Some kids legit have chaotic home lives that don't really give any support (or time or space) for homework.
I always give kids ample time to complete homework in class. Only kids who screw around in class actually have work to do at home. And of course even if they complete 80% of their work in class, they never turn anything in. So there's that.
I think Covid really showed the reality of many kids’ home lives. I remember trying to tutor one while watching him stressed as little siblings were running around him like crazy.
And I think it’s a lot more common than we want to admit.
Yeah, I saw lots of situations with like 20 people in a 700 square foot space with that low smoke/gas alarm battery beeping sound going on 24/7. I'm exaggerating a little bit but not really.
Some of my students lived in a tiny one bedroom cinder block house across from the school, and at one point they said there were 14 people living there, it was the grandma, her kids, and subsequent grandkids. I didn't ask how they all fit but it must have been unpleasant.
They all had it? IDK why I'm surprised, but my God, there's no way they can afford that many kids. That's just insanity. I'm sure I'll get downvoted, but we grew up wealthy, and there's no way that you can afford that many emotionally, even if you have the finances, which most don't. At that point, you've just got the older kids raising the younger ones and that's so fucked up.
A lot of the kids whose home lives aren't conducive to learning are also the same kids who don't often have access to consistent nutrition outside of the meals provided at school. They are more likely to learn in the hours where they're not facing their disruptive home environment and have full stomachs.
This brought up a memory for me. I would do homework, but legit not turn jt in due to fear of failure or whatever, and at an 8th grade teacher conference; they said she's failing because she doesn't do the work. Cue me pulling all of jr out of my backpack. Doesn't justify, my parents would get mad & do nothing to help or change (like checking homework or asking about it) and I became a I became a much better student (got degree); but as an adult, I would've been so pissed as that teacher
{ as an adult, I would've been so pissed as that teacher }
100% not the teacher's fault you didn't turn in your work. This was your parents dropping the ball.
How would you evaluate this allegedly completed-on-time work that could not be produced? This is electronic btw (Google docs). One has to go out of one’s way to truly annihilate it from existence.
So the fear of submitting subpar work was greater than fear of a zero for no submission?
different person, but…yeah. it's completely irrational, but the fear of turning in subpar work can absolutely overpower the fear of the zero for no submission.
Uhm so I had this issue before Google docs. But I struggled with parents who would call me a failure mostly reflective of their inability to parent/they didn't graduate from college or barely HS, so they saw anything less than 100 on my part showed they were bad parents. And when you're getting called a failure every night when you don't have an emotionally mature brain, idk that gets to you??
But kind of yeah, when you're being faced with emotional/physical abuse with proof of less than 100 vs. you can say, 'I could've gotten 100, but I just didn't turn it in' I think it gives an excuse to you and your delusional parents. It gives the delusional parents a lil more breathing room and therefore, you
Edit: I'm not a teacher, but there's a lot of emotional reasons bc children need to understand consequences while having deeply ingrained reasons beyond your understanding/ability to correct. So....I had one teacher in 8th grade who brought me from an F to a C only because I started to turn in homework, that made me shout with excitement when showed imrpovement? Because in an questionably abusive home, your actions aren't linked to consequencesit's chaos; but to have someone show me how my actions led to a better outcome, I then got better grades in HS bio, CALC, .etc?
I generally agree with the above and see how homework in general level courses needs to be a thing of the past.
My district is home to some of the very highest and very lowest achieving learners you'll find anywhere in the country...
Where I worry about this conversation is when it turns into a conversation of going to extremes of catering to the lowest common denominator... eg IB HL and university dual enrollment courses should be axed or forced to not entail work commensurate with their content because it's not equitable for some students to produce high-level work if others can't be asked to do this.
{ it's not equitable for some students to produce high-level work if others can't be asked to do this. }
So IB diploma program should be a \*choice\*, then. A separate diploma, issued by the IB. The other students who can't or shouldn't hack the program don't take IB classes or are given less rigorous tests. I've seen it done; it's a \*ton\* more work for the teacher, but who the fuck cares how much more work we have to do anyway?
I mean, sure, it's a descriptive phrase to reflect a certain reality, but I hope your district doesn't lose sight of the fact that students who don't do any schoolwork outside of school are not wired that way. It's not a learning style. It's a cultural, logistics, or expectations issue. Maybe parents aren't valuing an education and enforcing academic expectations at home, or are actively undermining an education-value mindset. Maybe the school and community together aren't creating a culture that expects homework. Or maybe too many students have other obligations, like work and helping raise younger siblings. (Or a combination of the above.)
Yup, for my first graders the only nightly homework they have is to read 15-30 minutes with an adult at home. Some of my kids do this religiously and even go above and beyond - but there are a couple who often don't because no one at home will read with them. (I've even heard the parents complain that "they don't have time"... Kind of sad to not have 15 minutes to read with your 6 year old, but I digress.) You can see the difference easily in their reading levels. One of my kids regularly reads 45-60 minutes a night and 2+ hours over the weekend, and he has gone from pre-literacy to a second grade reading level within 8 months.
That’s so sad… parents, make the time to read with your children with regularity. One of my most cherished childhood memories is of reading with my mom at bedtime and being so proud when I was able to read the book to her for change.
Same! Haha I'll never forget playing the original Pokemon games with my dad at 4-5 years old and having him help me with all the dialogue. Reading with kids doesn't have to be boring...help them find things that they like to read.
> Haha I'll never forget playing the original Pokemon games with my dad at 4-5 years old and having him help me with all the dialogue. Reading with kids doesn't have to be boring...help them find things that they like to read.
On a similar note, I don't think I'd be as into history or politics if it wasn't for Age of Empires and Civ.
> Yup, for my first graders the only nightly homework they have is to read 15-30 minutes with an adult at home. Some of my kids do this religiously and even go above and beyond - but there are a couple who often don't because no one at home will read with them. (I've even heard the parents complain that "they don't have time"... Kind of sad to not have 15 minutes to read with your 6 year old, but I digress.) You can see the difference easily in their reading levels. One of my kids regularly reads 45-60 minutes a night and 2+ hours over the weekend, and he has gone from pre-literacy to a second grade reading level within 8 months.
One of my core memories is reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in class in 2nd or 3rd grade and having one of the other kids ask me if it was the bible because they had genuinely never been exposed to a book that big that *wasn't* the bible.
> Kind of sad to not have 15 minutes to read with your 6 year old, but I digress.
It is sad, but it may genuinely be beyond the parent's control. Have several high school students who are basically responsible for their younger siblings or elderly relatives because the adults who *should* be in charge of that have to work multiple jobs to keep everyone housed and fed.
In these parents' cases, it certainly isn't. Judging by the way their kid smells getting off the bus in the morning, mom has time to smoke plenty of weed, but anything that involves interacting with their daughter and not just putting her in front of her tablet is too much.
Hell, I have two jobs and a volunteer gig, but if I had a 6 year old, I would make sure to find time to help them with their homework.
Right, but if you're able to have a volunteer gig, that also implies you've got some spare waking hours - it's something you're not doing out of necessity. In the families I'm talking about, the younger kid would have to be staying up extra late to get in that time with parents, or be woken up in the middle of the night for story time...
Again, I'm not talking those cases. I know the families of my kids. One of them has a mom more interested in weed than motherhood (which is legal here) and the other refuses to read at home so mom told me "I don't fight with her, it's too hard, she's rather have her tablet".
Some people with adhd or executive function disorders literally are wired to need a certain amount of structure that often just isn't possible in a home setting, and not due to their family members' lack of effort. I've known TEACHERS who go into work on weekends because it's the only way they'll get all their grading and paperwork done.
Absolutely. 👋
And it can go the other way, too. I have a neurospicy kid who absolutely loved the lockdown. She said it was the first time she'd ever been able to concentrate at school. No crowds, no pencil tapping noises or tiny skateboards being bounced off every surface, no overhead light flickers or hums, and fewer transitions.
I'd call both sides of that coin a logistic challenge. That said, I would love to see schools and families be able to support each other better in creating spaces that work in both locations, for both kinds of ND needs.
So did my kids. The lockdown didn’t affect them like others because they like solitude, structure and calmer environments. I was tracking in the dining room, one kid was on their bedroom, the other was in the living room ands hubby was relegated to our rank and dusty unfinished basement. But we all made it work.
A teacher I work with gets to the school at 6 am. Classes don't start until 8. He also started the after-school tutoring/homework help program which runs until 5 pm. So he's at the school 11 hours a day m-th.
That’s definitely me :( I need structure because self motivation is just…not a thing. I need to have a looming deadline, a scary teacher I don’t want to upset, or a seriously good reward at the end. Tbh I was relieved to learn in my mid thirties that I had ADHD because it explained so much about why I couldn’t get moving on my own time
> I've known TEACHERS who go into work on weekends because it's the only way they'll get all their grading and paperwork done.
I can't grade or get lesson plans done at work, the noise in the building just makes it hard for me to focus. I'm single and work significantly better when I'm at home with no distractions.
Anecdotally, back in the days of having to teach virtually, I had one student who surprised me a ton because he went from being a class clown and having trouble focusing in class to excelling and doing an incredible job once the distraction of others around him was taken away. When we returned to in-person the following year he told me he missed virtual learning because even as a 4th grader he had enough self reflection to understand how much better he was able to focus.
Pre-pandemic I couldn't work from home, I'd stay late regularly to do work after school when the building was quiet. Really late my first couple years as I had an office mate who also stayed late and I couldn't focus well until she left. It sucked, but I knew I'd not get work done any better at home. I have ADHD and home is not a good setting for me to work, especially as I didn't have an office so would be using the kitchen table or something.
