From my Mailbox–A Former Principal Offers an Opinion

I got the following email from a former high school principal and current teacher who is located in British Columbia, Canada.

Dear Sara,

As a — past — high school principal and teacher… I have never seen the value of more than a little homework. And that ‘little’ has to be considered for its merit before it should be issued. I believe that there should be a ‘through’ line where kids are thinking about their studies and planning and preparing at home, but not homework in the traditional sense.

You know what I really really believe — not popular — homework is a way of lessening the demands of the teacher to teach during the day and giving them an out that says “here’s the work that has to be done — if you waste your time during class, you will have homework.” Or, “we have to get through x, y, and z, and you will have extra work at home because the curriculum is too much to be covered at school.” TEACH differently then!
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Guest Blogger: First Grade in Public School Was Pure Torture

Today’s guest blogger, Tracy Stevens, is a former high school Spanish teacher who infrequently gave project-based homework to her students. Currently a telecom salesperson and the mother of two boys who attend private school after a difficult year in public elementary school, she is the author of abettereducation.blog, which is full of interesting interviews (including one with Daniel Pink) and thoughts. Today she writes about her son’s experience in first grade in public school and her decision to have her son repeat first grade in a more child-friendly atmosphere.

First Grade in Public School was Pure Torture
by Tracy Stevens

My son was born in August and attended a Montessori Pre-School since he was 1-1/2. When it came time to consider 1st Grade, we met with his teacher and the head of school and we felt that, despite being one of the younger kids, he was socially and academically ready to handle the rigors of public school, especially in the public Montessori Elementary School that we found for him, where he would experience a familiar classroom and learning system.

It was a year of pure torture for the entire family. The teacher encouraged reading through competition. Each kid had a thermometer that showed his level of reading. If you were a girl or an older child, your thermometer was pretty full. My son’s low thermometer was humiliating for him, and was also a marker of his confidence and curiosity as the year progressed.
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Free-Range Kids

About a month ago, I had the pleasure of spending a few hours with Lenore Skenazy, the author of the blog, free-range kids. We had a great time chatting about homework, education, childhood, and being parents of “free-range kids.” Skenazy is not only full of common sense but has a great sense of humor. Her book, Free Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry, which just came out this month, is equally full of common sense and humor.

In case you’ve managed to miss the brouhaha about Skenazy, she holds the moniker “America’s Worst Mom” (google it and see), because she allowed her nine-year-old son to ride the New York City subway alone. While a lot of the media and a lot of parents thought she was careless and had put her son in grave danger, others applauded her for knowing her son’s capabilities, allowing him a little independence, and not giving in to over-hyped fears about dangers that don’t really exist.

You can get a copy of her book here. And visit her blog, too. There’s always a lively discussion there.

Easing Homework Overload

Here’s a piece I wrote for Natural Awakenings magazine titled “Easing Homework Overload.” The free magazine is in health food stores around the country.

Here’s my suggestion: If you find a copy in your community, pick it up and leave it on a park bench, at the library, on the steps to the school, at the pediatrician or orthodontist’s office…. You never know who will read it and have their eyes opened.

Easing Homework Overload
by Sara Bennett
Natural Awakenings Magazine

These days, beginning as early as kindergarten, homework is a consuming nightly activity. According to a 2006 joint National Education Association/Leap Frog report, on average, children ages 8-13 work at it from 1½ to 1¾ hours a night. Most require almost 3 hours of help a week from their parents. It’s no wonder that parents complain about homework almost as much as, or more than, their children.

Their complaints are well founded. A 2006 Duke University review of more than 180 research studies found that there’s virtually no correlation between homework and academic achievement in elementary school. Even in middle and high school, the only correlation is that students who do their homework do better on teacher-created tests and grades. But no proof supports the misperception that homework helps with such long-term educational goals as creating life-long learners who are creative and analytical thinkers.

Many short-term education goals aren’t strengthened by homework either. Consider the time-honored tradition of weekly word study for a spelling test. As early as the late 19th century, research has found no link between the time spent on drills and student performance. That’s why, as so many teachers and parents know first-hand, students who can spell a new word on Friday won’t be able to incorporate it into their writing, or even remember how to spell it, the following Monday.

