So, kind of settling in, at a meeting I ask an Assistant High School Principal (there are several Assistant Principals at both high schools?) how many hours of homework are assigned to our students to complete each evening? His reply: “Oh, an hour or half an hour when they do it.” WHAT. “Mostly,” he adds, “they do homework during class.”
Now, other than hiring the Superintendent, determining expenses re curriculum and other costs, school board members haven’t authority. Certainly not over what teachers teach or how much homework they assign or are willing to accept. Doesn’t mean we aren’t permitted to think, be taken aback, be furious (to ourselves – decorum) or nearly go across the board table, leaning far forward, which I ultimately tend to do from time to time.
A myriad of thoughts race through my mind as I sit non responsive and attempting to remain calm. For one thing, there is a reason it’s called homework. I mean, really. And, what are teachers doing with their teaching time while students are doing homework during class time? Do teachers not want to be bothered grading homework? Or, thinking up effective and appropriate assignments?
Do they – the teachers – not want to argue with students who do not turn in assignments? Or, worse, their parents. I do remember reading once about parents who did not want summer reading assignments for their children because it would interfere with the family vacation. Yep, parents can be a contributing problem, too.
Do teachers and administration not understand that homework time is study time that doesn’t cost the district additional funding? That homework emphasizes, stresses, and accentuates what our children learn at school seems, at least to me, an excellent and important idea. It also encourages discipline. What a concept.
The little girl in the picture is doing homework. She thinks she is just having fun, reading to a dog; not a difficult book but she is only five. We don’t know whether the dog is enjoying the story, but probably likes the attention (and maybe the pictures?). My son is an elementary school teacher and has been for twenty years. He assigns home work for his first graders and if not completed, his students stay in at recess to finish. Discipline. Learning. All of his students have always been in the top 10% in the Country. They are happy and love school. Accomplishment will do that for children. As my son likes to say, “If a child can read, write and do math they will have all the self esteem they will ever need. His is not an ‘everyone gets a prize’ classroom.
He would especially like the picture here because it is of his niece. And she is reading.