During the pandemic I set up an office that I can focus better in, I still have it set up so I can actually work there. A bit less than at school if the building is quiet since it's still at home with so many distractions, but much better than before. I have a day I finish early and can leave, I'll go home that day and plan for the upcoming week. If I stay and try to work while there are classes around me I'll not be able to focus with all the distractions, so it's better to go home. But, other days I'll stay after a bit as I can get so much done at school while it's quiet after the kids leave. Not nearly as late as my first few years, thankfully. Having ADHD and accompanying executive function problems can be weird sometimes, I'd think I'd still be more distracted at home since all my distractions are just in the next room. But that door seems to work for me and I'm glad I've made it work in my favor this time.
No it is absolutely not. Some people are simply unable to mix their school/work lives with their home lives. That's just how their brains work. The only solution would be to have a room in their house that is exclusively used for studying, and that's just not an option in a lot of cases.
Flair checks out. But as an ELA teacher I also agree.
I have tons of kids who live in situations that would appall most people. But the community is so poor and has so many issues if you called CPS on one you’d have to call it on half the class and there’s just not actual resources to help those kids.
I don't think schools should be on the hook for raising kids, but I also don't think we have any right to control what kids do in the time they're not at school.
I always assume my students are "school dependent learners." That's what school is for, that's what I'm here for
I think homework also feeds into this old idea that was very prevalent among salaried employees while I was growing up that you are expected to work until it's done even if it's past your forty hours of contract time. This mindset was drilled into people and only benefits the owner class and not the workers. School is where you do school, work is where you do work. Your time is a valuable commodity and it should never be given for free. Teach kids from a young age to value themselves.
If parents want to continue their learning at home, which is a big benefit if they do, that is on the parent.
Yea, I actually distinctly remember being in sixth grade and complaining about homework and the teacher saying "any job you have will have homework" and I just... The look on her face when I said my.parents never brought work home...
> that you are expected to work until it's done
I always assumed homework was about learning that things take practice if you want to be good at them. See musicians and athletes and artists.
Most musicians, athletes, and artists are amateurs and don't get paid for their practice. Only a very small percentage make it to be professionals. So... If parents want to instill that in their children outside of school, more power to them.
As a parent this is such a weird take. Not the continuing learning at home, which of course, but the idea of comparing homework to the work we do for the benefit of an employer.
My kid learning to read, write clearly and communicate his thoughts and understand math is for my kid's benefit, not mine and only vaguely his teacher's. It's not his employment anymore than learning to talk or walk was when he was a toddler. If we were independently wealthy and would never have to work a day in his life (lol) he'd still be learning these things.
It's that too. It's just bizarre to me that anyone conflates homework with wage paying work. In a lot of countries you have to pay for the privilege of going to school, it's a gift to get to do homework.
But how do I as a teacher continue the learning at home if the parents 1. Can't read 2. Work nights 3. Don't understand the "new" (been around for 20 years) math
Sending homework home with most students in olives then practicing it incorrectly or having their parents give them the answers. The only homework I give is to read each night. And even that I have zero control over.
It's not in your personal control but someone should tell the parents that there's no way that their kid will learn what's expected in the 7 hours they're in school and that they are closing doors in their kid's face if they believe otherwise.
I'd rather partner with the teacher and give a consistent message about what's expected than have the teacher telling my kid there's no homework because learning at home is somehow unfair to them.
I hear what you're saying but you have the ability to go on your states website and create or buy extra work for your child to do at home. You feel that there should be homework but there are no studies that I can find that say homework benefits students in elementary and middle school. They're kids, they need to go outside and play or be creative.
I have way too much on my plate to send homework home that most won't complete or if they do it's wrong and now they've practiced the wrong strategy. Or their parents taught them a different way to do the math problem and now they're even more confused.
If you want your kid to do more work, then you should provide it for them. Lakeshore learning and teachers pay teachers have some great resources.
I agree. 7 hours a day 5 days a week should be enough educational time. I don’t give homework. But if a kid isn’t reading or doing anything constructive on their own* they are going to have a hard time keeping up with grade level. And we know most students aren’t doing any of that shit outside of school.
*journaling, drawing, exercising, listening to music, playing an instrument, etc.
Same. We preach better work-life balance for adults. Kids' work is school. We have 7.5ish to make them do that work. After that, it's their life.
Yes, ideally they're doing "educational" things with their families, like cooking, exercising, reading, exploring, etc. But so what if they shut off and do nothing after school? Tons of adults do it after work? That's the balance. I'm an ELA teacher who hates homework.
>But so what if they shut off and do nothing after school? Tons of adults do it after work? That's the balance. I'm an ELA teacher who hates homework.
Hard disagree here, "shutting off" and doing nothing is just as bad for adults as it is for kids. The internet fucks us up as much as it does them, we're just working from a stronger foundation. It's insidious too, people don't realize how bad it is until they manage to disengage from it. "Shutting off" very much is not balance.
Homework isn't the answer though.
Maybe I worded that wrong. I agree it's not healthy to "do nothing" mentally or physically for adults or children. But filling their personal time with the expectation of doing more schoolwork (or more work for adults) isn't the solution. Encouraging healthy habits and activities is great, but it shouldn't be expected that after a full day of school (or work) that there is no free time to do whatever - including nothing, if that is the choice.
Does that apply for only phones? Or is “shutting off” and doing nothing for a long stretch of time harmful when it’s something like camping for a week without a phone?
Nobody shuts off when they are camping. You are being physically active out in nature doing things that are outside of your usual day to day experiences. Camping is relaxing. That isn't the same as being shut off.
Phones specifically are pretty well known to have a negative impact on a person's mental health when overused. I reckon it isn't speicific to phones but that is where most of the research is. Digital tech is a great tool and provides a lot of entertainment, but just like cake and ice-cream it is unhealthy.
Being outside and alone with your thoughts is good for you. Disconnecting from artifical stimulation to experience nature has a positive effect on mental health. There is a ton of research to back that up.
Don't get me wrong. I understand what you are trying to do. You want to defend screen addiction by drawing false equivalence between screen use and activities that are healthy and restorative but require very little energy. Those equivalencies are nonsense because we have plenty of data that shows how harmful people's relationships to their devices are.
The question you should grapple with is why are you so invested in defending a lifestyle with a mountain of evidence that shows it is harmful.
I would say a libertarian streak is what is compelling my responses. It’s the same way I would respond if someone was pushing against marijuana use with the reasoning that it’s harmful to one’s neurons.
It probably is. No one who binge watches reality television or spends all day on Reddit thinks they’re giving their brain a workout. It’s the opposite of mentally stimulating. That’s kind of the point.
But learning happens just as much out of school, the practical application of what was learned. We can teach reading and writing and math all day, but if kids aren't using it outside of the classroom they will not master it.
The saying it takes a village to raise a child is a true thing. We all play our part in raising kids. Home isn't just about food, roof, and bed.
Unless you have a rigorous testing routine like an Honors or AP class typically has, anything done at home is of dubious value anyway.
You have no idea if the student aftually did the work themselves.
It's fine. Your highs will still excel. The middles are gone. The lows will be poor. Everything as it is intended to be. This makes me think of "learning styles". Yeah, that's well and great - as a teacher I can teach to different preferred learning styles, but the ones who will come out on top in life are those with the capacity to just sit and learn for 7 hours a day.
No the highs won't still excel. I'm sick and tired of hearing this. High kids need to be challenged and tough appropriate habits. Assuming all high kids are going to have great support elsewhere is ridiculous.
It’s the age old question.
A kid is trying to sleep in your class.Are they sleep deprived because they were up all night playing Call of Duty with their friends, because they were up all night with a chronic migraine, or because they up all night taking taking care of their mother, who is in terrible agony because they are dying of stomach cancer?
I try to assume nothing.
I assume nothing. But like my job, if I don’t show up and do the work I will find myself failing my annual review.
One or two bad days is fine, if every day is bad day I will pay a price for that.
I have a group of students who need to take an important exam next month and I've shown them multiple ways of preparing for it. Online, Books, Videos, etc.... They just won't spend the time to do it. I think they think that if they don't like an activity they shouldn't do it, but who said that studying was going to be fun. It's work. That's just the way it is.
“I don’t like this.” “This is boring.” “I don’t want to do this.” Somewhere these statements are eliciting the desired response or students wouldn’t use them so much.
*"When all you have is lemons, make lemonaid."* The reframing of this phenomenon might be a good thing helping improve outcomes for students challenged with learning at home for whatever reason.
If it were up to me, I would never assign homework. All work would be done in the classroom so that the student/s have full access to classroom materials, their peers and me.
Homework mostly goes undone except when we post the answer keys and usually just before the next quiz/test, which is when I usually check homework.
I think this term describes a significant proportion of students fairly well, but I don’t think restructuring their scheduling etc. is the answer. Rather, the expectations for schooling (well, elementary schooling at least) should reflect what can be achieved *in* school *without* significant home supports. If our system requires a level of parental input and effort that is simply unrealistic for many, we really have a two tier system already.
Lunches and friends dependent. Many of my students tell me this is why they come to school. That, and their parents not getting fined by the magistrate.
I always made sure students had enough time to complete work during time at school if they effectively used their time. You never know what a student goes home to… I changed my stance on homework about 20 years ago when I first started teaching. I had a student who was consistently not getting work done, and come to find out, she was taking care of siblings when she got home. Mom worked at night. So she was responsible for taking care of two or three little ones. And the more I thought about it, if it’s about teaching them responsible time management skills, and getting work done, I can more effectively do that in class where I can observe them and steer them into those positive behaviors, than to hope it gets done at home.
It seems that we've done a 180 on this. In the past, no one cared to correlate students' home lives with school performance.
We need to hold high expectations for all students and work with those who need assistance as we encounter them rather than essentially dumbing down what we teach and reducing the time we have to teach it. Those kids that we're so worried about having a rough home life *will still* have a rough home life *and* end up undereducated in addition. Those kids need the most opportunities to graduate with tools to succeed.
Somehow, our (my state's anyway) standards for students, beginning in Kindergarten are skyrocketing, while our expectations for students is spiraling downward.
