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 
Bryce and Maria: Perhaps you could get a petition going in your schools about homework or reading logs, and present it to your teachers and/or Principal. It might be helpful to get your parents on board. I don’t think you should feel totally powerless to change things in your schools.
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As a Mom and as a Reading Teacher, I see both sides of this debate.
As a teacher, though, in an alternative school for students expelled from school for a variety of behavioral issues, mostly drugs and alcohol, the majority of my students don’t read inside of school or outside. In fact, many have never read an entire book, except picture books in lower elementary. Many have not read a book since 4th or 5th grade and are now in high school. I see them for 45 minutes a day and am required to show “progress” with every student as measured by our state assessment. I am frustrated because I get no parental support but yet I am trying to inspire kids to read, to expand their reading skills, to build critical thinking skills, etc. I use reading logs or journals to help students to be repsonsible for spending a part of their day reading (something they have chosen), to have something to guide my questions for informal assessment on their personal reading, and to help the students to actually connect with the text that they have chosen to read, otherwise, they read the words but make no personal connections. Some of these kids have little skill in choosing texts, completing texts, managing their time to include reading, or even seeing the relevance of having solid reading skills in their everyday lives outside of school. It gives both me and the student great joy and pride when at the end of the year they can say, “I LOVED that book!” or “Hey, I read four books this year! First time ever!”
If this (reading logs) is so wrong and unproductive, could someone please give me some alternatives to accomplish some of these objectives?? (Not said sarcastically but sincerely seeking balance)
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Shelbylee, I hear you that you are in a tough predicament. And this is not to sound elitist at all because, well, we don’t have much money. But my child reads. Reads voraciously, voluminously. When I homeschooled on a shoestring budget, we practically lived at the library.
So I ask you, why does my child need reading logs? They were assigned in her private elementary school and those kids were not the ones you describe. FedUpMom, who wrote this post, also has her daughter in a private school. Therefore, the rationale for assigning reading logs to this population does not hold any water. And I seriously doubt that any kid will read more because he’s been made to do a reading log. As Sara Bennett writes in her book, in the time it takes a child (often with her parents) to fill out those darn logs, she could have been reading another book.
I’ll let you in on a secret. My daughter didn’t mind them too much. They weren’t as bad as painstakingly copying definitions out of the dictionary. I still didn’t see the point. A waste of time. And given her homework load, one more useless assignment.
Shelbylee, I have to run. You asked in full sincerity so I’ll think of something. I am sure Sara will chime in and give you some advice. Thanks for being a caring teacher and for asking important questions.
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I am frustrated because I get no parental support
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You’re teaching high school! How much parental support do you need?
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I use reading logs or journals to help students to be repsonsible
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If you asked your students why they fill out reading logs, do you think any of them would reply, “it helps us be responsible”?
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they read the words but make no personal connections.
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I don’t know who started this “personal connections” deal, but I think it’s crazy. People should be allowed to immerse themselves in reading and experience it naturally, without watching themselves do it and trying to force connections on it that might not even exist. A book is a different world; that’s why I like reading.
I’m reading a book about the search for the Northwest Passage (off topic, I recommend it: “The Man Who Ate His Boots”) and I don’t stop every few pages and try to relate it to my own life, which would be difficult. I don’t say to myself, “gee, they’re starving to death and trying to subsist on lichen they scraped off of a rock while wandering hopelessly in a hostile frozen wasteland. That reminds me of the time when I … uh … ” (what, exactly?)
I just read and experience. Can’t we allow our kids to do the same?
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If this (reading logs) is so wrong and unproductive, could someone please give me some alternatives to accomplish some of these objectives??
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Have you tried asking the students? They’re almost adults. Tell them the goal is that you want all of them to read and enjoy reading. Ask them, how can you help to accomplish this goal? Tell them you will honestly consider reasonable suggestions. They might surprise you.
Oh, and ask them whether they find reading logs helpful.
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Here’s a message from the Pro Teachers Forum:
http://www.proteacher.org/a/113002_I_let_the_reading_log_go.html
I let the reading log go
By maryteach
I quit doing them. I did an anonymous survey with my kids at the end of the year and asked how many TRULY did the reading for their reading log. 40% confessed to lying about it! 40%!!!!!!!!! A lot of parents will sign the log, even if they know it’s a lie, so their child doesn’t lose the grade. Why should a lying kid with lying parents get the same grade that the honest, hardworking student with honest parents gets?
