Homework and the Brain

Kerry Dickinson, who was instrumental in changing homework policy in her Danville, California, community last year, sent me an interesting article on how homework effects the brain.

“Once the frontal lobes start to develop, teenagers start being able to handle higher-level, more abstract concepts,” says Istvan Molnar-Szakacs, research neuroscientist at the UCLA Semel Institute’s Tennenbaum Center for the Biology of Creativity.

“The fiber tracts—highways that carry information from the sensory areas of the brain to the frontal lobes, and back again—have to be paved for information to travel.”

Molnar-Szakacs explains that the paving, known as myelination, is the process by which the fiber tracts are insulated. With more learning comes more paving, and as the pathways become more efficient, the brain gets better at integrating information.

Read the entire article here.

First Monday

This coming Monday, April 6, is the first Monday of the month. As I suggest every month in this blog, I hope you’ll send a note expressing your thoughts about homework to your children’s teachers or, perhaps, to a school administrator or School Board member. Even better, join with a few friends and send a collective note. Ask for a public discussion of the problem. Ask the school to be responsive. If you need help in formulating a note, look in The Case Against Homework for some examples, or see the kinds of notes parents have been writing by browsing Moms (and Dads) on a Mission on this blog. If you do send a note, please post a comment and send me a copy of your letter. And if you get a response from the teacher or school, please let us know that as well.

On the first Monday in February, I sent a copy of my book to the principal of my daughter’s high school–a public high school with more than 4,000 students–in Brooklyn, New York, and I invited him to have a discussion with me about homework. He emailed me back thanking me for the book, told me that he shared excerpts of it with some members of his staff, and invited me to meet with him. I did and we had a very open conversation about homework, stress, testing, and all other kinds of topics and I know we both learned a lot from each other. I also know that our conversation will be ongoing and that he is eager to do what’s best for his students.

I urge you to engage in a conversation with your head of school.

Moms (and Dads) on a Mission–Edible Projects (Part 2)

Before the day was over, the mom in yesterday’s blog post received a phone call from the principal telling her no parent had ever before complained about the project. And then the mom received an email from the teacher. Below is an excerpt:

The Teacher Responds to a Parent’s Concerns about Edible Art Projects

…I hear and will take every point you made into consideration. You certainly make valid arguments about parents being overly-involved in student work.

Having said that, I think you had a very limited perspective on today’s event and blew it out of proportion.

First of all, the “offering” was secondary to the viewing of the Iliad poster projects that lined the hallway on the way to the classroom. These were done entirely by students, and almost all completed at school.. There was NO parental involvement whatsoever. These projects will be graded. Were you aware of these?

I assigned the UNGRADED food project to allow the kids to have snacks during the day at school. It was a celebration of the end of a unit of study. I assigned this project because some of my students don’t get great grades on tests and homework. They don’t feel good about their classwork, but they feel great having a party and being creative in other ways.

When I said in my previous email that I thought the project would be fun for parents and students, I meant that the VIEWING would be fun. As I said before, I didn’t intend for parents to be heavily involved. And I think with the exception of a very few projects, parents were not overly involved.

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Moms (and Dads) on a Mission–Edible Art Project

Below is a letter a New York City mother sent to her son’s sixth grade public school teacher after her ex-husband told her that the edible projects at the class’s ancient Greek and Rome festival looked as though they had been made by pastry chefs. A few days before the project was due, the mother had asked the teacher for clarification and had been told: “The assignment (which your son should have in his folder if you’d like to look it over) is to bring an edible object which he can somehow, no matter how randomly, connect to our study of ancient Greece and Rome. It’s simply meant to be fun for kids and parents alike. He can bring hummus and pita or a bag of oreos–he just needs to be creative about how it connects to our festival. One year, a student made Poseidon’s Trident out of a tube of gumballs and tin foil shaped into a fork-like top. Another used a horse shaped cookie cutter to make Trojan Horse sandwiches.”

Dear 6th Grade Teacher

My son’s father just told me that my son felt self-conscious this morning about his “offering” when he saw the other spectacular projects, which is what I had feared. He felt fine about it until then.

My son is absolutely crazy about you as a teacher and I know how wonderful you are and how much they have been learning from you — so I do hope you will take this in the spirit in which it is intended. You have been truly amazing and so responsive to my son, so I do want to say how very appreciative we are for all of these things and that he was lucky enough to get you as his homeroom teacher!

After years of witnessing a certain phenomenon, though, and after reading this book (The Case Against Homework), and seeing this harrowing documentary I mentioned, I feel the need to speak my mind. (So please know that this letter is coming after years of silent endurance for fear of angering the teachers or — even worse — risking repercussions for my son. I trust that whether or not you agree with me, you will not hold anything against my son, who only wanted sincerely to do something wonderful and impressive for you and the class — hence his initial request to me that we build some huge structure out of candy!)

My ex-husband reported that some of the offerings were breathtakingly

Continue reading “Moms (and Dads) on a Mission–Edible Art Project”

L.A. Times Reports: Schools are Cutting Back on Homework

The L.A. Times recently reported on several California schools that have cut back on homework:

Trustees in Danville, Calif., eliminated homework on weekends and vacations last year. Palo Alto officials banned it over winter break. Officials in Orange…are reminding teachers about limits on homework and urging them not to assign it on weekends. A private school in Hollywood has done away with book reports.

Read the story here.

Teachers in British Columbia, Canada, Seek Ban on Homework Until Grade 4

According to an article in The Province, the president of the British Columbia Teachers Federation says that school kids should not be given any homework until Grade 4 at the earliest. “I’m not in favour of abolishing homework, but I do think we need to consider very carefully the age of children,” she said. “Certainly in the primary years [kindergarten to Grade 3] we shouldn’t be having kids have homework.”

School District in Newfoundland, Canada, Implements New Homework Policy

After some parent complaints that their children were doing too much homework, the Eastern School District in Newfoundland, Canada, implemented a new homework policy. According to vocm.com, “guidelines for Kindergarten students are roughly ten minutes, primary 30 minutes, elementary 40, intermediate an hour, and high school students one to two hours.” In addition, homework cannot be assigned over holiday breaks and cannot be assigned as a form of discipline. Read the policy here.

Moms (and Dads) on a Mission–Brooklyn, New York (Part 2)

In yesterday’s blog post, Aurora DeMarco of Brooklyn, New York, wrote about how she organized parents in her daughter’s first-grade class to get a reduced homework load. Here’s the letter the parents wrote to the School Leadership Team (SLT).

Letter to School Leadership Team
by First Grade Parents in Brooklyn, New York

There is growing concern among many parents in our school community about the quality and quantity of homework assigned to our children. We understand the value of homework: strengthening the home/school connection, establishing good work habits, and reinforcing skills learned in the classroom. We feel, however, that the current situation is not necessarily achieving these benefits- making our children bored and/or frustrated, as well as taking away from family time.

We feel that changes in these areas would greatly improve the homework:

1. Quality- We would like to see more interesting, engaging and content rich homework, as opposed to skills and drills. Skills are important, but they will be mastered more easily by an engaged learner than one who is bored of fill in the blank worksheets.
Continue reading “Moms (and Dads) on a Mission–Brooklyn, New York (Part 2)”