Time Article - What Teachers Hate about Parents (x-posted)

"Banty" wrote in message
...
In article , Stephanie Stowe says...


"Ericka Kammerer" wrote in message
...
wrote:

The Ranger wrote:

There are several options available: 1) You write notes to each
teacher
quoting the district's time-limits on allowable homework allotments
when
a child is given homework that he cannot complete. This might seem
flimsy and contrived but it works for many parents that do not feel
their child should be doing such make-work, college-level-consuming
homework.


Do all districts have policies like this? That *does* sound like it
would help, I just never heard of it before (my child's too young for
homework so I'm kind of clueless about how this stuff works from an
adult perspective).

Many districts do have homework policies. However,
having them doesn't necessarily mean they will be observed
or enforced. They do give you some leverage, though. Another
tricky bit is that it's *very* difficult to estimate how long
homework will take, and teachers/principals may have differing
takes on whether the time limit applies to the fastest child,
the slowest child, or the "average" child (whatever that might
be ;-) I think even the most well-meaning teacher trying to
adhere to the policy can have a lot of difficulty doing that
with any accuracy.

Best wishes,
Ericka


Off the wall curiosity question here.... What would happen if you
determined
what *you* considered a reasonable amount of time, set the timer for that
amount of time, and called it quits after that? This is assuming your
child
will give best effort for this amount of time. What are grades based on?
If
it is clear from the tests that the material is being aqcuired then what
is
the purpose of the homework? Is it an end in itself? I have always thought
of homework as exercise, but I get the impression that a lot of what my
nephews did was busy work to make a teacher happy. Of course, I got this
impression from the nephews whose points of view may have been a bit
distorted.




Tried that. Ran into an interesting problem.

It's *MY SON* who is too contientious for that - he can't just up from
homework
undone and turn it in unfinished, even with a note from me.

And I sure wasn't going to try to override what really is a fantastic
inborn
trait. (He's 12 - hope it stays that way...)


No WAY!!! I am with you there. It is my bad for assuming that just because I
never did any homework that everyone was trying to get out of it.

Banty

shinypenny wrote:

What hour does he get home?

Home at 3:30pm (12:30pm on Mondays), bedtime at 8:00pm.

Trying to place this in context, to get an
idea how much homework you're dealing with compared to what my kids are
dealing with.

The amount varies and is often unpredictable. Some days
it will be within the school guidelines (40 minutes for DS1).
Sometimes it's within a reasonable amount of variation from that
(say, up to an hour, or maybe even an hour and a half). The
days that he gets home from school and does pretty much nothing
from 3:30 until 8:00 besides homework (excepting snack, dinner,
and getting ready for bed) I think are ridiculous.

Because my kids go to afterschool, they don't get home until 6:00. They
do their homework at afterschool. For DD12, in 6th grade, she spends
pretty much the entire time (2-1/2 hours) doing homework. DD10, in 5th,
tends to spend about an hour, some days more; it varies but she's
almost always done before I pick her up.

DD12 might have more homework to do at home, and will do this while I'm
making dinner. After dinner, she will often have me sit and quiz her
for tests, but that takes only 20 minutes or so. DD10 rarely needs to
do any more in the evenings, although on occasion there is a project
requiring parental involvement (usually something internet- or
computer-related), but this is maybe once a month, tops. Both then read
for at least 30 minutes each night. Both will have homework on the
weekends, and that amount varies.

To me, that is an unacceptable amount of homework for
elementary-school aged children. Where is the time for physical
activity? Where is the time for socialization? Where is the
time to do things with family? Where is the time to have some
kind of responsibilities around the home?

We've found it helps to forget the homework until the morning. I
encourage an earlier bedtime, and have her set her alarm earlier than
normal. Then when she is fresh, she gets up and jumps right in to her
homework before school. Works well! She is most definetly a morning
person.

That's what DS1 does when he can't stay awake any longer,
but there's only so much you can leave until the morning and still
have a reasonable expectation of it getting done.