Read the rest here.

Why Teachers Quit

Whenever I talk to teachers, I try to keep in mind how hard their job is. It helps keep our conversations respectful and it also helps keep the focus on our common interest–the student.

Here’s an article from Teacher Magazine about the pressures on teachers and why so many of them are quitting:

It wasn’t her teenage students who drove Meghan Sharp out of teaching—it was the crippling inflexibility of her administrators.

All the innovative curriculum ideas and field trips she proposed to engage her 10th grade biology students were promptly shot down, and she left the profession after just two years.

“I still enjoyed teaching, but it was a constant battle with the administration,” says Sharp, who worked in an urban district in northern New Jersey. “I had to do things like submit weekly lesson plans. There was a lot of bureaucracy.” She now goes by her maiden name and asked Teacher Magazine not to identify her old school because she works as an education policy analyst.

Read the rest here.

Inside the Minds of School Board Candidates

I came across this piece, where candidates for the Houston Independent School Board were asked whether the District should have a “no homework policy.” I have a feeling that the positions taken by the various candidates are typical of those in many communities and thus worth a look, just to know what you might be facing in your own community.

Some Canadian School Eliminate Homework

I’ve written many times about places in Canada where homework has been eliminated. This month’s Today’s Parent, published in Toronto, Canada, has an article titled, “The End of Homework?”, which looks at a school in Barrie, Ontario, which eliminated homework this year. The article concludes:

But a year after [Barrie’s] Prince of Wales eliminated most forms of homework, students’ marks have improved by an average of three percent, [principal] Olson says. Is this due to less homework? Hard to say. But he points out that the new policy has forced teachers to cover more of the curriculum more effectively during class time. Students are more focused on classwork now, and reports of students not sleeping because of homework have disappeared, said Olson. “One family told me it’s the first time their daughter is involved in competitive sports because, previously, she never had time.”.

Read the article here. (And a big thanks to Amanda Cockshutt for sending me the article.)

Moms (and Dads) on a Mission–Update from Toronto, Canada

Today, Frank Bruni, the moving force behind Toronto, Canada’s family-friendly homework policy, writes about how the year-old homework policy is working. You can read Frank’s earlier entries here, here, here and here.

My Thoughts on the Anniversary of Toronto’s Adoption of its New Homework Policy
by Frank Bruni
April 16, 2009

It is one year today that the new homework policy was adopted in Toronto and it has been in force since September.

Amazingly, (forgive the sarcasm) the sun still rises in the morning, the birds still sing, and our kids have not become duller.

What has happened is that Toronto students have more time. More time with family, more time for extra curricular activities, more time to be kids.

Don’t get me wrong, there are still challenges. The new policy is a work in progress and there may be individual educators that are having a tough time adjusting. In addition, like most new policies in any organization, now that it is not front and center, it quickly becomes part of the background noise that is our everyday lives.

Still there has been much progress.

In my own case, I have noticed a marked change in my teen’s attitude towards homework. While most kids would, I think, prefer no homework, he is more engaged in what does come home because the busywork has all but disappeared. The number of nights where there is no homework has increased dramatically and he reads, every night, he reads for pleasure. Because the homework that is assigned is done so in blocks, my son has had to learn time management, surely a good thing.

And no homework on vacations – pure heaven!!

Yep, things are good in Toronto, not perfect, but better.

For those of you fighting this battle in your own communities don’t give up! There is currency at the end of your struggle, the most important currency of all – time.

Moms (and Dads) on a Mission–More from Halifax, Nova Scotia

A few weeks ago, Psych Mom, the mother of a second grader in Halifax, Nova Scotia, wrote about why she wasn’t going to make her daughter do any upcoming creative projects and how she was trying to reduce her daughter’s homework load.

She provides an update: “Update on the reading homework my 7 year old was assigned a week before March Break. 4 days before the homework was due, and it wasn’t done, I wrote a long letter to the teacher explaining that my daughter was much more interested in another book and that she was enthusiastic about answering questions I had designed (still trying to get to a little more depth out of the story). The teacher gave me feedback today and was right on board with everything and very encouraging. It has worked out beautifully, and gives me confidence to keep speaking up.”