted and already working well above grade level, and dumping the entire problem in our laps.
My husband and I initially spent a lot of time on homework, not on helping her but setting up that “distraction free” environment, sitting next to her so she wouldn’t be lonely and making sure it got done by just staying on top of it. That same professional told us not to do that. He said, as long as you guys put out this kind of home effort, the school will say, we see no problem and continue doing nothing to help her. I’ve also been told that some teachers think that helping a twice exceptional child is enabling. I shake my head. And it makes me wonder just what is covered during those weekly faculty meetings. Please tell me you guys do more than talk about standardized test scores.
Yes, you may counter that lots of kids with ADD get school support. Not a gifted one. Not in our experience.
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If you Google “reading logs”, this post comes up as the second entry! How cool is that?
Back to the discussion at hand. Rebecca, I’m interested in the boy who spends his class time drawing pictures and writing to his friends. What’s going on here? How did he get so deeply alienated from what you’re doing in class? Let me guess — is he gifted?
So you say you’re frustrated, because the boy doesn’t do the work in class unless you force him to, and you expect the mother to force him to do this work at home, after your efforts have failed in class. This is called “outsourcing to parents”. There’s a problem at school, and it needs to be fixed at school.
Maybe the boy feels that this schoolwork is just not worth doing. Maybe the mother feels the same way.
I have a great deal of sympathy for the refusenik and the kid who “goofs off”. I was that kid. I just couldn’t bring myself to do schoolwork that felt like an insult to the capabilities I knew I had.
I don’t think the example you gave of the notes the mother sent in — “I don’t believe in homework, so my son you will not be doing the work you sent home” — is so terrible, either. She’s telling you how she runs her home, which is her right.
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More on refuseniks — I had the following very sad discussion with an acquaintance whose son is now attending the public middle school my daughter would have gone to.
Me: How’s your son doing at the middle school?
Other Mom: Terrible! He doesn’t give a *bleep*. He gets As on all the tests, but he just won’t do the work!
Me: You mean he doesn’t do the homework?
Other Mom: No! We send him up to his room but he just goofs off.
Me: If he’s getting As without doing the work, maybe he’s just bored. Have you had him tested for the gifted program?
Other Mom: I asked about that, but they won’t let him try for the gifted program because he doesn’t do his work.
Ugh. Of course, the gifted program might not be a solution either, because it’s basically the exact same approach, but with more pressure and “covering” more material.
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I am a 1st Grade teacher who agrees with most of what was said on here. Many times however, administration put pressure on the teacher to “finish the curriculum” (I actually have an administrator who randomly checks to make sure we are on the right part of the lesson plan on the corresponding day of the school year). It’s frustrating. I don’t like to send home homework (after all, I’m paid to teach in class, not at home).
My observation has been that homework (including reading logs) continues they way it does because it’s been done that way so long and nobody really wants to come out of their comfort zones and try something different. As a matter of fact, I believe the whole grading system needs some work and should be completely revised. Kids have so much pressure on them that they are to stressed out to just be kids. They can’t function as kids because there is so much pressure from the adult world to make the into little adults. While there is an element of “training” involved with any lesson to be learned, kids are NOT little adults. Our current system of education is robbing kids of their most precious moments–child hood.
When will people realize that they have their whole life to be an adult? They need to be kids. Yes, they need direction, teaching, and education, but not in the broken, compulsory way we have been giving it to them.
My opinions make me not popular with other teachers but I care not. It needs to be said and I won’t change my mind.
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Hey, who let a sane person in? Joshua, hats off to you. You’re my kind of man;
You stood up and said it. The Emperor Has No Clothes! Classrooms today don’t seem all that different from classrooms in the 1950’s. We do things a certain way because we’ve always done them that way. Whether they make sense or not.
In fact, the 1950s were better. Now we have the worst of both worlds. At least children were allowed to play in the 1950s. Now we get archaic education right along with Nature Deficit Disorder. I don’t think we could screw this up more if we tried.
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Joshua — good for you! It’s good to hear from a teacher who agrees.
HomeworkBlues — I often feel that we have the worst of all possible worlds. We’ve got the authoritarian, tedious approach of the traditionalists plus the hollowed-out curriculum of the left-wing types. The result is kids who are neither enjoying themselves nor learning anything useful.