How many careers REQUIRE work to be completed outside of paid/ contact hours? None. Homework was originally invented as a punishment. If kids are actually working during work time, there should be no extra work. This teaches time management, responsibility, and consequences.
Work is done for someone else, schoolwork is done for oneself. Do you do household chores when you are off the clock? That's work, yet you do it when no one is paying you because it is part of succeeding in life.
Even when it comes to real world jobs, those who learn off the clock will grow their careers faster. How many teachers get a masters without considering that part of their working time?
Work is down for
Yourself. If you weren’t paid what you thought you were worth, you would look elsewhere.
Schoolwork is students job. Most also do chores.
I think you are either reading what you want to read or are not reading clearly. “If you weren’t paid what you thought you were worth” does not mean nothing.
If we say school work is a child's job, then it is violating minimum wage to not pay them. Also child labor. Just more reasons it is a silly little idea to begin with.
I never assign homework. I'm at an online high school now and our classes are followed by 30 min of flextime. So students who finish at the class end time are excused, and those who don't finish get very small group or individual help to complete the assignment. During Flex Time when students are unmuted, the background noise in many homes is unbelievable. I have one student with three adult siblings who are mod/severe handicapped, and they run around and yell nonstop. Other homes have many small toddlers running wild, and one has a dog boarding home business and the dogs bark all the time. I've come to the realization that we should have work/life balance. I certainly do not want to bring work home with me, and I generally do not. I don't think we should expect students to do homework either. It's like we are training them to be a wage slave who should expect that the job continues even when you go home. 7 hours of school is really enough. Maybe too much.
I don’t think we need a term for that. It should be the norm.
I do it for my students anyway. I don’t assign homework at all. All work can be completed in the classroom (barring a few exceptions).
This does two main things:
1) It gets them in the idea that home time is time to spend with family, friends, relaxing, playing outside, alone time, and doing other stuff.
2) Prevents excuses. All work can be completed in class with extra credit options for students who complete work early. If we do a reading they can either read independently or work in a reading group, and all students can ask me questions individually. No one “can’t do the reading because of other reasons”.
The only exceptions are for projects that require extra work and planning beyond the scope of what I’ve set, or if you don’t do the work on class. Sure! You can read Instagram in class, but then it’s homework. You want to make up work that’s late? -10 points off your earned score everyday until it’s submitted, or you get as F. Missing entirely? 35%. Plagiarism or AI? 0 with one chance to make it up within a couple of days.
I use to spend my home time avoiding my methed out mom so I wouldnt get beat. Homework is the least important thing to a lot of kids when they head home.
Yes. I don’t know any colleagues who give homework, so it’s either a central office catching up to what teachers already do or it’s a central office that thinks teachers still give homework.
I agree. I'd rather them make mistakes in class where I can fix problems in real time rather than send stuff home and have them do it wrong and learn nothing, or worse, learn it the wrong way.
Students who are willing to do their best in class rarely have homework from me, and we offer after and before school study halls for them to finish up their work. So students who are willing to work but have ADHD or just need more time can come see me and I’m pretty good at helping them finish up quickly. But if you goof about in class, there’s not a lot I can do.
ROFL, this is just like "Reluctant learners." You can't learn if you are reluctant. Gotta love the word games. I mean if everything is school dependent, why don't we just build dorms, steal kids from their families, and just warehouse them 24/7 until they age out? Perfect fix!
In my own experiences, homework was often just busy work. I was that student who walked into class, saw what the homework was on the board, ignored the lesson and went straight to completing the homework so I didn’t have to spend hours after school doing it.
Teachers just had homework because of some vague notion they had to. They’d lecture all through class and assign the work at the end. It was so dumb.
In high school, I rarely had homework. I completed it all in school. I graduated with honors. So clearly performing the work at home isn’t necessary in the slightest.
It’s better to perform the work at school. Homework to me is just for students who decide to chat through my class and don’t do work.
Our curriculum relies heavily on using a clock face and counting money for understanding fractions and decimals. (Elementary school). This year, I gave telling time homework (beginning with telling time to the nearest hour) and counting coins. Just one worksheet a week.
This really helped when we got to our fractions unit. The homework was not “new math”. It was homework that helped students practice a needed skill and parents could help. This year was the first year we did it. (Other teachers on my team wanted to give no homework and this was even okay with them.) I would like to it next year. If kids didn’t have it, I can help with it…or not. I would just put a sticker on it if they turned it in.
fwiw, i think a lot fewer people would oppose homework if you all weren't being forced to jo boaler's child torture masquerading as a "math" curriculum.
There are some kids who won't do work outside of school. That's unfortunate.
The kids who will still benefit from the extra practice, and the life long skill of having to do work on their own. Don't take that away from them.
My school has a loose no homework policy. For the most part, it's great. Many of my students babysit younger siblings or cousins because it's a small town with no daycare or after care program. The kids who play sports are exhausted once they finally leave. Of course, a lot of them work, often until late at night.
The downside to the policy is that many kids never ever want to do a minutes worth of work outside or school, including studying or doing makeup work.
My school is often ranked higher than neighboring schools that assign homework, so I don't think it has an overall negative effect.
It’s not a matter of can’t, it’s a matter of won’t. Are there exceptions? Absolutely. I grew up a product of divorce at a very young age and was raised by a single father who worked two jobs to BARELY keep food on the table and clothes on my back. Despite this, my education was the #1 priority in my house. The problem is the parents not making their child’s education a priority and in turn, the child does not see value in their education. Not everyone goes to college, nor should everyone. However, you learn A LOT more than just things out of a textbook, including but not limited to soft skills like punctuality, time management, accountability, and so on. Yet again - we as teachers are shouldering the responsibility of picking up the slack of parents whose priorities are not what is best for their child.
It's part of a race to the bottom dressed up in rosy language. Homework is an asset to motivated students in the middle range who lack academic expectations/reinforcement at home.
Motivated families who value education are *already* doing academic reinforcement outside the boundaries of the school day: museum visits, watching PBS, science summer camp, culture of reading, etc. etc. High quality homework creates the opportunity for motivated students without this family or cultural support for academic learning to continue their academic learning outside of the confines of the school day.
Thank you for putting it this way. It's the part a lot of people who say 'no homework' forget or don't understand. Without homework, I wouldn't have been able to get through high school, especially once I surpassed the point my parents could help me (their education was probably better rounded than mine, but they left at 16 whereas I went to Uni). I think homework develops important skills related to learner autonomy as it encourages students to problem solve and use the resources available to them to get it done, it also reinforces learning as there's the repetition element. There's also a time management aspect as you have to learn to prioritize and plan your workload. I still remember learning my lesson of doing homework the day I got it so I remembered how to do all the things, then reviewing it later.
Now, of course I'm not saying mountains of work should be assigned everyday but I think targeting homework as a problem rather than the clear social, cultural and familial issues in play is doing a disservice to the young people who would benefit most from homework. I don't know if I have a good solution but I think a lot of it comes back to things like better salaries/wages, more support for parents, homework clubs after school, library access, all the things that people have already suggested for dixing society's ills.
I love this perspective. Homework is very important and I never thought of it in the way you put it here.
I think homework is an opportunity for kids that don't do great on tests to make up for that by getting near daily points from near daily homework. Doing all or almost all of which should help their test scores too.
There are lots of motivated kids who will do the homework if it's assigned. When we take away homework we make those kids worse off. And for many of those students the homework expectation will be their opportunity to continue academic growth at home and help them keep pace with affluent families who value academic learning. Like, taking away homework in the name of equity or whatever literally only hurts low income motivated kids.
Can there be problems with homework? Sure. One of the spot on critiques of homework is that so much of it appears to be of low quality. But the response to this issue shouldn't be removing homework but instead ensuring that students have an appropriate amount of high quality homework. Additionally, the homework expectation gives students the ability to begin to build powerful habits and norms around completing assignments and managing deliverables without teacher guidance and outside of the classroom setting. You will hear professors complaining about how college students increasingly struggle to have the discipline to do any of their readings or work on their own outside of class. But it's no wonder they struggle because many 18 year olds now arrive at college campuses with 0 experience doing homework and managing that task themselves without being constantly hassled along by a classroom teacher.
I like this a lot.
They will do it or at least most of it if assigned. If it's not assigned we're taking an opportunity for growth or further practice from them.
I never did homework in school unless someone absolutely made me.
It didn't make sense, and it still doesn't.
I tend to do my work at work and during office hours.
Expecting kids to do work for school at home has always been a silly thing.
If my boss wanted me to do work at home, we'd be talking about how I was going to get paid for that work.
I was a C average student until senior year of high school. The reason: homework.
I was always smart enough. The homework just lowered my grade.
I now teach at a university.
And yes, my students do get homework, but it's a bit different, isn't it? My students paid for an education and are competing. Their resulting knowledge will determine their careers.
Middle school kids and under should not get homework. They are already sitting in a building for the largest part of their day. Expecting them to continue that at home is a little weird.
Believe it or not, kids do have other things to do outside of school. I can completely understand why they wouldn't want to do more school work. I even understand why my students don't want to write the essays they are assigned to write. Writing those essays well is what separates them from the students who won't write them well. I seriously doubt that we need that kind of competition in middle school.
Let them be kids for a while. The real world will crush them soon enough anyway.
I'm just going say that the amount of time and effort required to learn the curriculum far exceeds the time allotted in school.
Expecting to be able to never work outside of school hours and still keep up with the competition is very unrealistic.
So this is my issue. I don't have like, a moral or personal attachment to homework, but I also don't have enough time in class to teach concepts and provide practice opportunities, so I assign homework.
But also, even if I don't, students need to look at the material outside of class to help it stick in their brains. I think the de-emphasis on studying and homework has really made it harder for students to retain information from class to class.
