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

"The Ranger" wrote in message
...
Mark Probert Mark wrote in message
...
[snip]
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*.
[snip]

Damn! I feel extremely lucky reading these stories!

The teachers at my daughter-units' current school are giving of their
time and efforts in so many ways that I can't list them all without
sounding like a flat-out Neener-Neener Brag... _Every_ teacher will work
with the parents, to a point, so that each of their students can succeed
(minus those few parents that require the make-work on top of
make-work). This isn't to say that these same teachers are willing to do
a formalized IAP for each of the 600 students but they are willing to
find out what will work and how to improve that which isn't. Two
teachers have even gone to the extreme of offering afterschool tutoring
for students at every grade so that parents aren't being forced to teach
concepts that they haven't learned themselves.

The local district has a well deserved reputation for many problems. Visit
www.newsday.com and search on Mepham, for starters.

Previously, they were sued by a family of a kid with Tourettes who was
tormented for months before he struck back and want then hospitalized by his
"peers." The district recently settled for a significant sum.

I learned a long time ago that with them it is better to switch than fight.
They were most helpful in getting rid of us and getting my son into the
special school, whose nick name is "The Harvard of Special Education" and is
well deserved.

Mark Probert Mark wrote in message
...
[snip]
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*.
[snip]

Damn! I feel extremely lucky reading these stories!

The teachers at my daughter-units' current school are giving of their
time and efforts in so many ways that I can't list them all without
sounding like a flat-out Neener-Neener Brag... _Every_ teacher will work
with the parents, to a point, so that each of their students can succeed
(minus those few parents that require the make-work on top of
make-work). This isn't to say that these same teachers are willing to do
a formalized IAP for each of the 600 students but they are willing to
find out what will work and how to improve that which isn't. Two
teachers have even gone to the extreme of offering afterschool tutoring
for students at every grade so that parents aren't being forced to teach
concepts that they haven't learned themselves.

The Ranger

"Banty" wrote in message
...

The other problem was that Weekends Were Sacred. No homework on weekends,
when
our schedule was more relaxed and things like writing could be broken up
and
made more pleasant. It was all stacked onto Mon. - Thur. AND Scouts had
to be
some night Mon. - Thur. AND band rehersals and concerts had to be some
night
Mon. Thur. The after school program was iffy regarding homework time and
environment, so we'd often have four overstuffed evenings, a real tired
kid on
Fridays, and lots of free time on weekends. Well bully for the weekend,
and we
would always plan bigger homework projects for then, but didn't make sense
for
our family and it made school kind of miserable.


I was wondering about this. DD doesn't get homework on Fridays but I
assumed it was because she's only in 2nd grade. You mean this is true for
all grades? Actually I'd rather she have *some* homework - the same math
worksheet and spelling - over the weekend. Not three hours worth but maybe
20 minutes worth (don't worry, we can stretch it to 3 hours .

Jeanne

toto wrote:

The generally accepted homework guidelines seem to be
as follows, though I am sure there are exceptions in various
places

Homework should have different purposes at different
grades. For younger students, it should foster positive
attitudes and habits of work. For older students, it should
facilitate knowledge acquisition in specific topics.
Recommended frequency and duration for homework
assignments should be:

* grades 1-3—one to three assignments a week, each
lasting no more than 15 minutes.
* grades 4-6—two to four assignments a week, each
lasting 15-45 minutes.
* grades 7-9—three to five assignments a week, each
lasting 45-75 minutes.
* grades 10-12—four to five assignments a week, each
lasting 75 to 120 minutes.

HAH! Generally accepted, where? Academia? From
what I hear from other parents, our school's guidelines
are considered pretty low, and they'd stack up to yours
as follows:

Yours Ours

1-3 15-45 min/week 40-120 min/week
4-6 30-180 min/week 160-360 min/week

And, of course, many times our guidelines are exceeded.
I'd say DS2 in 2nd grade falls well within the guidelines
at about 60 min/week, but DS1 in 4th grade probably
does about 8 hours/week of homework.

Best wishes,
Ericka

toto wrote:

On Thu, 24 Feb 2005 14:05:31 -0500, Ericka Kammerer
wrote:


Well, how the heck am I supposed to do that if
there's only one night to produce a clean draft of
an essay?


Are you sure the teacher isn't looking at the homework
as a rough draft that can be edited in class?

Yep. It's made clear what level of editing
is expected. If it's specifically *writing* homework,
there probably will be time for edits and drafts between
homework and classwork, but she doesn't bat an eyelash
at assigning an essay for homework in *another* subject,
where the night's homework is the one and only draft
of the paper and it's expected to be of reasonable quality.

Best wishes,
Ericka

Mermaid wrote in message
...
[snip]
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."

What a spineless piece of washed-up jelly-bloat!

I know you don't like confrontation, Mermaid, but a little push-back is
needed to drive your point home even further about the volunteer
situation. Get the other three (or four) parents together and re-insert
yourselves into the classroom. The teacher _can_ use the extra eyes and
hands for one-on-one reading, math and art, and the aid -- she's only a
student teacher -- can be used for the reason she's there, learning how
to write-develop-and-deliver a lesson plan under experienced
supervision.