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FedUpMom writes: “The result is kids who are neither enjoying themselves nor learning anything useful.”
Stop and ponder this one for a moment. Isn’t this amazing? Children neither take pleasure from their school experience nor are they aren’t learning either. Reminds me of what that extremely bright diligent serious homeschooled high schooler told me about her 7th grade experience, before her parents pulled her out: “I never worked so hard, to produce so much, to learn so little.”
Homework is volume volume volume. If a child isn’t sweating over a worksheet or grimacing through a reading response assignment, conventional wisdom goes, he’s not learning anything. We value worksheets and logs and interactive notebooks and endless test and as long as it’s work work work we assume the child is assimiliating it.
I am sure many traditionalists would disparage our family walks in the frozen woods, where we seriously (and joyfully) analyzed literary works. But think about it. Think how much learning got done. I am not asking the teacher to take the kids on walks for two hours. I am asking the teacher to get as much done at school so that I may do so.
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Corrections:
1. Children neither take pleasure from their school experience nor are they aren’t learning either.
Take out AREN’T.
2. TESTS not test
See if you can stump me and catch more. Don’t blame me. I was an “involved” parent last night. I stayed up late with my daughter while she cranked out a writing assignment at 1am and then it was hard to settle down and fall asleep.
What would happen if she had a few less essays per year? A few less reports so she could get all the sleep her body needs? Will she truly become a better writer if she crams? If good writing is all about inspiration and passion, what if we kill that? And all that’s left are the mechanics. There’s so much information out there today, so much writing, so much of it mediocre. Is this what we are trying to breed?
Exhibit A here. We value VOLUME. More work, more essays, more write ups, more swaths of textbook readings gulped down at 2am. We don’t ask the critical questions. Will we lose more than we gain? Our children are earnest. They don’t want to come to school with homework undone. It is our responsibility, all of ours, teachers, administrators and parents, to see to it that just because our children will do the impossible, it does not give us the right to demand the impossible.
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Hey, FedUpMom, kudos to you. Not only does this come up on a Google hit, this post will make it comment #166! Must have hit a nerve. In both directions.
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“Research even shows that when students write about what they read they improve their comprehension.”
You know what really improves reading comprehension? Reading! In the time it takes a small child to fill out one of those busy logs, she could be reading another book.
You know what? Back when my daughter had to do them, in first grade, she didn’t really mind. Which is funny because a good two years later, she came to dread homework. Psych Mom, be careful. Don’t fall for that, it’s a difficult year, support your child. They’re eight. Much too young to turn them off.
And even with uneventful reading logs, I remember thinking, what a waste of time. So while this particular assignment wasn’t as onerous as some others to come, I still support FedUpMom on this completely. And if I only knew then what I know now, you can bet I wouldn’t have signed the damn reading log either.
The logs stopped in 3rd grade, I think. But 5th brought weekly dippy assignments on inane questions, designed more to crush the soul than to inspire reading. My daughter is still a voracious reader. Not because of those “comprehension” assignments, but in spite of it.
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I think I have to change my name to “Quandry”.
The first rule I’ve made up for us at our house is…it’s not called homework at home. It’s schoolwork. Home-work is cleaning your room, helping set the table, helping with the groceries and cleaning up the flood in the bathroom after you’ve played in there for half an hour. It’s a brand new school year for my daughter and she’s keen, but not in a good way. In an obsessive compulsive, “it’s Monday and this has to be done by Thursday-oh-no” way. “I’ve only written half a page and I have to write a page and a half and I don’t know what to write-oh-no”. Sounds like a volume requirement. I’m not impressed.
But I guess what is throwing me off, is the shrugging shoulders and “mmmmm, I know”, that is coming from other parents. “But you know, it gets better….now we hardly have a problem at all with Ashley doing her homework. She just knows she has to do it and it gets done.”
All I can visualize is a yoke around a little girl’s neck as yet another spirit bites the dust.
BUT, and I’m asking you all out there, how will my child maintain her spirit if I try to keep her “8” as the other bazillion girls in the class submit and get “serious” and succumb to the pressure. She very much wants to be a part of the homework crowd…..it’s the in crowd.
Just sign me Quandry
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PsychMom writes “The first rule I’ve made up for us at our house is…it’s not called homework at home. It’s schoolwork.”