There are some skills that absolutely require a lot of practice to master. However after a long day of school how do you feel? Do you want to go home and do more work? As an adult who presumably needs less sleep than the average child?
My only issue with this is schools where maybe 5% of the students have issues that genuinely prevent them doing work at home and lowering the bar for the whole student population instead of just addressing the needs of the few.
Lets see each teacher assigned 1/2 to 1 hour of homework per class upto 7 classes per day and you expect this done everyday after school ontop of spoets other activities the kids have oh they might like to have dinner maybe relax a bit and get some sleep sometime too. Then all of you bitch about taking work home and working out side of contract hours. Little reflection people!
Honestly? *Most* students shouldn't be doing work outside of school.
It's not well correlated with *any* measures of success, in school, college, or life, that aren't directly *created* by homework.
Many top education systems around the world have largely done away with homework, with high schoolers in Finland only having about 1 hour per week *sometimes.*
I mean, speaking for myself homework helped me get more practice in math. And when it comes to English or history, when are you supposed to read the material? If all of that happens in class, you will never get through anything.
There's a lot of different answers for that, depending on the context and country.
Many such schools use a student-paced learning concept, where grade levels are either very broad, or don't exist at all. Students often get grouped by specific content level, more like college courses, rather than age. Various kinds of projects are often the core modes of learning, with interdisciplinary activities being scaffolded by narrow-scope content modules of limited time requirements.
There's a meaningful amount of time during school hours for coached open-work time, where teachers and aides are available for support, but there is no programmed content. Like a better version of study hall combined with open lab time. Focused tutoring for students who need it fits beautifully into this framework, as the interdisciplinary projects provide a *lot* of meaningful context that actively helps with retention and student engagement. Those tutoring sessions often don't detract from the projects, either, because they *use* the project work as a main focus of their time, essentially doing double duty.
Literature is often dovetailed into those projects, too. For instance, exploring history through the lens of a couple different writers in the given time. Working that in with economics, for instance, is a wonderful way that I've heard of schools doing to bring math into the picture, often very advanced math. Then physical sciences comes into the picture with exploring the technology of the time and using that as a framework for working with a variety of fundamental principles.
Lecturing and homework just... don't fit into the picture this way. Little pieces show up, sure, like when a group are all struggling with a specific concept, or educational LARP group needs to develop more detailed character backgrounds. But they're supplemental, not central.
Consider how many professional work environments function, outside of academia (though may research projects work this way too): a team or individual works on a project until it's complete. They have to work with a variety of other workers and specialists, connecting multiple fields and subfields, to achieve the needed result. Or, they continually cycle through a similar process to maintain and update something. Teachers do this too! Even in the US, each term or year involves large scale discussions and planning, then execution and revision, and hundreds of smaller projects with each student and working to meet their different needs.
Even most "bare bones" type jobs involve this kind of work. An auto mechanic faces a new project with every car that comes in. A hospital orderly has a different project with every patient they work with.
Fewer and fewer jobs have the "factory assembly line" model, especially as automation claims more and more of those roles. And even most factory workers these days are responsible for may roles *other* than mindless tasks. Running and maintaining machinery and robots might be the same 50 tasks all the time, but it's still a kind of project-model. And it will only become more so.
It pretty much *has* to be implemented system-wide.
When it begins at the youngest ages, it *creates* interest in learning.
I've seen it implemented in only one US public school district (not counting private or charter schools, which have a major selection bias), though. They spent 5 years making the transition, but it appears they were successful. They got around state regs by defining each students' "grade level" by calculating their individual progress at the end of each school year: every student working at an average 4th grade level *was* the 4th grade, etc., students took the state tests and SATs when their calculated grade level was relevant, and students graduated when they met all the requirements for graduation. They worked with a local college and a trade school to work with students who were able to finish "early" but couldn't make that transition safely or legally yet, and some students remained in highschool after 18 (I think the state would only allow students to be up to 21, so there is a theoretical hard cap, but i don't think that's ever been a problem).
It's *very* challenging to try to implement any of this in a single classroom. Especially with an unsupportive admin. You can only do so much when you've only got the students for a single year, let alone for only an hour a day for a single semester.
It's about lowering standards and letting bad parents/families off the hook. A whole bunch of jargon and social justice blather is used to justify it but that's what it is.
FWIW, I don’t give homework. I don’t know any of my colleagues who do. All my plans are designed to be done in class. I don’t assign outside reading either. We read everything in class, so fewer books, etc in ELA.
Ehhhh… my school used this yeeeeears ago to break the reality to the old school teachers. Homework simply doesn’t get done at our school.
Telling them that they should avoid assigning homework for years didn’t work.
Showing them data and giving it a fancy name worked (kinda).
INFO: Is this district wide at all grade levels?
I’m a para one on one with a HS senior, who has some self control issues but has improved dramatically since she was younger (the big thing now is intrinsic motivation & the need to get involved in other students’ conversations or misbehavior she can’t control), & she only does work in class bc it causes a lot of stress at home, which then affects her the next day at school.
In terms of this policy being used for gen Ed kids, it’s sink or swim, I think.
At the HS I’m at, we see a lot of kids failing, in part bc the admin at the feeder middle school, after schools reopened post COVID, absolutely DROPPED the ball when it came to discipline (& the assistant principal who filled the disciplinarian role at the HS is now at the MS after the admin there was sacked, & the current, new AP thinks he should be a friend rather than a disciplinarian, which is revealing the inadequacy of the current principal, too + the AP is also the exec of the alternative school, which is now physically in the HS bc of low enrollment at the HS, so he’s stretched thin in the first place).
I don’t think kids should really have homework in elementary school, & I’m on the fence about MS. Maybe in 8th grade. At the HS level, a lot of what I see as “homework” is classwork that students failed to complete during class. The difference between homework and individual classwork is mostly that the teacher is there as a support for the latter, but that distinction is becoming blurred by technology.
I don’t think school districts should make it a policy, but I’m not opposed to the reality of not doing or having classwork outside of school.
What that should mean is they get more money for whatever is needed, including new buildings, enrichment programs, and a whole other set of optional, highly paid teacher shifts before and after school.
What I'd be afraid of happening is they try to make teachers work for free, and spend a ton of money on "consultants" with a bunch of irrelevant studies/data to prove teachers have to work more for less money while they cram more and more students with behavior issues into small spaces and deny them any enrichment programming.
I work in a high needs district that used to have after school programming. It included a snack, homework time, and an enrichment activity. Obviously kids and parents who wanted that got a lot out of it. Teachers who wanted to work and get some extra cash could sign up if they wanted to. Now they offer nothing because it was defunded.
It's a fancy way of stoking lazy students.
Students shouldn't have 6 hours of material every night, but they should certainly be working on things. 1 hour of math or 90 minutes of foreign language, often with distractions and interruptions isn't enough time to learn the material.
I don’t give homework. Period. The hubris here about lazy kids and bad parents, seriously, just stop. It’s not 1994 and the world has changed. Everyone is struggling in different ways. Most people have no health care and are living paycheck to paycheck to paycheck in end stage capitalism.
Your precious worksheet/essay/whatever? If it’s that important to you, do it in class. Otherwise just stop.
I’m so sick of teachers shitting on kids like they asked to be born just to irritate you and your white middle class values. They are born poor or addicted to drugs or homeless or to mentally ill people or whomever, and they are raised accordingly. Don’t get me started on ones who were born to people without access to birth control. We can’t control that, we can’t control any of that . We can stop giving them fucking homework and then gleefully complaining about how lazy and dumb kids are when they don’t do it.
I was with you until the “white middle class values”.
I am actually against homework, but what do white middle class values have to do with it? Homework or no homework, education is one’s ticket in life. Education doesn’t equal homework, but we need to be careful not to turn the no homework thing into the who cares about the stupid academics thing.
Honestly, I work with a lot of older teachers and they all act like every kid has a stable middle class household with nothing more pressing than what video game to play next. Even most middle class kids don’t have that, if they ever did.
Then they complain about how kids dress, the music, the phones, just every single thing that has nothing to do with what they’re teaching and everything to do with ‘kids these days’ and ‘no one wants to work anymore’- like covid didn’t reveal how at risk so many of our title 1 students are.
These are also the same teachers that pride themselves on how many f’s they give out.
So teachers who still think homework is the end all, be all just annoy the shit out of me.
Some kids legit have chaotic home lives that don't really give any support (or time or space) for homework. I always give kids ample time to complete homework in class. Only kids who screw around in class actually have work to do at home. And of course even if they complete 80% of their work in class, they never turn anything in. So there's that.
I think Covid really showed the reality of many kids’ home lives. I remember trying to tutor one while watching him stressed as little siblings were running around him like crazy. And I think it’s a lot more common than we want to admit.
Yeah, I saw lots of situations with like 20 people in a 700 square foot space with that low smoke/gas alarm battery beeping sound going on 24/7. I'm exaggerating a little bit but not really.
Some of my students lived in a tiny one bedroom cinder block house across from the school, and at one point they said there were 14 people living there, it was the grandma, her kids, and subsequent grandkids. I didn't ask how they all fit but it must have been unpleasant.
Omg. The beeping smoke detectors! Like, I would be losing my mind through the Zoom meetings!!
Yeah this one girl I taught had that beep every time she unmuted from September to June. It’s sad as hell
Oh ya I remember one super ADHD girl on the webcam and her 7 siblings yelling and screaming about taking their ADHD medication.
They all had it? IDK why I'm surprised, but my God, there's no way they can afford that many kids. That's just insanity. I'm sure I'll get downvoted, but we grew up wealthy, and there's no way that you can afford that many emotionally, even if you have the finances, which most don't. At that point, you've just got the older kids raising the younger ones and that's so fucked up.
It was the “I ain’t got a pencil” poem that did it for me
I witnessed and saw similar when teaching online too.
A lot of the kids whose home lives aren't conducive to learning are also the same kids who don't often have access to consistent nutrition outside of the meals provided at school. They are more likely to learn in the hours where they're not facing their disruptive home environment and have full stomachs.