But mostly, I tell the girls that if they can get it all done at
afterschool, we don't have to make that choice in the evenings. The
goal is to have evenings relatively clear of school work - so ALL of us
can relax.

I'm glad that works well for you. We'd be between a
rock and a hard place, though! If my kids got home at 6pm,
we'd only be able to eat dinner and get them to bed! That
would be a 9.5 hour workday for the kids!

I don't ever remember having ANY homework until I hit junior high. The
world has certainly changed. But, I have come to believe it's not such
a bad thing. I am amazed that my kids can handle it, and amazed at how
much they know at this age, compared to what I knew at that age!!

Personally, I don't think that the homework is
the only, or even the major, factor enabling such progress.
Even if it is, I think the cost of 9.5+ hour workdays
for children is unacceptable.

In that case, yes, I agree, it IS too much homework. There definetly
needs to be a balance, because the goal is not to undermine the
children from learning to take responsibility for it. In our district,
parental involvement tapers off until 5th grade, and by 6th they are
completely on their own.

And the benefit of having the parents manage all those
early years is....what? Studies don't show the value of
homework in the early grades in producing greater academic
success later. Having the parents do the planning/scheduling/
etc. just makes the child dependent upon the parents'
planning skills so that they *have* to be weaned off them,
in my opinion.

Best wishes,
Ericka

In article .com, shinypenny
says...

DD10 is always exhausted by the time she gets home at 6. She gets very
cranky, too. If for some reason she couldn't get her homework done at
afterschool (there was a field trip, for example), then we're in big
trouble, because like you're son, she is just too tired to focus.

We've found it helps to forget the homework until the morning. I
encourage an earlier bedtime, and have her set her alarm earlier than
normal. Then when she is fresh, she gets up and jumps right in to her
homework before school. Works well! She is most definetly a morning
person.


My son started doing this. By himself. It's simply amazing to me...

He sets his alarm for 4:00 am. (!!!) Really - 4:00 am on the weekdays. He
leaves at 6:50 am for hte school bus (those incredibly early Jr. High hours..)

He does his homework then, most of it. I get on him to try to finish most of it
during the evening, because he's toast if he oversleeps ohterwise. But he
hardly even oversleeps.

THEN, the other thing that amazes me, is that on weekend mornings he never
awakes, and sleeps 'till noon.

So he's on this amazing 5-2 sleep schedule, and it seems to work for him.

Although I think he does some sleeping at school - that's not good. But his
grades have actually been decent.

Banty

In article , Ericka Kammerer says...

Banty wrote:

Tried that. Ran into an interesting problem.

It's *MY SON* who is too contientious for that - he can't just up from homework
undone and turn it in unfinished, even with a note from me.

And I sure wasn't going to try to override what really is a fantastic inborn
trait. (He's 12 - hope it stays that way...)

Yeah, that too. I think many kids feel that way. The
few times I've told my son that it was just too late and he needed
to go to bed and I would explain to his teacher that he worked
plenty hard for plenty of hours before stopping, he was *extremely*
upset at the notion of not finishing his homework.

Yep. In our case, he would be too upset to sleep, making the whole thing
counterproductive.

Banty

Ericka Kammerer wrote:


To me, that is an unacceptable amount of homework for
elementary-school aged children. Where is the time for physical
activity? Where is the time for socialization? Where is the
time to do things with family? Where is the time to have some
kind of responsibilities around the home?

You're talking about DD12, not DD10 (who averages about one hour plus
30 minutes of reading)? Because even when DD10 gets her homework done
at afterschool, she has plenty of time to socialize, run around on the
playground, etc, and her homework rarely (maybe once or twice a month)
interferes with family time after 6.