Also–beginning this year–we are not allowed to flunk any child over not doing homework. Reading logs were the only homework I gave them. We do everything else in class. I was making the log worth a whole lot of points so if it didn’t get turned in, it hurt a lot….but what was really happening was that the same kids were reading, the same kids were not. Some kids who I think were actually doing the reading could not, for the life of them, remember to turn in that log every three weeks. So some kids who were really reading were being knocked down to half credit (ouch!) for a late log, while some of the little liars were remembering to get their lie turned in on time, so they got the A.
And in the end–the kids who are going to read independently will, and the ones who don’t want to, won’t. I don’t think requiring reading logs had the outcome I had intended at all. You can require reading logs till you’re blue, and the students who don’t want to read, aren’t going to. So I’m done with them. I’m done reminding them over and over that it’s due in one week, six days, five days, etc. And I am tired of kids who still don’t get it in on time even AFTER all the reminders. I am tired of beating my head against the reading log wall. I was one of the only two holdouts in our English department, and this year, I’m not doing them.
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A good place to begin might be for teachers who use reading logs to consider what the true goal of the log is.
It is sad that there are students who appear not to have time or to make time to read at home, but how much control can a teacher really exert here? What makes it a teacher’s responsibility to “assess” personal reading, done on a student’s own time?
If the goal is to nurture a lifelong love and appreciation of reading, might I suggest with all due respect that teachers need to turn away from mandating reading logs and quizzes and think creatively about how to support students in their own processes of discovering the value of reading, in whatever form it takes. This is what the Book Whisperer book and blog are about (link is on Stop Homework home page). Teachers also can speak up in support of the crucial role libraries and credentialed librarians play in creating a culture of readers in their communities.
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So some kids who were really reading were being knocked down to half credit (ouch!) for a late log, while some of the little liars were remembering to get their lie turned in on time, so they got the A.
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My daughter, on her own, was reading Wuthering Heights, Shakespeare, NY Times and Scientific American in 5th grade, just to name a few. She forgot to turn in her reading logs and got an F in reading. School called me, telling me she was going to be pulled out for remedial reading. I had a fit, ran in there, and told them, don’t you DARE! It was one of those times I forgot to be meek and let them have it.
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HWB, I was reminded of you when I looked at Jay Mathews’ column this morning.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/class-struggle/2010/05/child_resisting_school_try_a_s.html#comments
Someone home-schooled their kid for a year and wrote a book about it. It sounds a lot like your story.
Warning: the comments are disheartening.
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FedUp, I read it too. In fact, the woman who wrote the book interviewed me for my sabbatical after DD had returned to school. I will tell you that I coined the term sabbatical in this usage. Laura Brody contacted our state wide homeschooling organization, looking for people who’d done what she called “short term homeschooling.” They put Laura in touch with me. We talked for a while and she sent me a list of questions to answer. I referred to it as our “sabbatical” and Laura loved that term. I like what she writes, she had a wonderful piece in the Post’s Outlook some months ago, but shouldn’t she credit me for that usage? :(.
I really enjoyed working with Laura on that article. I’m itching to read the comments today but I’d better wait. I have some deadlines today for a change (one after the other, all revolving around graduation, scholarships, college) and I must not get derailed!
One quick thought, though. Jay Mathews presents a “sabbatical” when all else has failed and you need a time out, what he calls emergency schooling. In our case, my daughter attended what is arguably considered the “best” middle school in the county. I’m told parents fall all over each other to get into that GT Center.
We left because homeschooling was heavenly while school was merely so so. And that’s on a good day. Not because she couldn’t hack it or we ran screaming but because what I could do, what we could do was head and shoulders over anything school had to offer. And that’s putting it diplomatically. The school we should have turned our backs on the second I laid eyes on that grim sour controlling 5th grade teacher even before day one was the two years of public school elementary.
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HWB- I am always struck by the same qualities you describe in public elementary school teachers. Volunteering always left me sad and depressed. It’s as if they want to make everyone as miserable as they are.
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Just being in the classroom left me sad and depressed too. Why are these places of learning not places of joy?
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Here’s an essay about “literacy kudzu”: love the term!
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/guest-bloggers/literacy-kudzu.html#more
I feel that the main effect of all this promotion of reading skills is a generation of kids who despise reading.