Exactly! This is what I wrote as I recounted our glorious homeschool year. I banished that word. It was too loaded. Besides, there was no delineation between schoolwork and homework. She didn’t spend all day on schoolwork and then do homework! A preposterous idea for schooled kids and even worse for home ones. She took three on line classes and I called the assignments, well, assignments!
I hear you about third grade and the other parents and how all the perfect girls do every drop of homework with a smile and without protest. At third grade Back to School Night, one of my daughter’s teachers queried, “does anyone have trouble with the homework?” Kudos for asking. But not one parental hand shot up. I sat there, not sure what to do. We were into the third week of school and it was already oppressive.
I thought it only took my daughter three hours to get it done. Now, this was private school and at least they listened. I will tell you though, PsychMom, despite the fact that I could meet with the director, I still wish we’d homeschooled instead. Go to a homeschool Park Day and watch how much fun the eight year olds are having. And pay careful attention to this line: When asked why I was homeschooling my thirteen year old, I would say, “I can’t bring back eight. But I can salvage thirteen.”
Just think, PsychMom, you are in better shoes. You can still salvage eight and you don’t have to wait five years, filled with regret. She’s eight and you are keenly aware of it. Whatever you do, and I didn’t have this blog for support then, resist the pressure and keep your little girl eight. She is not a little adult and you fervently know it!
Back to that third grade year, and yes, I know, it’s a day at the beach compared to what we wrestle with now. As said, I thought it only took my daughter three hours to get her homework done. Perfectionist, very creative, very smart, distractable, procrastinator. Then I privately ask around and find out many other kids, especially girls, are in the same boat! Most likely not a single parent wanted to raise his or her hand and call attention to the problem. Peer pressure. Gotta keep up that perfect front. .
What to do? That’s an involved question. I have to run now, it’s 8:10 and I should be doing getting-her-off-to-school duties. I hope others quickly chime in during my absence from now till next week.
The first advice I will give you is, RESIST PARENTAL PRESSURE. This in fact is the best advice you will get from me and it will carry you through 12th grade. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make a friend in that grade. But choose carefully, find an ally and avoid the hyper-competitive Stepford Wives. They’ll just make you feel bad. It’s how I learned to survive.
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Thanks HWB. My gut tells me I’m on the right track…oh I hope the teacher asks the same question 2 weeks from now when we have curriculum night.
I welcome the challenge.
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PsychMom, now Quandary, if the teacher asks, stick up your arm straight up. Announce that why yes, we are! You can be respectful, I know you like the school for its other attributes. If you are daring, you can be armed with research. You know, Harris Cooper says no homework in elementary, or, ten minutes per grade. I like the outspoken approach and I think you can pull it off with aplomb. If you can’t, raise your hand anyway and then tell the teacher privately you have concerns and schedule a meeting soon.By raising your hand, you are telegraphing to the silent resister that there is support.
Many here suggest the diplomatic approach, lots of meetings. But after years of research (even Jay Mathews of the Washington Post, who calls himself Mr. Homework and loves “rigor” and NCLB came around on the elementary homework issue three years ago), why is this taking so long? I’d hate for a parent to have to spend her entire year advocating and defending, only to have the school system stall and at best, arrange more meetings. But it’s a start and if change does eventually take place, you are paving the way for a better life to those children right behind you.
In the past, when we parents brought up the minutes rule, it tended to invite rebuttal. The school may very well say, but it’s not SUPPOSED to take three hours. Or two. We only assign thirty minutes. It’s taking your child longer because, take your pick:
1. She has poor time management skills (a school favorite)
2. She procrastinates (yea, no kidding)
3. You didn’t follow our tips sheet (condescending. Assumes parents are idiots)
There’s another problem with minutes we haven’t quite addressed. Last week I spoke of minute misconceptions. When a teacher assigns little Jackie a thirty minute spelling assignment and she does it in thirty minutes, teacher assumes this is how it works at home. But home is not school and children behave differently. Also, it’s the end of their day and children cannot be expected to sit still for yet one more hour. The homework you think takes one hour (way too long for six year olds) has now dragged out to an all night affair because little Johnny cannot sit still any longer. Think of all the wasted time cajoling him when he could be playing outdoors and reading.
Okay, so we’re getting to something. Schools need to know what schoolwork looks like when it’s been neatly transferred to the home. Should there be doubts, many of you will gladly open your homes for a visitation.