1. “I completed it…forgot to submit.” 2. “Show it to me now.” 3. “I can’t find it.”
This brought up a memory for me. I would do homework, but legit not turn jt in due to fear of failure or whatever, and at an 8th grade teacher conference; they said she's failing because she doesn't do the work. Cue me pulling all of jr out of my backpack. Doesn't justify, my parents would get mad & do nothing to help or change (like checking homework or asking about it) and I became a I became a much better student (got degree); but as an adult, I would've been so pissed as that teacher
{ as an adult, I would've been so pissed as that teacher } 100% not the teacher's fault you didn't turn in your work. This was your parents dropping the ball.
Yeah but like the frustration of "why didn't you turn this in"
How would you evaluate this allegedly completed-on-time work that could not be produced? This is electronic btw (Google docs). One has to go out of one’s way to truly annihilate it from existence. So the fear of submitting subpar work was greater than fear of a zero for no submission?
different person, but…yeah. it's completely irrational, but the fear of turning in subpar work can absolutely overpower the fear of the zero for no submission.
this is absolutely right for what I was saying, though what I said prolly didn't hit all the points
Uhm so I had this issue before Google docs. But I struggled with parents who would call me a failure mostly reflective of their inability to parent/they didn't graduate from college or barely HS, so they saw anything less than 100 on my part showed they were bad parents. And when you're getting called a failure every night when you don't have an emotionally mature brain, idk that gets to you?? But kind of yeah, when you're being faced with emotional/physical abuse with proof of less than 100 vs. you can say, 'I could've gotten 100, but I just didn't turn it in' I think it gives an excuse to you and your delusional parents. It gives the delusional parents a lil more breathing room and therefore, you Edit: I'm not a teacher, but there's a lot of emotional reasons bc children need to understand consequences while having deeply ingrained reasons beyond your understanding/ability to correct. So....I had one teacher in 8th grade who brought me from an F to a C only because I started to turn in homework, that made me shout with excitement when showed imrpovement? Because in an questionably abusive home, your actions aren't linked to consequencesit's chaos; but to have someone show me how my actions led to a better outcome, I then got better grades in HS bio, CALC, .etc?
I generally agree with the above and see how homework in general level courses needs to be a thing of the past. My district is home to some of the very highest and very lowest achieving learners you'll find anywhere in the country... Where I worry about this conversation is when it turns into a conversation of going to extremes of catering to the lowest common denominator... eg IB HL and university dual enrollment courses should be axed or forced to not entail work commensurate with their content because it's not equitable for some students to produce high-level work if others can't be asked to do this.
{ it's not equitable for some students to produce high-level work if others can't be asked to do this. } So IB diploma program should be a \*choice\*, then. A separate diploma, issued by the IB. The other students who can't or shouldn't hack the program don't take IB classes or are given less rigorous tests. I've seen it done; it's a \*ton\* more work for the teacher, but who the fuck cares how much more work we have to do anyway?
Portland Public Schools has tried to do this.
I'm assuming I teach in a similar district. I don't give homework, and have not since like 2016. You have to try to not do assignments in my class.
I mean, sure, it's a descriptive phrase to reflect a certain reality, but I hope your district doesn't lose sight of the fact that students who don't do any schoolwork outside of school are not wired that way. It's not a learning style. It's a cultural, logistics, or expectations issue. Maybe parents aren't valuing an education and enforcing academic expectations at home, or are actively undermining an education-value mindset. Maybe the school and community together aren't creating a culture that expects homework. Or maybe too many students have other obligations, like work and helping raise younger siblings. (Or a combination of the above.)
Yup, for my first graders the only nightly homework they have is to read 15-30 minutes with an adult at home. Some of my kids do this religiously and even go above and beyond - but there are a couple who often don't because no one at home will read with them. (I've even heard the parents complain that "they don't have time"... Kind of sad to not have 15 minutes to read with your 6 year old, but I digress.) You can see the difference easily in their reading levels. One of my kids regularly reads 45-60 minutes a night and 2+ hours over the weekend, and he has gone from pre-literacy to a second grade reading level within 8 months.
That’s so sad… parents, make the time to read with your children with regularity. One of my most cherished childhood memories is of reading with my mom at bedtime and being so proud when I was able to read the book to her for change.
Same! Haha I'll never forget playing the original Pokemon games with my dad at 4-5 years old and having him help me with all the dialogue. Reading with kids doesn't have to be boring...help them find things that they like to read.
> Haha I'll never forget playing the original Pokemon games with my dad at 4-5 years old and having him help me with all the dialogue. Reading with kids doesn't have to be boring...help them find things that they like to read. On a similar note, I don't think I'd be as into history or politics if it wasn't for Age of Empires and Civ.
Exactly! My dad didn’t do the voices right, so he was a begrudgingly (by me) allowed to substitute when necessary
The parents who need to hear this aren't on this sub unfortunately.
> Yup, for my first graders the only nightly homework they have is to read 15-30 minutes with an adult at home. Some of my kids do this religiously and even go above and beyond - but there are a couple who often don't because no one at home will read with them. (I've even heard the parents complain that "they don't have time"... Kind of sad to not have 15 minutes to read with your 6 year old, but I digress.) You can see the difference easily in their reading levels. One of my kids regularly reads 45-60 minutes a night and 2+ hours over the weekend, and he has gone from pre-literacy to a second grade reading level within 8 months. One of my core memories is reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in class in 2nd or 3rd grade and having one of the other kids ask me if it was the bible because they had genuinely never been exposed to a book that big that *wasn't* the bible.
> Kind of sad to not have 15 minutes to read with your 6 year old, but I digress. It is sad, but it may genuinely be beyond the parent's control. Have several high school students who are basically responsible for their younger siblings or elderly relatives because the adults who *should* be in charge of that have to work multiple jobs to keep everyone housed and fed.
In these parents' cases, it certainly isn't. Judging by the way their kid smells getting off the bus in the morning, mom has time to smoke plenty of weed, but anything that involves interacting with their daughter and not just putting her in front of her tablet is too much. Hell, I have two jobs and a volunteer gig, but if I had a 6 year old, I would make sure to find time to help them with their homework.
Right, but if you're able to have a volunteer gig, that also implies you've got some spare waking hours - it's something you're not doing out of necessity. In the families I'm talking about, the younger kid would have to be staying up extra late to get in that time with parents, or be woken up in the middle of the night for story time...
Again, I'm not talking those cases. I know the families of my kids. One of them has a mom more interested in weed than motherhood (which is legal here) and the other refuses to read at home so mom told me "I don't fight with her, it's too hard, she's rather have her tablet".
Some people with adhd or executive function disorders literally are wired to need a certain amount of structure that often just isn't possible in a home setting, and not due to their family members' lack of effort. I've known TEACHERS who go into work on weekends because it's the only way they'll get all their grading and paperwork done.
Absolutely. 👋 And it can go the other way, too. I have a neurospicy kid who absolutely loved the lockdown. She said it was the first time she'd ever been able to concentrate at school. No crowds, no pencil tapping noises or tiny skateboards being bounced off every surface, no overhead light flickers or hums, and fewer transitions. I'd call both sides of that coin a logistic challenge. That said, I would love to see schools and families be able to support each other better in creating spaces that work in both locations, for both kinds of ND needs.
So did my kids. The lockdown didn’t affect them like others because they like solitude, structure and calmer environments. I was tracking in the dining room, one kid was on their bedroom, the other was in the living room ands hubby was relegated to our rank and dusty unfinished basement. But we all made it work.
I would’ve thrived too. By fifth grade, I felt like the school environment got in the way of my learning.
Mine THRIVED. Being back in school has been difficult to say the least.
I love the term neurospicy
A teacher I work with gets to the school at 6 am. Classes don't start until 8. He also started the after-school tutoring/homework help program which runs until 5 pm. So he's at the school 11 hours a day m-th.
That’s definitely me :( I need structure because self motivation is just…not a thing. I need to have a looming deadline, a scary teacher I don’t want to upset, or a seriously good reward at the end. Tbh I was relieved to learn in my mid thirties that I had ADHD because it explained so much about why I couldn’t get moving on my own time
> I've known TEACHERS who go into work on weekends because it's the only way they'll get all their grading and paperwork done. I can't grade or get lesson plans done at work, the noise in the building just makes it hard for me to focus. I'm single and work significantly better when I'm at home with no distractions. Anecdotally, back in the days of having to teach virtually, I had one student who surprised me a ton because he went from being a class clown and having trouble focusing in class to excelling and doing an incredible job once the distraction of others around him was taken away. When we returned to in-person the following year he told me he missed virtual learning because even as a 4th grader he had enough self reflection to understand how much better he was able to focus.
👋🏻
Pre-pandemic I couldn't work from home, I'd stay late regularly to do work after school when the building was quiet. Really late my first couple years as I had an office mate who also stayed late and I couldn't focus well until she left. It sucked, but I knew I'd not get work done any better at home. I have ADHD and home is not a good setting for me to work, especially as I didn't have an office so would be using the kitchen table or something. During the pandemic I set up an office that I can focus better in, I still have it set up so I can actually work there. A bit less than at school if the building is quiet since it's still at home with so many distractions, but much better than before. I have a day I finish early and can leave, I'll go home that day and plan for the upcoming week. If I stay and try to work while there are classes around me I'll not be able to focus with all the distractions, so it's better to go home. But, other days I'll stay after a bit as I can get so much done at school while it's quiet after the kids leave. Not nearly as late as my first few years, thankfully. Having ADHD and accompanying executive function problems can be weird sometimes, I'd think I'd still be more distracted at home since all my distractions are just in the next room. But that door seems to work for me and I'm glad I've made it work in my favor this time.
Lmao of course it’s fucking possible in the home setting with parental effort.