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Research shows that young students that read at home will show more improvement in every other academic area than those students that do not. As a 1st grade teacher, I have taught years where I didn’t require a reading log and years when I did. I have noticed that when I let the Reading Log be more of a weekly “when I get the chance” assignment rather than a “You better do this every single night or you’ll miss recess” assignment that parents seemed to be more receptive. From a teacher’s point of view the last thing we want is for students to hate reading..especially in 1st grade when they’re just now starting to learn how to read! But, the standards set for students these days are so high that if we didn’t expect parents to help out at home most students would never meet the ridiculously high standards that are set for them. Reading logs aren’t meant to be a burden or a homework assignment for parents. Asking parents to sign a reading log isn’t a sign that teachers think parents wouldln’t read with their child if they weren’t being asked to. If you’re reading with your child at home anyway, what’s wrong with signing a piece of paper saying you did so? I love my students and I love having positive and open relationships with my parents and I would hope if any parent had a problem with homework that I sent home with their child or a better suggestion on how I could improve their child’s reading level or other academic areas without sending home homework that they would share it with me and not bad mouth my strategies for improving their child’s education on the internet or with other parents. I think if parents understood the amount of pressure put on teachers they would understand the reasoning behind a lot of things that we do. Yes, we get paid to be teachers and we are given about 5 and 1/2 hrs a day to teach children, but if we were “just teaching” that would be great..but we are doing mandated testing, paperwork, working with students with special needs, helping students below grade level in interventions, and trying to control 25+ kids. Parents expect us to teach students to be responsible, polite, honest, etc. I don’t think it’s too much to ask for a little help from them as well.
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Research shows that young students that read at home will show more improvement in every other academic area than those students that do not.
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Okay, I believe you. That’s why I am adamantly opposed to reading logs and anything else that causes my kids to hate reading.
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“You better do this every single night or you’ll miss recess”
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Why does anyone think this is OK for 1st grade? You teach very young children. They can’t reliably remember to do something every single night. You’ll hold many out of recess for nothing more than being normal 6-year-old kids. Terrific. You’ve not only made them hate reading, now they hate school. Plus they’ll come home and start bouncing off the walls because they didn’t get a break during the day.
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parents seemed to be more receptive
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Parents will be certain to sign the log, whether the child did any reading that night or not, because they don’t want their kid to miss recess. That doesn’t mean parents are “receptive” to the reading log or that the log is accomplishing anything useful in the child’s life.
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most students would never meet the ridiculously high standards that are set for them.
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If you think the standards are ridiculously high, why do you spend your time enforcing them?
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I love my students
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Well, that’s what you tell yourself. But if you really loved your students you wouldn’t hold them out of recess because their parents neglected to sign a reading log.
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I don’t think it’s too much to ask for a little help from them as well.
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When you send home a mandatory reading log with mandatory parent signature, you’re not “asking for help”, you’re demanding compliance. No, it’s not the same thing.
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but we are doing mandated testing, paperwork, working with students with special needs, helping students below grade level in interventions, and trying to control 25+ kids.
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Teachers say they work hard, and I believe them. My question is, how much of that work is actually worth doing, and how much is just a waste of time and effort?
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“Research shows that young students that read at home will show more improvement in every other academic area than those students that do not.”
But that’s our entire point! We aren’t arguing against READING, we’re arguing against reading logs!
I sound like a broken record here but my daughter was reading The New York Times at age eight (while sucking her thumb. You know, those asynchronies) and grabbing Wuthering Heights off my bookshelf and reading it in its entirety at age ten. What does she need reading logs for?
I know too many kids who despise reading and attack it like a chore, to be dispensed with quickly so they can move on to what’s really important, television. Reading logs, Accelerated Reader, DIBELS have all produced a generation of kids who by and large, do not get lost in their reading. I know many top students going to highly selective colleges who have dutifully read throughout K-12 but just don’t seem to love it. These are your cream of the crop. And even they’ve been damaged by our grade school system.
“that they would share it with me and not bad mouth my strategies for improving their child’s education on the internet or with other parents.”
We aren’t bad mouthing you. We are a group of intelligent smart parents who came here out of alarm. Your strategies by and large don’t work and we’ve spent considerable time proving that on this post.
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Referring to the Anonymous teacher’s posting….can anyone tell me of another profession that serves the public that actually demands that the recipients of their service do part of their job for them? Yes, many public services have automated their services so that we access their services in more of a self serve manner. Mainly those are cost cutting measures. But to actually say to the public, “I can’t do my job in my normal work day so you have to pick up the slack”.
Except it’s disguised as “parental involvement that enhances student learning”. I worry about my mounting debt too as I pay for private school, but when I read things like that posting, I worry more about public school and its effects on families.
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PsychMom, yea, that letter took a lot of chutzpah. The teacher said in essence, I waste my day doing useless tasks that I am forced to do. Therefore, you must pick up my slack and “help” me.
Except it isn’t even just “helping.” So many of us found we were doing all the work, essentially homeschooling our children from 4 to midnight.
Given the stack of useless work this teacher moaned about, why would she (I think it’s a she) demand reading logs? Isn’t that just more useless paperwork, more time wasted? As FedUp wrote, garbage in, garbage out.