As for DD12, she's in middle school, not elementary. I should add that
she may possibly be a unique kid. She is a straight A student, and
highly motivated to learn without any prompting from anyone. On her own
initiative, she does MORE than the required work. She's the infuriating
kid who always does the extra credit and challenge problems, completes
the book report three weeks early, goes out of her way to do her own
research outside of the classroom when a subject interests her. The
teachers love her. :-)

As for socialization, she tends to socialize around homework
activities. Quite a lot of her homework involves working with a
partner. She has homework dates on the weekends. For doing chores, she
has plenty of time for that and is a huge help around the house,
recently taking on all the laundry. For physical activity, she
currently swims and skis. It is true she probably needs more on a daily
basis, and it's something we've been brainstorming. When it was warmer
out, we'd take walks together after dinner. For family time, we
consider 6 to 8 pretty sacred, as well as the weekends. She might do
homework while I'm cooking, but does so from the kitchen so we can
visit at the same time. This kid is simply ultra-organized and driven,
and a very good time manager.


I'm glad that works well for you. We'd be between a
rock and a hard place, though! If my kids got home at 6pm,
we'd only be able to eat dinner and get them to bed! That
would be a 9.5 hour workday for the kids!

Yeah, it takes getting used to. We've been doing it since an early age.
And except for the nights we might go out as a family, they manage to
get to bed at a reasonable hour, believe it or not!


In that case, yes, I agree, it IS too much homework. There
definetly
needs to be a balance, because the goal is not to undermine the
children from learning to take responsibility for it. In our
district,
parental involvement tapers off until 5th grade, and by 6th they
are
completely on their own.

And the benefit of having the parents manage all those
early years is....what? Studies don't show the value of
homework in the early grades in producing greater academic
success later. Having the parents do the planning/scheduling/
etc. just makes the child dependent upon the parents'
planning skills so that they *have* to be weaned off them,
in my opinion.

I must not be explaining myself well. :-)

In our school, there is very little parental management involved. Yes,
the occasional project, but otherwise, we initial the homework and
that's it. By 5th, we don't even do this. I'm not
managing/planning/scheduling anything. The kids have slowly learned to
do that for themselves.

The end result is that DD12, now in middle school, is ultra-organized,
self-motivated and a fabulous time manager. DD10 is getting there. I
think by age 12 she will *also* be there.

jen

"Ericka Kammerer" wrote in message
...
Ruth Baltopoulos wrote:


Here is my strategy: I provide a place for homework to be
done and access to computers. I ask if it has been
completed (sometimes). I stay in touch with the school
(PTO, Conferences, Open Houses, School Committee) and
teachers are aware that I am interested in knowing of any
challenges or foibles. The end.

That strategy works fabulously under normal
circumstances. Under other situations, it doesn't work
out quite so well. There are nights my 4th grader comes
home with so much homework that if it happens on a day
when we have to do *anything* after school other than
eat dinner, he's up well past his bedtime to finish
it. Once he's that tired, if one of us is not sitting
with him to keep him focused, he falls asleep at his
desk. And heaven forbid you have a child with attention
issues, for whom it tends to take longer for homework
to get done in the first place and who might well require
parental attention to keep focus. And then there are
the children who are struggling with the material and
require substantial help from the parent to *teach* the
material in order for the child to be able to complete
the homework. And that's before we get to the stupid
assignments designed to create more "parental involvement"
that *require* the parent to participate--we have quite
a few of those. The instructions actually *tell* the
parent what the parent is supposed to be doing (so it's
not the child just conning the parent into doing it).
There are far too many nights when I'm wrung
out from attending to the needs of two kids' homework.
I resent that there are so many fun and educational
things we could do as a family, but our time to do
so is severely limited by the amount of homework that
is sent home. I do not see how well over an hour of
homework is appropriate in elementary school--add the
homework to the amount of time they're in school,
and many of these kids are putting in 50+ hour
weeks!
So, if you have a school that is sending home
reasonable amounts and types of homework, and is teaching
the children the material before assigning homework on
it, and your children don't have any extenuating
circumstances that make homework more challenging
than normal, I envy you. In that situation, I would
happily stay the heck out of the way while my kids
got their homework done, just as my parents did for
me. Unfortunately, I believe that the situation here
actively *UNDERMINES* children learning to be responsible
for their own homework by making it virtually impossible
for the children to take full responsibility for it.
Some years we have teachers who don't buy into the
homework overload madness, and those years are *so*
much better for us as a family--and (surprise, surprise)
the kids still manage to learn just as much or more
in those classes as the ones with mountains of homework.