But there’s another angle. We assume the child got distracted and couldn’t stay focused. But what if the reverse happens, which it frequently does. Say your child loves to learn (it happens) and is asked to write a report on some history project (yep, that happens too. My eight year old was asked to do a six-part project, assigned the second week of third grade and due a month later, I thought I was going to die and that was the start of Project Hell. Hey, guess who time managed that first one?).
Your daughter is intrigued by the topic and becomes engrossed. She reads everything on the subject she can get her hands on and then when it’s time to do the project, she has a thousand ideas and colors and shapes. School wants homework to be like school. I say school is where kids have to keep to a clock (I don’t like it which is why I would homeschool but it is school and school needs some semblance of structure and order). But home is where our children should be allowed to linger with their learning, savoring their discoveries.
So there is your child, captivated (this seems to happen less and less in today’s draconian environment but my daughter was in private where she tells me each day the work was more interesting) by her spelling story. She wants to write eight pages. But if she does, the math won’t get done and the teacher, rather than recognizing one gift, chastises the lack of another. There is a famous quote and I’ll get in trouble for saying this, but hey, shoot the quoter, not me, I’m only the messenger: “There are some teachers who will seek out creativity in a child and then go about doing everything they can to destroy it.”
So now your child is engrossed. The only way homework can take thirty minutes is if you stand there with a whip and stopwatch. It takes away any incidental learning the child would stumble upon on his own because for the entire time he is working, everything is prescribed. What he should do, when he should do it and long he should do it. No wonder the kid’s hiding under the table or locking himself in the bathroom. He’s trying to tell us something, if only we’d stop calling him long enough to listen. He is saying, I was engrossed, I was in flow, I enjoyed it, I wasn’t allowed to, so I’m giving up. I have decided that under the current conditions, I will get nothing out of it so why bother?
This especially happens with gifted kids, the higher the more resistance. Many teachers conclude these children are lazy and misinterpret their restlessness for insolence. They are in fact screaming a message but we are shouting so loud ourselves, we can’t hear them.
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The school tends to stick to the 10 minutes per grade rule and lives by the concept that young children need to be trained to do homework. We give it to them in Grade 3 because they’ll have alot more of it to do in middle school and if we don’t start them now then they’ll NEVER be able to do it in Middle school….kind of idea. Homework is good for children, they believe. It’s a necessary evil, like cod liver oil.
I can’t abide by the 10 minute per grade rule because it’s not based on anything. I work in health care, and the current big thing is hand washing….we all need lessons in hand washing. They have done studies to determine the minimal amount of time it takes to clean your hands well….it’s about 40 to 60 seconds. Not 30, not 2 minutes…if you want to be a generalist, you say it takes about a minute. But the same “rigor” (love that word) is not applied to this 10 minutes per grade rule. It’s a stab in the dark. It sounds catchy.
So without even considering the individual differences offered by the children, 10 minutes per grade is a crock.
And there’s one other thing I’ve noticed. These girls who love following the rules and being orderly, are only getting these obsessive habits more deeply ingrained by having these deadlines and criteria applied to their work. They’re already learning to fill the page rather than follow their minds. And that’s the stuff I object to.
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Ah yes, the completely self-referential loop. My favorite.
“The purpose of going to school is to learn how to go to school so you can get into a really good school.”
“The purpose of homework is to learn how to do homework. We need a whole lot of homework this year because there’ll be a whole lot more homework next year!”
“The purpose of taking tests is to learn how to take tests so you can do well on tests.”
Wince and repeat.
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Wince and Repeat.
Cute, FUM! It does seem as if we are in endless circles. I can imagine how incredibly frustrating hearing that mantra is when we’ve digested it so thoroughly on this blog.
It’s frustrating, maddening and ill informed. I would start a meeting diplomatically relating that you have reached this conclusion after reading, researching and discussing homework with seasoned veterans. Dispel the notion that over-preparation leads one to be prepared for more preparation. You can head it off at the pass. It would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad that so many educators roll out that line. Do they actually believe it or do they think it’s a show stopper?
It’s insulting to hear it. It’s bad enough if you are a newbie, green, innocent, where you know something is wrong but the powers that be convince your instincts are all wrong. It’s another when you already know that preparation mania doesn’t work and is unnecessary if not downright harmful.