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“Parents expect us to teach students to be responsible, polite, honest, etc. I don’t think it’s too much to ask for a little help from them as well.”
No, I don’t ask you to do that. That’s MY job. I ask you to teach. That’s your job.
Yes, you can “help” me by reinforcing values we instill at home. In turn, I will “help” you by raising my daughter in an intellectual environment where learning is revered, where she trips over books because I litter the house with them.. That kind of partnership can live with. But that’s not what we have now.
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Maybe all of you complainers should try teaching a modern-day class before you sit here and blame us teachers. You read a couple of books and now you think you’re all experts about homework. You complain about the many teachers you have had problems with in the past. You say you have had such bad experiences in both public and private schools. You say you have hardly met any good teachers around. Maybe the schools and teachers aren’t the problem…maybe you are the problem. Did you ever think about that? I am very glad that your children love to read for hours and hours. As a teacher, I think that’s great, but I also want to say, “SO WHAT?!?” There are kids out there who read just as well and as much as your kids, and their parents aren’t on this web site declaring their hatred for homework, for schools, for teachers. One of you had a story about how your child read instead of doing another assignment and she got in trouble for reading. That is ridiculous. Your child did not get in trouble for reading. She got in trouble for not being responsible enough to do assigned work. Why couldn’t she do the assigned work (which should take hardly any time because she is so smart), then go back to reading some more? Stop making lame excuses for your kid. If you got pulled over for speeding and the cop says your license expired the day prior and you had to pay the consequences, would you tell him that you should be let off because you were too busy reading to renew it? Loving books, and being able to read, and enjoying the pleasures of reading are not passes to dismiss life’s everyday tasks. Just because a student reads above grade level does not make it acceptable for him/her to ignore other required assignments. Your kid’s not the only one who can read well!!! Lots of other kids read well too–even the ones with a low socioeconomic background. I had a parent in my class this year that said that her child was not going to be doing homework anymore because she and her son didn’t see the value of practicing skills he already possessed. She also mentioned that she didn’t see the point in him doing it because I never sent it back home with feedback (I am a teacher who trusts that parents and students communicate at home about their school work and homework, and that homework is practice of concepts learned during school hours so it shouldn’t be graded). Anyway, she said that it was a decision she made with her husband and son. I told her that it was fine, and I really do believe that it’s the family’s choice to do homework or not. I actually give every student a satisfactory grade for turning homework regardless of whether it is completed or not because I don’t believe it is a school issue as much as it is a home/family issue. However, there are a sharing activities my class does in school using the homework that they have completed. She walked in one day and noticed that all of the students in my class were sharing their homework, including their literature responses that accompanied their READING LOGS (I ask my students to write about whatever they would like to as long as it has to do with their book of choice). She saw that her child was uncomfortable and upset that he didn’t do his homework and had nothing to share. A simple homework task could have been completed by this student within ten minutes could have avoided the discomfort of feeling left out. Needless to say, the family started doing homework again shortly after this incident. Telling your child that homework isn’t important could be a lie. To the student in my class, it was important for him to have his voice heard in class that day like his peers. It was important for him to be able to share about what he read over the past week. Think about what social skills you are teaching your children when you tell them that they can read all night for homework instead of doing what was assigned. You might as well change the word “read” in that sentence to “eat 100 pounds of chocolate,” or “get drunk,” or “play with guns.” You are telling them that their choices override that of any authority figure…that there is no authority figure, and that you will support them on it no matter what. Stop making excuses for you kids and trust teachers. Why the hell would we purposefully try to “torture” your kids with homework? If I wanted to “torture” a kid, I could find better ways than that. We are their parents during the day.
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In response to PsychMom’s posting “can anyone tell me of another profession that serves the public that actually demands that the recipients of their service do part of their job for them?”
Are you kidding me? It’s not like you’re just sending your car through the carwash or checking out a book at the library. Teachers deal with actual human beings. If you took your child to the doctor and you needed to check your child’s temperature twice a day and give him medicine three times a day, would you say no to the doctor because that would be like you doing his job for him? NO! You would try to help your child the best you could so that he/she would get better. Why wouldn’t you do the same when a teacher asks you to help your child?
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Anonymous- could you perhaps write in paragraphs, as it makes it easier to read?
There is a difference between schoolwork and taking medicine and a fairly large one at that. The difference is that in many situations (not all), for the brighter children in the class, school is more about busywork rather than learning and may serve no benefit other than stressing them out- when you’re at the top there are few places left for you to go. Medication, on the other hand, is given to make people get better, only when they need it.