OS has AD/HD with serious attention/focus problems. Fortunately, he is out
of HS, and about to graduate college with a BFA.

YS has CP with significant fine motor problems, and until this year needed
100% assistance with his HW. IOW, he got home from school at 3:30 and my
wife would work with him on English (she teaches that) and Social Studies
until dinner. After dinner, I took over and did the math and science until
around 9 PM.

Our regular district school's staff could not figure out why we wanted his
assignments for the week coming home on the preceding Friday. When I finally
got the point across to the individual teachers, they said that they would
not change their practices for *our convenience*.

Needless to say, he is now in a private special education school, paid for
by NY State, and the teachers there SUGGEST ways for us to better manage our
time. He is doing 30-40% of his own work now, using dictation software and
large type multiple choice handouts.

That is terrible. It's unconscionable (sp?) that a child's quality of
education should suffer like this. Incidentally, that business with the
student teacher was ludicrous.

I made a point of talking to the principal today in regards to the issue
with the student teacher. She swallowed hard and basically back peddled.
"OH no the reason you and the other parents are being told not to come into
this classroom is that now that the teacher has the student teacher there
she is able to work with the students having trouble." I wanted to say
"well why didn't they say that in the first place!" It appears that she was
caught in the middle and wanted to make excuses anyhow. Oh well. I made my
point telling them that I hope the students who need help will get it even
if it means the student teacher is uncomfortable."

Anni

shinypenny wrote:

Ericka Kammerer wrote:



To me, that is an unacceptable amount of homework for
elementary-school aged children. Where is the time for physical
activity? Where is the time for socialization? Where is the
time to do things with family? Where is the time to have some
kind of responsibilities around the home?


You're talking about DD12, not DD10 (who averages about one hour plus
30 minutes of reading)? Because even when DD10 gets her homework done
at afterschool, she has plenty of time to socialize, run around on the
playground, etc, and her homework rarely (maybe once or twice a month)
interferes with family time after 6.

At 10yo, 1.5 hours of homework still sounds excessive
to me. I think an hour is more than enough on top of seven
hours of school.

As for DD12, she's in middle school, not elementary. I should add that
she may possibly be a unique kid. She is a straight A student, and
highly motivated to learn without any prompting from anyone. On her own
initiative, she does MORE than the required work. She's the infuriating
kid who always does the extra credit and challenge problems, completes
the book report three weeks early, goes out of her way to do her own
research outside of the classroom when a subject interests her. The
teachers love her. :-)

That's great that she is thriving on this, but while
I certainly hope DS1 will still be enjoying academics and
school in middle school, I also hope that he will continue
to enjoy some things outside of school. It would be one
thing if his talents and interests just happened to be all
academic, but as he has demonstrated other talents and
interests as well, I think it would be a shame for him
to have to give them up in order to devote more than 50 hours
a week to academics. Heck, I maintained a heavy courseload
through college, graduated with honors, and didn't have to
put in much more than that! (Good thing, too, since I had
to work.)


And the benefit of having the parents manage all those
early years is....what? Studies don't show the value of
homework in the early grades in producing greater academic
success later. Having the parents do the planning/scheduling/
etc. just makes the child dependent upon the parents'
planning skills so that they *have* to be weaned off them,
in my opinion.


I must not be explaining myself well. :-)

In our school, there is very little parental management involved. Yes,
the occasional project, but otherwise, we initial the homework and
that's it. By 5th, we don't even do this. I'm not
managing/planning/scheduling anything. The kids have slowly learned to
do that for themselves.

Kindergarteners can manage their homework themselves?
They are able to plan their lives so that they have time to
do their homework? Or are parents creating the time and space
for them to be successful with their homework? Most kindergarteners
can't even read a calendar well, much less have much control over
their schedule or providing the resources necessary to get their
homework done.
The only logic to it is the theory that one is
establishing a *habit* of doing homework every single
day (ideally same time, same place) so that it sticks
because That's the Way It's Always Been. Personally,
I don't think that holds a whole lot of water. DH
didn't get up and shower every morning as a 4yo to
make sure he'd be in the habit by the time he had to
in order not to offend passers by with his unwashed
self, yet that habit is so engrained that I shudder
to think how he'd function without his morning dose
of hot water.