Wince and Repeat indeed!
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I get the best lines from you guys….Wince and repeat…that’s genius.
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Isn’t it, indeed!
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I should clarify — I can’t take credit for “wince and repeat”. I read it in a comment on the kitchen table math blog.
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I read that blog too! We do circle in the same orbit, don’t we? No, don’t say it, don’t give it away!
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Mugs….I think we should start selling mugs and teeshirts.
What’s an obvious icon for homework that we could put a circle around and then a line through?
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1. Kid carrying giant backpack, huge oversized backpack, hunched over from the weight, sleepwalking.
2. Kid’s head down on a pile of textbooks and notebooks, Pile should be sky high. To get the point across.
We had a moment of levity at LL Bean. In their back to school backpack section, they feature an ENORMOUS backpack. And I mean ENORMOUS. The kids loved it. Anyone seen it?
My daughter walked over and slid into the straps. It’s too big to hoist so she was forced to sit down. (Another g ood image, backpack so heavy, she can no longer carry it). She said, goodnaturedly, I go to ______________ school, I need a backpack this size.
We couldn’t stop laughing. I took pictures but I only had my cell phone. We need to submit this one for the school newspaper, it was priceless!
Of course, it’s no laughing matter. But that day, with her, before school started, I thought laughter might carry the day a little better than tears. After all, if not for the backpack that is so heavy, she can’t ride the bus and walk home from the sheer weight, and the ten ton textbooks and homework that ends at…when does it end? My cajoling that she MUST stop starts at eleven, and endless exams and quizzes, it’s not a bad school. That’s like saying…
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There are a couple of issues here that I’d like to bring up. I currently teach at a low-income, urban high school in Chicago. Most of my 9th grade students read well below grade level. To make the statement that this reading log assignment is bad, is a drastic generalization. It may be a “chore” for middle class to upper class school children. Parents of these children are readers and have books all over the house. The fact that this parent even wrote an email to the school illustrates a lot. However, a reading log at my would ensure that my students are reading outside of school. My kids come from households where reading is often not modeled by adults in their lives. Lets be real here; what applies to predominantly white, middle-class schools does not always apply to low-income, urban schools.
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Brian asserts; “It may be a “chore” for middle class to upper class school children. Parents of these children are readers and have books all over the house. ”
Which begs the question. Then why assign them to middle class families with books all over the house? FedUpMom has already said, over and over, that her daughter is in a private school comprised of middle and professional class families.
FedUp, you don’t mind, do you? After all, I’m not giving away any confidences. You made this point the last time.
We are going in circles. Every time we decry homework, along comes someone to tell us we need it because lower income children don’t read at home.
Brian, I admire what you do, and you have made it clear middle class families with involved parents and books should not have to waste time providing evidence of their reading. Kudos to you! But over and over, along comes someone to tell us we need homework because some other kid doesn’t read.
If Johnny won’t read, that means my kid isn’t allowed to either (homework prevents my daughter from reading, I’m not kidding)? If Suzy doesn’t play outside, that means my daughter can’t either (one teacher wrote that not all parents take their kids to the park and the kid would just be sitting home, planted in front of the tv so better give homework)? If Jimmy doesn’t get taken to museums (same argument made. Not all parents are going to take their kids someplace educational so we need to send home homework), therefore I’m not allowed to take my daughter to the science museum either?
Suppose you and I are in the same room. You’ve been lost at sea and by the time they find you, you are near starvation. I am overweight. They need to fatten you up. Do they need to fatten me up too?
Let’s give kids what they need. And let’s stop justifying onerous homework on the grounds that most parents are idiots and wouldn’t know to read to their kid unless the government asked for evidence.
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HW Blues:
Completely agree with you. For the most part, middle class/upper class students are reading outside of class; this is a given. With such students, critical thinking should be the focus of homework (if hw is to be given at all). Assignments where students are creating and not just reproducing.
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Important to add that mandatory reading assignments with intrusive monitoring doesn’t make sense for children of any social class. Kids from lower income families may need more support, but let’s be careful not to assume that disrespectful and counterproductive practices, including giving kids no say about what they’re doing and imposing the school’s agenda on parents, is no more appropriate for poor kids than for rich kids.
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If she’s so ‘fed up’, what’s her solution?
Parents who complain, and offer no alternative, make me tired.