Another thing you spoke about was reading instead of doing assignments and that you would not use that as a valid excuse if your license expired. It is true that you would not if you had many good reasons not to let your license expire which you most probably do- for example to stay on the road and experience the benefits of being able to move from place to place more quickly. But for many school students, particularly those who know their grade work back to front, their only reason to do a homework assignment is to prevent getting in trouble from the teacher. They may not experience any benefits from doing said homework assignment, unless it happened to be about something that they were passionate about (in which case the benefit would be the joy of doing it). The point of school is to learn and if a person is not learning because they already know the work then I see little point in forcing more work of the same nature down their throat. If the reason is “because everyone else has to do this work” then it is little wonder that there are many people worldwide who are too afraid to do things differently to other people.
It’s nice to hear that in your class students get to happily discuss their homework, but do respect the fact that this is not always the case. In many classrooms, homework is simply collected, given a mark by the teacher and then handed back. It seems to me that this is the situation of many posters or children of posters on this blog.
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To Anonymous….who said
“Teachers deal with actual human beings.”
I know you deal with human beings. All the more reason for you to be accountable for what you’re doing and responsible for keeping up with the latest research in the area of education.
You also said:
“Why wouldn’t you do the same when a teacher asks you to help your child”
If my child needed help, of course I would help. But I’m not asked to help. I’m told to teach. As far as I know, my child doesn’t have learning difficulties; she doesn’t need help. This is very different from your medical example. If there is so much that teachers have to cover that they can’t do it in class, then the curriculum is not appropriate. Young children in elementary school and their parents should not be forced to pick up the slack. School ends at 3:15…just like work days end at 5 pm.
There just came out a new study here in Canada that reported that adult lives are totally messed up and that the future of our collective health is in jeopardy. We don’t eat with our families, we don’t get out of the house, we don’t go out to cultural events or national parks at the rates we did just 10 years ago, we don’t work regular hours…we are too stressed. And that’s the adults. Kids will fair worse. Homework is not necessary in our lives…it’s got to go.
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I meant “kids will fare worse”
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Anonymous says:
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If you got pulled over for speeding and the cop says your license expired the day prior and you had to pay the consequences, would you tell him that you should be let off because you were too busy reading to renew it?
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You could write a book about control freaks just using the comments on this post. Teachers are not cops, nor should they be. Education should not be about training kids in compliance.
The whole comment from anonymous was about authority and doing what you’re told. There’s not a word about learning. She doesn’t claim that her assigned homework actually teaches the kids anything.
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She saw that her child was uncomfortable and upset that he didn’t do his homework and had nothing to share.
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In other words, you found a way to humiliate the child in class. Nifty. Couldn’t you just ask the kid to say a few words about his reading, if he didn’t have his reading log?
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I told her that it was fine, and I really do believe that it’s the family’s choice to do homework or not … Needless to say, the family started doing homework again shortly after this incident.
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Passive-aggressive control freak much? If you’re serious about letting families decide whether or not to do homework, stop humiliating kids who haven’t done it, and don’t crow about forcing families who don’t believe in homework to do it anyway.
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Think about what social skills you are teaching your children when you tell them that they can read all night for homework instead of doing what was assigned. You might as well change the word “read” in that sentence to “eat 100 pounds of chocolate,” or “get drunk,” or “play with guns.”
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What the …? As a teacher, you should be aware that free reading is one of the best things our kids could possibly be doing for their education. No, it’s not equivalent to getting drunk or playing with guns, except in your world, where the only two categories are “obey the teacher” and “every other activity known to humankind.”
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Why wouldn’t you do the same when a teacher asks you to help your child?
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Mandatory reading logs with mandatory parent signature are not “asking for help”, they’re demanding compliance. I believe I’ve said this before, but it doesn’t seem to sink in.
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If I wanted to “torture” a kid, I could find better ways than that.
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I’m sure you could. That’s why you don’t belong in the classroom.
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Here’s a list of “Top Ten Reasons I Hate Reading Logs”, from a teacher!
http://blog0rama.edublogs.org/2010/03/24/top-ten-reasons-why-i-hate-reading-logs/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MrsLovesBlog-0-rama+(Mrs.+Love%27s+Blog-0-Rama!)
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To FedupMom,
This teacher has a galvinizing effect…bringing into clear focus why what we’re saying and doing on this site is so important. It was that post that spurred my Open Discussion post today. I’m now for a ban…the total elimination of homework from the education system. At least we have data on our side.
All the other side has is conjecture, intuition, and serious control issues.