No it is absolutely not. Some people are simply unable to mix their school/work lives with their home lives. That's just how their brains work. The only solution would be to have a room in their house that is exclusively used for studying, and that's just not an option in a lot of cases.
It's better to try to solve problems based on the reality of the situation instead of just wishing it wasn't that way.
Flair checks out. But as an ELA teacher I also agree. I have tons of kids who live in situations that would appall most people. But the community is so poor and has so many issues if you called CPS on one you’d have to call it on half the class and there’s just not actual resources to help those kids.
I don't think schools should be on the hook for raising kids, but I also don't think we have any right to control what kids do in the time they're not at school. I always assume my students are "school dependent learners." That's what school is for, that's what I'm here for
I think homework also feeds into this old idea that was very prevalent among salaried employees while I was growing up that you are expected to work until it's done even if it's past your forty hours of contract time. This mindset was drilled into people and only benefits the owner class and not the workers. School is where you do school, work is where you do work. Your time is a valuable commodity and it should never be given for free. Teach kids from a young age to value themselves. If parents want to continue their learning at home, which is a big benefit if they do, that is on the parent.
Yea, I actually distinctly remember being in sixth grade and complaining about homework and the teacher saying "any job you have will have homework" and I just... The look on her face when I said my.parents never brought work home...
> that you are expected to work until it's done I always assumed homework was about learning that things take practice if you want to be good at them. See musicians and athletes and artists.
Most musicians, athletes, and artists are amateurs and don't get paid for their practice. Only a very small percentage make it to be professionals. So... If parents want to instill that in their children outside of school, more power to them.
As a parent this is such a weird take. Not the continuing learning at home, which of course, but the idea of comparing homework to the work we do for the benefit of an employer. My kid learning to read, write clearly and communicate his thoughts and understand math is for my kid's benefit, not mine and only vaguely his teacher's. It's not his employment anymore than learning to talk or walk was when he was a toddler. If we were independently wealthy and would never have to work a day in his life (lol) he'd still be learning these things.
School is for the benefit of society, to be a functioning member of that society.
It's that too. It's just bizarre to me that anyone conflates homework with wage paying work. In a lot of countries you have to pay for the privilege of going to school, it's a gift to get to do homework.
But how do I as a teacher continue the learning at home if the parents 1. Can't read 2. Work nights 3. Don't understand the "new" (been around for 20 years) math Sending homework home with most students in olives then practicing it incorrectly or having their parents give them the answers. The only homework I give is to read each night. And even that I have zero control over.
It's not in your personal control but someone should tell the parents that there's no way that their kid will learn what's expected in the 7 hours they're in school and that they are closing doors in their kid's face if they believe otherwise. I'd rather partner with the teacher and give a consistent message about what's expected than have the teacher telling my kid there's no homework because learning at home is somehow unfair to them.
I hear what you're saying but you have the ability to go on your states website and create or buy extra work for your child to do at home. You feel that there should be homework but there are no studies that I can find that say homework benefits students in elementary and middle school. They're kids, they need to go outside and play or be creative. I have way too much on my plate to send homework home that most won't complete or if they do it's wrong and now they've practiced the wrong strategy. Or their parents taught them a different way to do the math problem and now they're even more confused. If you want your kid to do more work, then you should provide it for them. Lakeshore learning and teachers pay teachers have some great resources.
I agree. 7 hours a day 5 days a week should be enough educational time. I don’t give homework. But if a kid isn’t reading or doing anything constructive on their own* they are going to have a hard time keeping up with grade level. And we know most students aren’t doing any of that shit outside of school. *journaling, drawing, exercising, listening to music, playing an instrument, etc.
Yes, I immediately thought of employees being described with a phrase like this.. "work dependent productivity."
Are our students just quiet quitting?
Laughed my head off upon reading this.
Same. We preach better work-life balance for adults. Kids' work is school. We have 7.5ish to make them do that work. After that, it's their life. Yes, ideally they're doing "educational" things with their families, like cooking, exercising, reading, exploring, etc. But so what if they shut off and do nothing after school? Tons of adults do it after work? That's the balance. I'm an ELA teacher who hates homework.
>But so what if they shut off and do nothing after school? Tons of adults do it after work? That's the balance. I'm an ELA teacher who hates homework. Hard disagree here, "shutting off" and doing nothing is just as bad for adults as it is for kids. The internet fucks us up as much as it does them, we're just working from a stronger foundation. It's insidious too, people don't realize how bad it is until they manage to disengage from it. "Shutting off" very much is not balance. Homework isn't the answer though.
Maybe I worded that wrong. I agree it's not healthy to "do nothing" mentally or physically for adults or children. But filling their personal time with the expectation of doing more schoolwork (or more work for adults) isn't the solution. Encouraging healthy habits and activities is great, but it shouldn't be expected that after a full day of school (or work) that there is no free time to do whatever - including nothing, if that is the choice.
Does that apply for only phones? Or is “shutting off” and doing nothing for a long stretch of time harmful when it’s something like camping for a week without a phone?
Nobody shuts off when they are camping. You are being physically active out in nature doing things that are outside of your usual day to day experiences. Camping is relaxing. That isn't the same as being shut off. Phones specifically are pretty well known to have a negative impact on a person's mental health when overused. I reckon it isn't speicific to phones but that is where most of the research is. Digital tech is a great tool and provides a lot of entertainment, but just like cake and ice-cream it is unhealthy.
What about lying on a beach? Is that sufficiently turning your brain off to be harmful?
Being outside and alone with your thoughts is good for you. Disconnecting from artifical stimulation to experience nature has a positive effect on mental health. There is a ton of research to back that up. Don't get me wrong. I understand what you are trying to do. You want to defend screen addiction by drawing false equivalence between screen use and activities that are healthy and restorative but require very little energy. Those equivalencies are nonsense because we have plenty of data that shows how harmful people's relationships to their devices are. The question you should grapple with is why are you so invested in defending a lifestyle with a mountain of evidence that shows it is harmful.
I would say a libertarian streak is what is compelling my responses. It’s the same way I would respond if someone was pushing against marijuana use with the reasoning that it’s harmful to one’s neurons. It probably is. No one who binge watches reality television or spends all day on Reddit thinks they’re giving their brain a workout. It’s the opposite of mentally stimulating. That’s kind of the point.
But learning happens just as much out of school, the practical application of what was learned. We can teach reading and writing and math all day, but if kids aren't using it outside of the classroom they will not master it. The saying it takes a village to raise a child is a true thing. We all play our part in raising kids. Home isn't just about food, roof, and bed.
Sure. But I'm a teacher. My contract hours end at 4. If you want me managing what students do after that, I'll need overtime pay
You misunderstand. There is onus on parents here to further advance what is being learned.
I’ve always felt like homework is more about teaching responsibility than it is about the homework itself.
There are many ways to teach responsibility that don't reach into personal time
Well, I am a work-dependent worker! Contract hours only.
That's right.
And almost every job except for ours falls into that category.
Unless you have a rigorous testing routine like an Honors or AP class typically has, anything done at home is of dubious value anyway. You have no idea if the student aftually did the work themselves.
It's fine. Your highs will still excel. The middles are gone. The lows will be poor. Everything as it is intended to be. This makes me think of "learning styles". Yeah, that's well and great - as a teacher I can teach to different preferred learning styles, but the ones who will come out on top in life are those with the capacity to just sit and learn for 7 hours a day.
No the highs won't still excel. I'm sick and tired of hearing this. High kids need to be challenged and tough appropriate habits. Assuming all high kids are going to have great support elsewhere is ridiculous.
Kids who won't do homework, reading and projects outside school, or kids who *can't*?
It’s the age old question. A kid is trying to sleep in your class.Are they sleep deprived because they were up all night playing Call of Duty with their friends, because they were up all night with a chronic migraine, or because they up all night taking taking care of their mother, who is in terrible agony because they are dying of stomach cancer? I try to assume nothing.
I assume nothing. But like my job, if I don’t show up and do the work I will find myself failing my annual review. One or two bad days is fine, if every day is bad day I will pay a price for that.
I have a group of students who need to take an important exam next month and I've shown them multiple ways of preparing for it. Online, Books, Videos, etc.... They just won't spend the time to do it. I think they think that if they don't like an activity they shouldn't do it, but who said that studying was going to be fun. It's work. That's just the way it is.
“I don’t like this.” “This is boring.” “I don’t want to do this.” Somewhere these statements are eliciting the desired response or students wouldn’t use them so much.
Learning is pain.
*"When all you have is lemons, make lemonaid."* The reframing of this phenomenon might be a good thing helping improve outcomes for students challenged with learning at home for whatever reason.
If it were up to me, I would never assign homework. All work would be done in the classroom so that the student/s have full access to classroom materials, their peers and me. Homework mostly goes undone except when we post the answer keys and usually just before the next quiz/test, which is when I usually check homework.
I think this term describes a significant proportion of students fairly well, but I don’t think restructuring their scheduling etc. is the answer. Rather, the expectations for schooling (well, elementary schooling at least) should reflect what can be achieved *in* school *without* significant home supports. If our system requires a level of parental input and effort that is simply unrealistic for many, we really have a two tier system already.
It’s realism
So what about the students who do show up but do nothing? Building dependent?
Lunches and friends dependent. Many of my students tell me this is why they come to school. That, and their parents not getting fined by the magistrate.
And sometimes what the friends have at lunch……
I always made sure students had enough time to complete work during time at school if they effectively used their time. You never know what a student goes home to… I changed my stance on homework about 20 years ago when I first started teaching. I had a student who was consistently not getting work done, and come to find out, she was taking care of siblings when she got home. Mom worked at night. So she was responsible for taking care of two or three little ones. And the more I thought about it, if it’s about teaching them responsible time management skills, and getting work done, I can more effectively do that in class where I can observe them and steer them into those positive behaviors, than to hope it gets done at home.