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To Miss Incognegro:
What exactly is the problem to which she, as a parent, is obligated to offer a solution? (Other than “stop sending home reading logs and turning reading into a chore for my child”)
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I am a fifth grade reading teacher and a mother of three boys (all of whom are voracious readers). I was guilty of assigning reading logs (and I varied the log each year, trying to “tweak” it until it worked…which it never did). This year, I decided to take a hard look at this practice. And what did I decide? I decided to throw it out.
My oldest son was in fifth grade last year, and read 2-3 books a week. However, he never wrote down the time he started to read, the time he finished and the pages he read. That meant that the night before the (major grade) reading log was due, he was hurriedly writing down every book, date and page number he could remember. Unfortunately, that meant precious little was remembered! The log turned out to be a big, fat, fabrication. This was my a-ha.
I then began to think about how I, also a huge reader, behave when I read. Do I complete a log? No! I just begin reading. If I am to model to my students what living a readerly life is all about, if I want them to feel the same delicious feeling I enjoy when I curl up with a good book, then requiring them to keep an eye on the clock and the pages does not fit into that equation.
My students were DELIGHTED when I shared with them my thinking this year. Does that mean that I just ask them to read at home? Yes and no. When they come back to school after a night of reading, I check in with them. I ask them to share the page number that they are currently on. I call this “status of the class.” In five minutes, I can tell who was really busy last night, who read a ton (and there are a lot of them), and who has been repeatedly NOT reading by picking up on the trend. The record keeping is put on ME, the professional. The traditional reading log places the duty on the reader/parent. I use the status to then guide my instruction and conferencing throughout the week. It is also a great tool to show parents when conferencing time rolls around.
In addition to this, my children are required to keep a reader’s notebook. In it, there are sections: Identity of a reader, books on deck (books they are planning to read-they get ideas through my booktalks, booktalks from their peers, parents, librarian…), reading list, letters, thoughts about my reading, and book club sections. In the reading list portion, the kids write down the title of any book they begin, then the date, genre, and date finished with a rating between 1-10 after they read. By the end of each six weeks, they tally how many books they read (and they complete any work in their notebooks in class—it is a teacher driven tool), and they should have around 5-6 books logged.
Reading should be authentic. Any documentation of the reading should be solely on the teacher’s shoulders. Anything else is a farce!
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To Morty:
My mother rarely complained about teachers. When she did, she at least had a helpful suggestion for the teacher.
I guess my mother is part of a generation of parents which no longer exists.
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To Miss Incognegro: your mother was likely part of the generation which was expected to stay out of their kids’ homework. Back then, schools didn’t assign homework until the child was old enough to handle it on her own, and they didn’t routinely send home work for the parents to do. I’d bet money that no teacher told your mother to sign your homework every night. Right?
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In response to the comment “parents who offer no alternative (to homework)………make me tired”
I think the alternative to homework has been very well articulated. Leave kids alone and let them be kids. Homework has become such an accepted way of life, people don’t even think about it anymore, and wonder why many of today’s kids are disengaged from their schooling, their families, and even from themselves to a large extent. Going to school and learning is a child’s job but that does not mean that coming home with two hours of homework every night is also a part of their job.
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So homework is the root of all evil huh? Homework is why students are consistently failing in America. Homework is why America’s educational system is falling behind other countries, behind China, Japan, India, Europe….yes, it must be those darn reading logs. Because God Forbid that countries like China and Japan, who are producing their top scientists and engineers, will think of the audacity to monitor their child’s reading progress and work accountability. I think parents just needs to stop being so lazy and sit down with their “busy” middle/high class lives and talk with their kids about their readings for a few minutes–meanwhile take about 15 seconds to sign their reading logs. Is this website for real?
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Really, oh, boy am I glad you are not my daughter’s teacher. I dare say you come off pretty uneducated yourself. You clearly didn’t do your homework. Take the time to read this blog, it’s origin, why people joined, what the issues are, and ways in which we can resolve them. Smart involved parents are discovering one way is resistance.
You come off ill-informed and rigid.Shudder.
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Are any of you considering voting out the politicians who have created and perpetuated this testing frenzy?
Teachers have no choice about following directives from administrators, who in turn are following directives from state boards, etc., on through the chain of folks who created and enforce these problems?