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Good Heavens! I am struck by the hostile, angry tone of anonymous. In order to be a great teacher, I think one really has to know herself and understand what is motivating her interactions with parents and students. The bad teachers I have encountered truly don’t understand what motivates their words and actions.
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Yes, and anonymous told us to trust teachers.
Parents have been far too trusting that the school system knows what it’s doing. I get wary when any institution says, “Trust us..we know what we’re doing.”
Jeez…I never used to be so cynical.
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Agreed. Also, in reference to the doctor analogy; one is free to choose another doctor if he or she feels the need for another opinion. Moreover, if they choose not to follow the doctors orders, they don’t have to worry about a vindicitve doctor humiliating their child.
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I have so much to say and so little time to say it. Let’s start with this, shall we, and pick up next week.
“You might as well change the word “read” in that sentence to “eat 100 pounds of chocolate,” or “get drunk,” or “play with guns.”
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You must not like to read very much now, do you? Gee, what gave me that clue?
Our children are made to feel guilty for…READING. NCLB goes crazy, twisting itself into a pretzel to raise those reading scores, and here are kids who read, and your response? So what. I pity the very rare Einstein or Mozart in your class.
You equate reading with guns, drinking, excessive chocolate. Sinful pleasures, eh? Can’t have too much joy, we’ll all go to hell. Who says religion has been removed from the classroom?
And while we’re at it, do try to compose an essay in paragraph form, easier on the eyes. It offends this English major’s sensibility. When I homeschooled my daughter, there would be hell to pay (hell again) if she submitted writing to me of that caliber.
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Wow~ I’m a mother AND a public school teacher who absolutely LOVES my job. It sounds like a lot of lazy parenting here.
Homework is a great way (especially in math) to reinforce what they learned in school.
Reading logs ARE to hold them accountable…what in the world is wrong with that? Moms…as adults we are ALL held accountable for something in this life.
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public school teacher, yea, we’re pretty lazy in this household. You seem to think my daughter doesn’t do homework. I first joined this blog out of alarm. Homework was increasing exponentially each year and my child was staying up later and later.
If you only knew what we parents have done, how much we’ve been involved, the things we do to ensure she learns and keeps up at school, you would never have the gall to call me a lazy parent.
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public school teacher, shouldn’t the accountability be in reverse? Why must we parents be accountable to you? You’re the one getting paid! Shouldn’t you be accountable to us, the taxpapers, the clients? How would you feel if I asked you to log everything you did all day? You know, just to make sure you’re teaching.
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publicteacher says:
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It sounds like a lot of lazy parenting here.
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Hey, thanks. But what exactly is “lazy” about an ongoing struggle regarding our kids’ education? The lazy (and very popular) solution is to simply fake the log.
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Reading logs ARE to hold them accountable…what in the world is wrong with that?
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What’s wrong with it? It causes kids to hate reading, that’s what’s wrong with it.
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I’m on a roll. Stop me before I wax wise! You’re going to say, but it’s the kids who must be accountable, not the parents. Well, you do ask for our signature, don’t you? And surely you must have figured out by now how many of those logs are faked, parents doing all the work. My daughter dutifully filled out those useless logs. In the time she was recording all these factoids, she could have been reading another book.
And what did the teacher do with the mounds of paper flowing onto her desk? Nothing! Were they used in class as a learning tool? Never.
But…when I respectfully broached the subject of its value, she listened to me. She really did. I was not rude, she was patient. She admitted she assigned the logs because that’s the way it’s been, an old habit. I posited, most of these kids are reading, why the log? She couldn’t think of a good answer. I suggested she already knows who the struggling readers are. Just about all these kids did their homework. I suggested she trust them, they would read, the log served no useful purpose. I don’t know a single kid who became a much better reader because she filled out a log. Many of us parents sought to instill a love of books in our children. It would never have occurred to us to ask them to fill out a log to nurture that budding passion. Who dreamed up this idiocy? Common sense should automatically dictate otherwise.
My daughter had a fabulous teacher in 4th grade. She neither admonished the children when they read ahead (yep, hard to believe, but my daughter was always chastised for being unable to stop reading) nor forced a worthless weekly reading log on them. All your doing, teachers, is creating a bookkeeping nightmare. Why do you want to juggle all that paperwork?
But that was private school. Time to drag public school into the 21st century. It’s been ten years. Time to shift course.
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Typo alert! All YOU’RE doing. Not, all YOUR doing.
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Come and teach in a classroom in southern California. The minority population is the majority. I have kids in my class speaking Arabic, Spanish, Korean, and French. Their parents may or may not be educated adults. None of them speak English well. I encourage families to read books in their home languages as well as in English. Reading logs and literature responses have been useful and helpful to those families. While you live your American Dream, there are people who rightfully reside in this country who are desperately trying to get their children educated so that their children can read English just as well as your kids.