Screw the lack of support from the school. Push back and push often; it
might feel like you're pushing against the ocean's tide but you're not.
Eventually the resource they get from the parent community will enhance
their overall points and community.

The "BTDT" Ranger

"Ruth Baltopoulos" wrote:
: Then obviously something has to give - usually a class.
Rarely (or has
: things really changed that much) do schools require six
classes and three
: electives. Drop an elective or two. But even if this is
the case, I don't
: think heavy coursework is a legitimate reason for parents
to do their
: children's homework.

I have heard of this homework nightmare from others in my
town, but my teenagers must be attending a different school,
because I have *never* seen the amount of homework lamented
about smile, and if I had, I definitely would have
addressed it with the Superintendent and Principals. Many,
many parents have vocalized to me that they have no life in
the evenings as they sit with their children while they
do/help them with their homework boggle!

Sometimes it depends upon the kid. My kids in 3rd or 4th grade
frequently had 3 hours homework in one subject. It took that long for
them to come up with and write 15 nontrivial sentences for their 15
spelling words (my son would try to write sentences like "I am XXXXX"
for all his sentences but we required more than that). It took them
that long to solve the 20-25 arithmetic problems on the page, both
with the help of parents who would help and hint but not give them the
answers. We eventually got the homework for my son reduced to 5
sentences, which made it a reasonable amount of time. But I'm sure
other kids were able to spill out 15 sentences in 15 minutes or less.
(My kids were ESL, but the problem went beyond that to simply not
being able to think of sentences).

lojbab
--
lojbab
Bob LeChevalier, Founder, The Logical Language Group
(Opinions are my own; I do not speak for the organization.)
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org

"Stephanie Stowe" wrote:
Once he's that tired, if one of us is not sitting
with him to keep him focused, he falls asleep at his
desk.

See that's wrong. If a kids gets to here in the normal course events (vs
blowing off homework all day) then that is just too much.

There are many kids (and mine were among them) that are mentally
exhausted by the time school let out. My son as late as 4th or 5th
grade had no trouble going to sleep at 800, and sleeping all night.
We could seldom get 15 minutes work out of him in the evening without
obvious signs of being tired (and not just laziness). He had
attention issues, and merely staying attentive all day for him, with
medication, was exhausting work. My daughter who had no such
attention deficit diagnosis, was frequently reported to lose her focus
at school about 1-130PM. We later linked the early tiredness to the
lack of recess, and the fact that the school started lunch before 11am
(and the kids only had a half hour for their lunch break, so that they
had very little time to move around after standing in the cafeteria
line for up to 15 minutes, and being required to stay in assigned
seats while eating).

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.

What classes / ages does this occur in? Why does this occur, I wonder. As
in, what is the teacher hoping to gain?

Most elementary grades. And it is something that is necessary for any
sort of long term project when kids have attention spans of less than
1/2 hour.

lojbab
--
lojbab
Bob LeChevalier, Founder, The Logical Language Group
(Opinions are my own; I do not speak for the organization.)
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org

Ericka Kammerer wrote in message
...
toto wrote:
On Thu, 24 Feb 2005 14:05:31 -0500, Ericka Kammerer
wrote:
Well, how the heck am I supposed to do that if
there's only one night to produce a clean draft of
an essay?

Are you sure the teacher isn't looking at the homework
as a rough draft that can be edited in class?

Yep. It's made clear what level of editing is expected.
If it's specifically *writing* homework, there probably
will be time for edits and drafts between homework and
classwork, but she doesn't bat an eyelash at assigning
an essay for homework in *another* subject, where
the night's homework is the one and only draft of the
paper and it's expected to be of reasonable quality.

That's the benefit of computers and word processing programs.
Daughter-unit Beta is writing multiple essays this year in disparate
topics and subjects. I made sure the teacher understood that each essay
would be coming in printed from a laser printer. He didn't have a
problem with that. In fact he asked the rest of the class to make sure
they turned in their essays printed from the computer to help with ease
of reading (most are still writing using Kinder-glyphs and crayons for
handwriting). Only two kids took him up on it (because their parents
forced them!) The other 32 students use their computers to instant
message and play games! Using it for what it was designed is a totally
alien concept. shakes head

The Ranger

The Ranger wrote:


That's the benefit of computers and word processing programs.
Daughter-unit Beta is writing multiple essays this year in disparate
topics and subjects. I made sure the teacher understood that each essay
would be coming in printed from a laser printer. He didn't have a
problem with that. In fact he asked the rest of the class to make sure
they turned in their essays printed from the computer to help with ease
of reading (most are still writing using Kinder-glyphs and crayons for
handwriting). Only two kids took him up on it (because their parents
forced them!) The other 32 students use their computers to instant
message and play games! Using it for what it was designed is a totally
alien concept. shakes head

While my son prefers keyboarding to handwriting, that's
not the issue. Writing is hard for him, and it's coming up
with the words and the structure that takes time for him, more
so than writing things down.

Best wishes,
Ericka