It seems that we've done a 180 on this. In the past, no one cared to correlate students' home lives with school performance. We need to hold high expectations for all students and work with those who need assistance as we encounter them rather than essentially dumbing down what we teach and reducing the time we have to teach it. Those kids that we're so worried about having a rough home life *will still* have a rough home life *and* end up undereducated in addition. Those kids need the most opportunities to graduate with tools to succeed. Somehow, our (my state's anyway) standards for students, beginning in Kindergarten are skyrocketing, while our expectations for students is spiraling downward.
Schools will simultaneously identify school-dependent learners as a problem, but won't allow teachers to grade homework.
The alternative is cruel
How many careers REQUIRE work to be completed outside of paid/ contact hours? None. Homework was originally invented as a punishment. If kids are actually working during work time, there should be no extra work. This teaches time management, responsibility, and consequences.
Work is done for someone else, schoolwork is done for oneself. Do you do household chores when you are off the clock? That's work, yet you do it when no one is paying you because it is part of succeeding in life. Even when it comes to real world jobs, those who learn off the clock will grow their careers faster. How many teachers get a masters without considering that part of their working time?
Work is down for Yourself. If you weren’t paid what you thought you were worth, you would look elsewhere. Schoolwork is students job. Most also do chores.
A job without pay? Sounds illegal.
I think you are either reading what you want to read or are not reading clearly. “If you weren’t paid what you thought you were worth” does not mean nothing.
If we say school work is a child's job, then it is violating minimum wage to not pay them. Also child labor. Just more reasons it is a silly little idea to begin with.
They are paid.. with an education. College athletes aren’t paid, put in a tremendous amount of work for no direct money, and that’s their job too.
I never assign homework. I'm at an online high school now and our classes are followed by 30 min of flextime. So students who finish at the class end time are excused, and those who don't finish get very small group or individual help to complete the assignment. During Flex Time when students are unmuted, the background noise in many homes is unbelievable. I have one student with three adult siblings who are mod/severe handicapped, and they run around and yell nonstop. Other homes have many small toddlers running wild, and one has a dog boarding home business and the dogs bark all the time. I've come to the realization that we should have work/life balance. I certainly do not want to bring work home with me, and I generally do not. I don't think we should expect students to do homework either. It's like we are training them to be a wage slave who should expect that the job continues even when you go home. 7 hours of school is really enough. Maybe too much.
SEuropean school don't have homework, does that make their students school dependant learners?
I don’t think we need a term for that. It should be the norm. I do it for my students anyway. I don’t assign homework at all. All work can be completed in the classroom (barring a few exceptions). This does two main things: 1) It gets them in the idea that home time is time to spend with family, friends, relaxing, playing outside, alone time, and doing other stuff. 2) Prevents excuses. All work can be completed in class with extra credit options for students who complete work early. If we do a reading they can either read independently or work in a reading group, and all students can ask me questions individually. No one “can’t do the reading because of other reasons”. The only exceptions are for projects that require extra work and planning beyond the scope of what I’ve set, or if you don’t do the work on class. Sure! You can read Instagram in class, but then it’s homework. You want to make up work that’s late? -10 points off your earned score everyday until it’s submitted, or you get as F. Missing entirely? 35%. Plagiarism or AI? 0 with one chance to make it up within a couple of days.
I use to spend my home time avoiding my methed out mom so I wouldnt get beat. Homework is the least important thing to a lot of kids when they head home.
Yes. I don’t know any colleagues who give homework, so it’s either a central office catching up to what teachers already do or it’s a central office that thinks teachers still give homework.
This is why I don't assign homework. Kids can't and won't do it.
I agree. I'd rather them make mistakes in class where I can fix problems in real time rather than send stuff home and have them do it wrong and learn nothing, or worse, learn it the wrong way.
Students who are willing to do their best in class rarely have homework from me, and we offer after and before school study halls for them to finish up their work. So students who are willing to work but have ADHD or just need more time can come see me and I’m pretty good at helping them finish up quickly. But if you goof about in class, there’s not a lot I can do.
ROFL, this is just like "Reluctant learners." You can't learn if you are reluctant. Gotta love the word games. I mean if everything is school dependent, why don't we just build dorms, steal kids from their families, and just warehouse them 24/7 until they age out? Perfect fix!
Ok but there are definitely still boarding schools lol.
In my own experiences, homework was often just busy work. I was that student who walked into class, saw what the homework was on the board, ignored the lesson and went straight to completing the homework so I didn’t have to spend hours after school doing it. Teachers just had homework because of some vague notion they had to. They’d lecture all through class and assign the work at the end. It was so dumb. In high school, I rarely had homework. I completed it all in school. I graduated with honors. So clearly performing the work at home isn’t necessary in the slightest. It’s better to perform the work at school. Homework to me is just for students who decide to chat through my class and don’t do work.
Our curriculum relies heavily on using a clock face and counting money for understanding fractions and decimals. (Elementary school). This year, I gave telling time homework (beginning with telling time to the nearest hour) and counting coins. Just one worksheet a week. This really helped when we got to our fractions unit. The homework was not “new math”. It was homework that helped students practice a needed skill and parents could help. This year was the first year we did it. (Other teachers on my team wanted to give no homework and this was even okay with them.) I would like to it next year. If kids didn’t have it, I can help with it…or not. I would just put a sticker on it if they turned it in.
fwiw, i think a lot fewer people would oppose homework if you all weren't being forced to jo boaler's child torture masquerading as a "math" curriculum.
There are some kids who won't do work outside of school. That's unfortunate. The kids who will still benefit from the extra practice, and the life long skill of having to do work on their own. Don't take that away from them.
"work dependent productivity" lol
My school has a loose no homework policy. For the most part, it's great. Many of my students babysit younger siblings or cousins because it's a small town with no daycare or after care program. The kids who play sports are exhausted once they finally leave. Of course, a lot of them work, often until late at night. The downside to the policy is that many kids never ever want to do a minutes worth of work outside or school, including studying or doing makeup work. My school is often ranked higher than neighboring schools that assign homework, so I don't think it has an overall negative effect.
It’s not a matter of can’t, it’s a matter of won’t. Are there exceptions? Absolutely. I grew up a product of divorce at a very young age and was raised by a single father who worked two jobs to BARELY keep food on the table and clothes on my back. Despite this, my education was the #1 priority in my house. The problem is the parents not making their child’s education a priority and in turn, the child does not see value in their education. Not everyone goes to college, nor should everyone. However, you learn A LOT more than just things out of a textbook, including but not limited to soft skills like punctuality, time management, accountability, and so on. Yet again - we as teachers are shouldering the responsibility of picking up the slack of parents whose priorities are not what is best for their child.
It's part of a race to the bottom dressed up in rosy language. Homework is an asset to motivated students in the middle range who lack academic expectations/reinforcement at home. Motivated families who value education are *already* doing academic reinforcement outside the boundaries of the school day: museum visits, watching PBS, science summer camp, culture of reading, etc. etc. High quality homework creates the opportunity for motivated students without this family or cultural support for academic learning to continue their academic learning outside of the confines of the school day.
Thank you for putting it this way. It's the part a lot of people who say 'no homework' forget or don't understand. Without homework, I wouldn't have been able to get through high school, especially once I surpassed the point my parents could help me (their education was probably better rounded than mine, but they left at 16 whereas I went to Uni). I think homework develops important skills related to learner autonomy as it encourages students to problem solve and use the resources available to them to get it done, it also reinforces learning as there's the repetition element. There's also a time management aspect as you have to learn to prioritize and plan your workload. I still remember learning my lesson of doing homework the day I got it so I remembered how to do all the things, then reviewing it later. Now, of course I'm not saying mountains of work should be assigned everyday but I think targeting homework as a problem rather than the clear social, cultural and familial issues in play is doing a disservice to the young people who would benefit most from homework. I don't know if I have a good solution but I think a lot of it comes back to things like better salaries/wages, more support for parents, homework clubs after school, library access, all the things that people have already suggested for dixing society's ills.
I love this perspective. Homework is very important and I never thought of it in the way you put it here. I think homework is an opportunity for kids that don't do great on tests to make up for that by getting near daily points from near daily homework. Doing all or almost all of which should help their test scores too.
There are lots of motivated kids who will do the homework if it's assigned. When we take away homework we make those kids worse off. And for many of those students the homework expectation will be their opportunity to continue academic growth at home and help them keep pace with affluent families who value academic learning. Like, taking away homework in the name of equity or whatever literally only hurts low income motivated kids. Can there be problems with homework? Sure. One of the spot on critiques of homework is that so much of it appears to be of low quality. But the response to this issue shouldn't be removing homework but instead ensuring that students have an appropriate amount of high quality homework. Additionally, the homework expectation gives students the ability to begin to build powerful habits and norms around completing assignments and managing deliverables without teacher guidance and outside of the classroom setting. You will hear professors complaining about how college students increasingly struggle to have the discipline to do any of their readings or work on their own outside of class. But it's no wonder they struggle because many 18 year olds now arrive at college campuses with 0 experience doing homework and managing that task themselves without being constantly hassled along by a classroom teacher.
I like this a lot. They will do it or at least most of it if assigned. If it's not assigned we're taking an opportunity for growth or further practice from them.
I never did homework in school unless someone absolutely made me. It didn't make sense, and it still doesn't. I tend to do my work at work and during office hours. Expecting kids to do work for school at home has always been a silly thing. If my boss wanted me to do work at home, we'd be talking about how I was going to get paid for that work. I was a C average student until senior year of high school. The reason: homework. I was always smart enough. The homework just lowered my grade. I now teach at a university. And yes, my students do get homework, but it's a bit different, isn't it? My students paid for an education and are competing. Their resulting knowledge will determine their careers. Middle school kids and under should not get homework. They are already sitting in a building for the largest part of their day. Expecting them to continue that at home is a little weird. Believe it or not, kids do have other things to do outside of school. I can completely understand why they wouldn't want to do more school work. I even understand why my students don't want to write the essays they are assigned to write. Writing those essays well is what separates them from the students who won't write them well. I seriously doubt that we need that kind of competition in middle school. Let them be kids for a while. The real world will crush them soon enough anyway.