Also, teachers are accountable for so many things already, including your children’s well-being each and every single day they attend school. Why is it wrong for us to ask you to be accountable for your child’s education at home?
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Forgot on the last post that I also have a student who speaks Hindi =)
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“Why is it wrong for us to ask you to be accountable for your child’s education at home?”
Not wrong at all. Pretend my daughter is in your class. Let’s go back, pretend she’s ten again. Ask me what we do at home. I’ll gladly tell you. We read, go on walks and hikes, free Shakespeare, free classical concerts, the library, museums, art exhibits, math and science competitions, Odyssey of the Mind, intellectual dinner conversations that would go on for hours, were it not for homework. And I’m just getting started. See, we do plenty at home. No reading logs necessary.
You don’t need to be looking over our shoulder. We take our parenting and home learning responsibilities very seriously. Based on what I’ve seen, accountability needs to be on the other side. I’ve proven what I do at home. Now it’s your turn. And no, test prep doesn’t count.
And by the way, I don’t live the American Dream. I know exactly what you’re talking about when you tell of immigrant children raised by non-English speaking parents. I was one of those children.
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Just because you were an immigrant child raised by non-English speaking parents doesn’t mean you aren’t living the American Dream. I am also an immigrant to this country. My parents were educated in our home country, but I can say that if we didn’t come to the United States, life would be very different for us. My parents were, and still are, very hard-working people. Growing up, we didn’t have a big house. We didn’t have a lot of money, and my parents didn’t have the resources to take me to the museum. They didn’t know about free concerts or art exhibits. I was lucky that I did have parents who thought dinner as a family, and family time in general, was important.
Today, I send home information about free educational trips, events, and outings for families to attend. Our schools hold events in the evenings inviting families to join, including reading nights, picnics, concerts in the park. Most families do not come. Their kids are at home with a video game or TV as a babysitter. I have parents come in my class to ask me who Judy Blume is because they havve never heard of any of her books.
Your family has more quality time together than most families. I applaud you for that. Don’t do the homework if you don’t want to, but you cannot expect teachers to stop giving it because there are children growing up in this country who do not spend quality time with their families. Most of them have never participated in a family dinner, own a library card, or have seen an art exhibit. I also have worked in a school where students lived in motels, so they could move any time during the year. They are replaced with new motel tenants. These kids move so often and are usually from broken families in which parents didn’t finish school themselves. They only own a couple of books. Their parents have the reading comprehension of a third-grader. I have met with parents who were illiterate, and the only thing they knew how to do was to write their name. There are parents who don’t do what you do with your daughter. They use homework as the quality time that they spend with their children. I have been asked by parents many times in the beginning of the school year when homework is going to start because they want to have it. We are accountable for many children, not just yours. We are accountable to students, parents, the community, the state, and the federal government. I work for a school district that believes in providing each student a way to succeed through dozens of programs, which are being cut little by little as funds from the government have dwindled.
We also mainstream many students with special needs. I have had students who have been diagnosed with emotional disturbances, severe speech and language needs, autism, and ADD and ADHD. I have students who are on medication which affects their learning, especially if their doctors are just figuring out the correct dosage for them. Many of these students and their parents rely on systematic contracts and charts for both social and academic areas. They use a reading log everyday.
I do use reading logs in my classroom. I have never asked parents to sign it. It is a very small part of my reading program. I have used them very consistently with families who think their children can benefit from them. I send a reading log with other students to fill out about one week of every month, which includes a response to one of the books that they read that week. It is more like a book report with a porttion of it being a log. The log part is to literally make a checkmark next to each day that they read for at least 20 mins. I encourage students to read more, of course. I don’t ask for titles or authors, nor do I ask for a parent signature. The students share their responses in class, and enjoy doing so. They recommend books for their peers to read, and they make comments or ask questions about what they read at home. Some students, of course, participate in this more than others. It’s not a perfect system. Some kids just don’t read as much, and some kids just don’t like sharing or speaking in front of a group.
For every class that have each year, I can say that maybe a quarter of them will read with or without the log. That number is not enough for me to say that it’s okay to do away with them forever. With the way things are going right now in my state and in the country, it is also getting more and more difficult to individualize education for my students.
Our school library doesn’t even have its own space. It is in the corner of our multi-purpose room. The librarian doesn’t allow kindergarten and first grade to take books that they have checked out of the school library home because it is too expensive to replace lost items! These kids have to get books some other way! It’s ridiculous! I use the reading log to see if they did some kind of reading at home, and to see if they read a legitimate book when they write a response and share in class. Like I said, not all students go to other libraries besides the one at school.