Vote these people out, tell them you have had it with standardized testing, state standards (that ought to be called dictates), with making testing companies rich, with textbook publishers spinning out revised versions of junk, etc.
You have the power to change the system. Teachers do not have the power. Maybe if we stopped allowing outsiders to dictate to talented teachers how to do the job they are so passionate about, they might just surprise you.
And quit daydreaming that if we leave children alone, they are intrinsically motivated to learn. Intrinsically motivated to play, to watch TV, to avoid anything hard, etc.–yes. Are some, a few, intrinsically motivated? Yes. On the whole, students don’t do assignments, don’t show up prepared to discuss topics they have not prepared to discuss, don’t want to write down anything, like to whine and complain, and pass the buck and play the blame game. (And my students were largely middle class, not living in poverty, with lots of advantages.)
I am a passionate teacher who hates homework for no purpose, but some subjects require a little more than can be accomplished in 45 minutes. I hated staying up until 2 a.m. doing homework at our house–a lot of it needless, time-consuming and not instructional. But let’s get real. Both sides of this argument have some merit.
Daydream about ideal teachers and ideal children. Meanwhile, teachers get to work with the real ones who show up every day. And a great many of us love them, love the job, and want to do it well. And most of us have our hands tied at every turn. Given fewer criticisms and fewer lists of things we must do from outside the field, we might be able to simplify the process for everyone. The more pressures we get, more rules, more reactions, more policies, and more ridiculous responses are created.
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@ FedUp @PsychMom,
FYI:
My mother was *very* involved in my education, despite the fact that Black parents are widely believed to be disconnected and disinterested in their children’s education. So, when teachers were acting like a-holes, she stepped up immediately, and let them know. But, this was rare.
Additionally, my mother is also a Depression-era, Jim Crow-era, Civil Rights-era lady. She knows and understands full well the importance of education and learning.
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Miss Incognegro — I’m sure your mother was very involved. I’m not criticizing your mother at all. And I would guess that most Blacks in the middle class today got there because of their parents’ interest in education.
I’m saying that in today’s school system, we start homework with kids at such a young age that it really becomes the mother’s problem. Then the school tries to enforce “Parent Involvement” in a completely patronizing way.
When you were in school, homework probably didn’t start until you were old enough that you could do it yourself without constant management. Right? So your mother could take a different role in your education, instead of becoming “homework cop” when you were 5.
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Charlotte says:
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On the whole, students don’t do assignments, don’t show up prepared to discuss topics they have not prepared to discuss, don’t want to write down anything, like to whine and complain, and pass the buck and play the blame game. (And my students were largely middle class, not living in poverty, with lots of advantages.)
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Charlotte — how do you think your students got this way? Kids are born wanting to learn. How did these kids get so completely turned off to school? My theory is that they get turned off by years of pointless busywork. What’s your theory?
When I read paragraphs like the one above, and then you protest that you “love the kids!”, I’m skeptical.
And it would be easier to vote out the guilty politicians if I knew of anyone who was running on a platform of true school reform.
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Let the bashing begin. I am a Public School Teacher.
Now, put down that rotten tomato and listen. I do the best I can with the resources I get. Yes, your taxes pay my wages, but you did not pay for 7 years of University, make up for lost wages for the years I worked on-call (Substitute/Supply teaching), and you have not walked a mile in my Birkenstocks.
For the record: I have taught all grades from 1 to 9, the most of my years at grade 4/5/6, I am currently at Middle School. I stopped doing spelling tests years ago. I never did reading logs, and I never participated in the “read 10 books, get a coupon for a pizza” program, and I rarely give homework.
I read aloud to my students (still, even in Middle School) and I talk about books and authors and literature elements and the fun and joy of reading a good book.
But I also get told what I will do in my class, despite any understanding I have about professional autonomy. The Ministry tells us what to do, the district tells us what to do, Parents come in and expect us to do all sorts of other magic. The Ministry of Education is run by politicians, not educators. Teachers have no voice at the administrative level. We don’t think parents are idiots (well, collectively) but guess what? My colleagues are some of the best educated, most traveled, diverse people on the planet– I assure you we are not idiots, either (by and large)
Blame the bureaucrats who insist on collecting meaningless data, rather than offering support and resources. We are just doing our best
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Lisa Read — we’re not in the business of “bashing” here.
I have a question for you — what country are you in?
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