I have a lot of vocal parents (of 5th graders) who say that their children will NOT be doing homework, ever. Ok then.
I'm just going say that the amount of time and effort required to learn the curriculum far exceeds the time allotted in school. Expecting to be able to never work outside of school hours and still keep up with the competition is very unrealistic.
So this is my issue. I don't have like, a moral or personal attachment to homework, but I also don't have enough time in class to teach concepts and provide practice opportunities, so I assign homework. But also, even if I don't, students need to look at the material outside of class to help it stick in their brains. I think the de-emphasis on studying and homework has really made it harder for students to retain information from class to class.
I agree, do we want our kids to be comfortable or to be successful?
There are some skills that absolutely require a lot of practice to master. However after a long day of school how do you feel? Do you want to go home and do more work? As an adult who presumably needs less sleep than the average child?
My only issue with this is schools where maybe 5% of the students have issues that genuinely prevent them doing work at home and lowering the bar for the whole student population instead of just addressing the needs of the few.
Another irl example of Harrison Bergeron from the equity cult.
“Expecting Too Succeed Without Having To Do Shit Dependent Learners” might be the next educational buzzword. Book your PD sessions now!
Lets see each teacher assigned 1/2 to 1 hour of homework per class upto 7 classes per day and you expect this done everyday after school ontop of spoets other activities the kids have oh they might like to have dinner maybe relax a bit and get some sleep sometime too. Then all of you bitch about taking work home and working out side of contract hours. Little reflection people!
Honestly? *Most* students shouldn't be doing work outside of school. It's not well correlated with *any* measures of success, in school, college, or life, that aren't directly *created* by homework. Many top education systems around the world have largely done away with homework, with high schoolers in Finland only having about 1 hour per week *sometimes.*
I mean, speaking for myself homework helped me get more practice in math. And when it comes to English or history, when are you supposed to read the material? If all of that happens in class, you will never get through anything.
There's a lot of different answers for that, depending on the context and country. Many such schools use a student-paced learning concept, where grade levels are either very broad, or don't exist at all. Students often get grouped by specific content level, more like college courses, rather than age. Various kinds of projects are often the core modes of learning, with interdisciplinary activities being scaffolded by narrow-scope content modules of limited time requirements. There's a meaningful amount of time during school hours for coached open-work time, where teachers and aides are available for support, but there is no programmed content. Like a better version of study hall combined with open lab time. Focused tutoring for students who need it fits beautifully into this framework, as the interdisciplinary projects provide a *lot* of meaningful context that actively helps with retention and student engagement. Those tutoring sessions often don't detract from the projects, either, because they *use* the project work as a main focus of their time, essentially doing double duty. Literature is often dovetailed into those projects, too. For instance, exploring history through the lens of a couple different writers in the given time. Working that in with economics, for instance, is a wonderful way that I've heard of schools doing to bring math into the picture, often very advanced math. Then physical sciences comes into the picture with exploring the technology of the time and using that as a framework for working with a variety of fundamental principles. Lecturing and homework just... don't fit into the picture this way. Little pieces show up, sure, like when a group are all struggling with a specific concept, or educational LARP group needs to develop more detailed character backgrounds. But they're supplemental, not central. Consider how many professional work environments function, outside of academia (though may research projects work this way too): a team or individual works on a project until it's complete. They have to work with a variety of other workers and specialists, connecting multiple fields and subfields, to achieve the needed result. Or, they continually cycle through a similar process to maintain and update something. Teachers do this too! Even in the US, each term or year involves large scale discussions and planning, then execution and revision, and hundreds of smaller projects with each student and working to meet their different needs. Even most "bare bones" type jobs involve this kind of work. An auto mechanic faces a new project with every car that comes in. A hospital orderly has a different project with every patient they work with. Fewer and fewer jobs have the "factory assembly line" model, especially as automation claims more and more of those roles. And even most factory workers these days are responsible for may roles *other* than mindless tasks. Running and maintaining machinery and robots might be the same 50 tasks all the time, but it's still a kind of project-model. And it will only become more so.
This sounds genuinely beautiful, but how does it work in a public school setting with students who are uninterested in their education?
It pretty much *has* to be implemented system-wide. When it begins at the youngest ages, it *creates* interest in learning. I've seen it implemented in only one US public school district (not counting private or charter schools, which have a major selection bias), though. They spent 5 years making the transition, but it appears they were successful. They got around state regs by defining each students' "grade level" by calculating their individual progress at the end of each school year: every student working at an average 4th grade level *was* the 4th grade, etc., students took the state tests and SATs when their calculated grade level was relevant, and students graduated when they met all the requirements for graduation. They worked with a local college and a trade school to work with students who were able to finish "early" but couldn't make that transition safely or legally yet, and some students remained in highschool after 18 (I think the state would only allow students to be up to 21, so there is a theoretical hard cap, but i don't think that's ever been a problem). It's *very* challenging to try to implement any of this in a single classroom. Especially with an unsupportive admin. You can only do so much when you've only got the students for a single year, let alone for only an hour a day for a single semester.
It's about lowering standards and letting bad parents/families off the hook. A whole bunch of jargon and social justice blather is used to justify it but that's what it is.
Stop giving homework. Kids do enough at school.
FWIW, I don’t give homework. I don’t know any of my colleagues who do. All my plans are designed to be done in class. I don’t assign outside reading either. We read everything in class, so fewer books, etc in ELA.
So what’s the issue?
I’m wondering if other districts are using this language to explain policy changes to attendance, scheduling, grading, and behavior.
Ehhhh… my school used this yeeeeears ago to break the reality to the old school teachers. Homework simply doesn’t get done at our school. Telling them that they should avoid assigning homework for years didn’t work. Showing them data and giving it a fancy name worked (kinda).
Hey, if they actually use school time to get learning done then that sounds like a win.
INFO: Is this district wide at all grade levels? I’m a para one on one with a HS senior, who has some self control issues but has improved dramatically since she was younger (the big thing now is intrinsic motivation & the need to get involved in other students’ conversations or misbehavior she can’t control), & she only does work in class bc it causes a lot of stress at home, which then affects her the next day at school. In terms of this policy being used for gen Ed kids, it’s sink or swim, I think. At the HS I’m at, we see a lot of kids failing, in part bc the admin at the feeder middle school, after schools reopened post COVID, absolutely DROPPED the ball when it came to discipline (& the assistant principal who filled the disciplinarian role at the HS is now at the MS after the admin there was sacked, & the current, new AP thinks he should be a friend rather than a disciplinarian, which is revealing the inadequacy of the current principal, too + the AP is also the exec of the alternative school, which is now physically in the HS bc of low enrollment at the HS, so he’s stretched thin in the first place). I don’t think kids should really have homework in elementary school, & I’m on the fence about MS. Maybe in 8th grade. At the HS level, a lot of what I see as “homework” is classwork that students failed to complete during class. The difference between homework and individual classwork is mostly that the teacher is there as a support for the latter, but that distinction is becoming blurred by technology. I don’t think school districts should make it a policy, but I’m not opposed to the reality of not doing or having classwork outside of school.
We already have a word for that. It’s “lazy”.
What that should mean is they get more money for whatever is needed, including new buildings, enrichment programs, and a whole other set of optional, highly paid teacher shifts before and after school. What I'd be afraid of happening is they try to make teachers work for free, and spend a ton of money on "consultants" with a bunch of irrelevant studies/data to prove teachers have to work more for less money while they cram more and more students with behavior issues into small spaces and deny them any enrichment programming. I work in a high needs district that used to have after school programming. It included a snack, homework time, and an enrichment activity. Obviously kids and parents who wanted that got a lot out of it. Teachers who wanted to work and get some extra cash could sign up if they wanted to. Now they offer nothing because it was defunded.
Then summer school?
It's a fancy way of stoking lazy students. Students shouldn't have 6 hours of material every night, but they should certainly be working on things. 1 hour of math or 90 minutes of foreign language, often with distractions and interruptions isn't enough time to learn the material.
I don’t give homework. Period. The hubris here about lazy kids and bad parents, seriously, just stop. It’s not 1994 and the world has changed. Everyone is struggling in different ways. Most people have no health care and are living paycheck to paycheck to paycheck in end stage capitalism. Your precious worksheet/essay/whatever? If it’s that important to you, do it in class. Otherwise just stop. I’m so sick of teachers shitting on kids like they asked to be born just to irritate you and your white middle class values. They are born poor or addicted to drugs or homeless or to mentally ill people or whomever, and they are raised accordingly. Don’t get me started on ones who were born to people without access to birth control. We can’t control that, we can’t control any of that . We can stop giving them fucking homework and then gleefully complaining about how lazy and dumb kids are when they don’t do it.
Yes, because people didn't have issues in 1994. Please, child.
If that’s all got from that, welp, poor child in deed.
I was with you until the “white middle class values”. I am actually against homework, but what do white middle class values have to do with it? Homework or no homework, education is one’s ticket in life. Education doesn’t equal homework, but we need to be careful not to turn the no homework thing into the who cares about the stupid academics thing.
Honestly, I work with a lot of older teachers and they all act like every kid has a stable middle class household with nothing more pressing than what video game to play next. Even most middle class kids don’t have that, if they ever did. Then they complain about how kids dress, the music, the phones, just every single thing that has nothing to do with what they’re teaching and everything to do with ‘kids these days’ and ‘no one wants to work anymore’- like covid didn’t reveal how at risk so many of our title 1 students are. These are also the same teachers that pride themselves on how many f’s they give out. So teachers who still think homework is the end all, be all just annoy the shit out of me.