If you have a problem with the education system of our nation, don’t blame teachers. Blame the politicians that run the system. The government requires us to do a lot with the very little money that they provide us. They also want us to raise class sizes, but find a way to individualize instruction and find a way to give more one-on-one time with students. Many of my colleagues were pink-slipped this year, and still don’t know if they are coming back in the fall. If they do not come back, then our class sizes will increase. On top of that, we have been asked to take 6 furlough days. So now they want us to teach the same things that we do each year with having more kids in a classroom, less resources, and in less time. I teach in a state where prisons receive more money per inmate than schools do per student.
P.S. It is sad that someone would say that it is a guilty pleasure to play with guns.
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Gee, we flat out told the teacher in an email our kid wasn’t going to do his reading every night, especially if there was a choice between sacrificing sleep and his nightly reading. Life gets in the way and we do have one beside homework after school.
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These are hilarious to read! Thanks for the entertainment! You need to come to my school. Parents meet with a panel of teachers and adminisrators to voice concerns and together come up with solutions. It has worked out wonderully! Goodluck and hope some day your concerns are heard and dealt with.
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you all sound extremely lazy. it is vital that you be a part of your child’s formal education. you’re making excuses b/c the work is hard/time consuming for you and/or your child. many parents no longer expect their children to do anything they don’t want to do. Teachers, parents, and students need to be accountable for their work. It’s a partnership formed for the benefit of YOUR child! Each year the work load increases b/c your child is older, has more skills, hopefully a longer attn span, and more stamina. If we never increased the expectations they will not be ready for college (which is the goal for most of the students at my school). I make my students write a reading log b/c I want to talk to them about what they’re reading b/c many parents don’t bother. They need to get used to responding to their literature in written form, writing in complete sentences and communicating their thoughts and feelings about the text.
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One thing and one thing comes to mind only when I read your comment Anonymous.
Old School…
Did you know it’s 2010, not 1963.
I want more for my child than what you’re offering, which is not much. Same tired old stuff from 30 years ago. Same boring old things you’ve been doing for 30 plus years and more. It’s no wonder kids are dropping out of school at the rates they do.
There is more to life than the drudgery you’re wanting my child to entrain herself to. I’m very much a part of my child’s formal education, just not the way you want. And just because I prefer my way doesn’t make me a bad parent, nor does it make my child a failure.
It’s taking me weeks and weeks this summer to get my kid to love reading again because she was forced to read things she wasn’t interested in all last school year. School did that, not me. Old School.
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I’ll second PsychMom here. Anonymous, in addition, I stopped counting all the mistakes in your post. Hope you don’t teach reading or writing.
What I hear from you is drudgery, compliance and above all, numbness. You don’t convey a passion for what you do. Pity your poor students. If they do remember you years later, don’t bet it’ll be your inspiration and excitement.
You say you are preparing your students for college. Trust me, a whole lot of college professors would rather you not “prepare” them if this is what you think preparation is. I have college professor friends who are tearing their hair out of their heads because some 5th grade English teacher ruined it for the kids. Please apply the Hippocratic Oath: “but first do no harm.”
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any suggestions about what I could do, as a teacher, to get my students to read outside of school. Reading is a habit that needs to be developed in young people. I love to read, but when I get out of the habit of finding time and picking a good book, I find that I don’t read for months. that is not what we should want for our developing readers. would i, as a student, hate writing the log? yes. would it get me to pick up a book i like and read? yes.
I have a very small class of fifth graders (8) in a private school. I believe, maybe foolishly, that 7/8 read each night and complete a valid log. I don’t think 7/8 would make the time to read if i didn’t require it.
I’m sincerely interested in your input.
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PsychMom, HWB — could you stop by Kid-Friendly Schools and drop me a line? I’m pretty sure the comments are now coming through. It’s lonely over there! **crickets**
http://kidfriendlyschools.blogspot.com
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Anonymous says:
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I believe, maybe foolishly, that 7/8 read each night and complete a valid log.
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There’s a post from a teacher somewhere in this list where she found that 40% of her students admitted to faking the reading log. What would happen if you tried an anonymous survey?
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any suggestions about what I could do, as a teacher, to get my students to read outside of school.
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Have you tried asking the students what would help them read more at home? Have you asked the parents?
One thing I’ve noticed with older dd is that she’s very interested in recommendations from her friends. If you could harness some of that energy, you’d be in good shape.
Also, take a look at the Book Whisperer — there’s a link on the side —
oops, gotta run!
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