The end result is that DD12, now in middle school, is ultra-organized,
self-motivated and a fabulous time manager. DD10 is getting there. I
think by age 12 she will *also* be there.

But I rather suspect they could have had practically
no homework for early elementary and could still be at the
same place by now. Similarly, you can start a child on
piano at 4yo or at 7yo, but by the time they're 9yo you
probably can't tell the difference (except that you will
burn out some of the 4yos due to sheer frustration before
they even get to be 9yo piano players).

Best wishes,
Ericka

Banty wrote:

In article , Ericka Kammerer says...

Banty wrote:


Tried that. Ran into an interesting problem.

It's *MY SON* who is too contientious for that - he can't just up from homework
undone and turn it in unfinished, even with a note from me.

And I sure wasn't going to try to override what really is a fantastic inborn
trait. (He's 12 - hope it stays that way...)

Yeah, that too. I think many kids feel that way. The
few times I've told my son that it was just too late and he needed
to go to bed and I would explain to his teacher that he worked
plenty hard for plenty of hours before stopping, he was *extremely*
upset at the notion of not finishing his homework.


Yep. In our case, he would be too upset to sleep, making the whole thing
counterproductive.

Adriain actually woke up screaming at 3am that he
needed to do his homework one night during Nutcracker season
when I told him he just needed to go to bed and I would
talk to his teacher about it. I think that's sad that he
should feel so pressured about homework at this tender
age.

Best wishes,
Ericka

On Thu, 24 Feb 2005 13:34:56 -0500, Stephanie Stowe wrote:

"Ericka Kammerer" wrote in message
...
Stephanie Stowe wrote:


Off the wall curiosity question here.... What would happen if you
determined what *you* considered a reasonable amount of time, set the
timer for that amount of time, and called it quits after that?

Bless his heart, that's exactly what my DS2's teacher does
for math--they're to do 15 minutes of work. What isn't done after
15 minutes just doesn't get done. He evaluates both the accuracy
and amount of what's completed to get a bead on how well the
students understand the material. Fabulous. Love it.

This is assuming your child will give best effort for this amount of
time. What are grades based on? If it is clear from the tests that the
material is being aqcuired then what is the purpose of the homework? Is
it an end in itself?

I think how it's viewed depends on the teacher. In my
experience, the teachers who deliberately give a lot of homework
are True Believers. They believe that regular significant amounts
of homework will teach children to be responsible, to have a good
work ethic, to develop good study habits, etc. etc. etc. They
view not completing the homework as a character flaw, and see
any parent who isn't on board with the program as insufficiently
interested in a quality education for the child. Other teachers
can be more amenable to various strategies, but this one can be
a bit tricky. It can appear pretty unfair to other kids who
are doing the homework until it's done, whatever that takes.



Let me ask you this philosophical question from *your* opinion. What is your
child's math teacher's responsibility to your child regarding work ethic,
responsibility and whatnot as a primary goal? There is a need to assume that
the child has a degree of responsibility in order to achieve math skills.
But I think that a child's math teacher should be primarily focused on
achievement in math. Perhaps I am nuts.

I don't think you're nuts.

In my not-so-humble opinion, the Math teacher is there to guide my kids
though the math that I can't teach them. The Science teacher is there to
handle the science that I can't teach them. The Music teacher is there to
teach them everything about music, since I don't have the foggiest idea
about even the most basic concepts. ;-) But it is the responsibility
of my wife and I to teach my children to be good, responsible, contributing
members of our society. We had kids so that we could teach them how
to live a good life - not so that some teacher could try to turn them
into workaholics because he or she has some extreme idea of what
constitutes "good study habits". There are more than enough kids
being taught to be drones, already.

- Rich