Update on Our Homework Conundrum

As I prep for an upcoming conference presentation titled Wonderwork Replaces Homework, I'm visiting some of my previous blog posts on homework. My post at the end of last school year about not making my son complete a word search worksheet assigned for homework stirred some controversy, so I thought I'd take some time to address some of the statements that were presented to me after people read my post.

1)  "You should always make sure your child completes homework as a way of teaching him responsibility." We have never before supported our sons skipping homework assignments, and the only reason we supported it this one time was because we wanted our son to learn about consequences on an assignment that was not adding value to his life.  It was a meaningless word search worksheet that didn't require any thought--mere busy work.  At the same time, please recognize we have required our sons to complete busy work in the past as a minor way of supporting teachers and the school. 

2)  "Letting students determine if an assignment is meaningless is a slippery slope."  The definition of meaningless in our minds is any work that can be completed without thought and that is assigned with no intentional purpose.  A word search worksheet falls into this category because it's simply a search for random words in a scramble of letters.  In previous situations, we have required our sons to complete even these meaningless word searches. Again, it was this one time that we allowed our son to make the decision.  He made this decision not so he could spend time playing video games (we don't allow our sons to play video games during the school week).  He made this decision after returning home late from an athletic practice and after studying for a math test.  (For the sake of anonymity for my son and his school, I'm not mentioning which sport, which son, which school, or which subject assigned the word search.)

3)  "We all have to do things in life we don't enjoy."  It is true that we all have to do things in life we don't enjoy, but when school continually falls into this category, I believe we have a bigger issue to consider.  Why does school have to be un-enjoyable drudgery?  When this happens, we run the risk of having kids feel like captives in an inflexible institution.  I don't believe school should be viewed this way.  School should be a place where kids look forward to going and look forward to learning topics of interest, topics that expand their understanding of humanity, and topics that teach them skills they need to be successful in life.

4)  "How are you teaching your child high expectations?" We are not opposed to the concept of homework, responsibility, or high academic expectations.  We understand that the right homework can extend learning and can be a powerful way for our sons to practice skills they learned in school or to finish research projects or papers. We also believe in studying regularly for any unit exams because we know content stays with you longer if you don't cram at the last minute for a test.  On the other hand, homework should not be assigned just to raise standardized test scores or to prove that a school has high expectations.  Homework should be assigned if it's genuinely improving learning.

5)  "You are an educator, so you should support teachers and not question their assignments."  Actually, the fact that we are educators is precisely the reason we question assignments.  We believe assignments should move learning forward, and we don't believe a word search worksheet moves learning forward. We have learned over the years that flexibility is a key consideration with assignments.  Yes, there are due dates we should aim to reach and should reach on a regular basis.  However, when life and its responsibilities get in the way, flexibility from time-to-time helps students understand human nature and reduces stress related to trying to be perfect.  None of us is perfect (even though some of us have perfectionist streaks).  Fixed mindsets and harsh penalties do not help students; they merely make them think life is rigid and inflexible.

6)  "How are you making your child accept responsibility if you allow him to skip an assignment?" Personal goal setting increases responsible behavior.  By encouraging students to set their own weekly goals, they can attend to issues that pertain to them individually.  For example,  if a student regularly turns in assignments late or not at all, that student could be encouraged to set a goal of completing all assignments on time for a period of time.  Meeting this goal would bring individual feelings of accomplishment.  Since every child is different, maybe another child should set a goal to be more balanced and less fixated on perfection.  Completing all tasks assigned on Monday when they're not do until Thursday might not be the best goal if it's bringing undo stress and causing a child to experience anxiety. 

Note: There have been more word search worksheets to come home this year, and we have required our sons to complete them because there are too many and we don't want them to fail a class over something like this.

Pre-service Teachers Share Top 3 Fears & Exciting Thoughts

 Exciting news in my life-- I am teaching again!  This time, it's a course at our local university.  My students are pre-service middle school teachers, and our course is a study of English Language Arts methods.  I invited my class to guest blog today.  Collaboratively, they created this blog post as a practice run for their individual posts they will write each week over the next seven weeks. Their individual posts will not appear here, but we thought a guest post written together for an established blog would be a great start.  Please share your thoughts, comments, and ideas with us.

We the people of EDC 447 have chosen to use this blog as an outlet for sharing our fears and excitement about our upcoming endeavors in the world of teaching. We have spent countless hours in the library studying to become educators, and our time as students is dwindling.  Soon, we will be in classrooms, not sitting in desks, but standing before countless wondering eyes. The last four or five years of our lives have been solely dedicated to earning a piece of paper that will solidify our right to mold the young minds of our students. Without further ado, here is what scares us to death and excites us the most about what lies ahead in our futures.

Top 3 Fears

Students won’t take us seriously. 

We (obviously) started with our fears for teaching.  One of the main fears we have, as young and inexperienced teachers, is that our students won’t take us seriously.  We all know we had teachers that were young and we thought we could get away with so much more simply because they lacked the experience our older teachers had.  As new teachers, we are nervous for how to approach this.  We are eager to learn ways to relate to our students but to also establish the line between students and teacher. 

This is a big responsibility!

It is scary to think that what we teach (or don’t teach) our students will have an impact on their entire lives. We don’t want any of our students to go to class the year after we have them and say, “We never learned that last year.” We don’t want them to get to college or their careers and think, “Why didn’t I learn this in 7^th grade?” From where we sit right now, this responsibility seems pretty daunting.

What if we wasted money on teaching degree/will grow to hate teaching?

The cost of a bachelor's degree continues to grow, and nationally 17% of teachers quit every year.  It is only natural then that as teachers-to-be we should fear throwing away all of our money for a temporary infatuation with teaching as a career. If there's anything we learned from Kim Kardsashian's failed marriage, it's that if we're going to spend this much money, it better last.

Top 3 exciting thoughts

Paid job, sense of accomplishment

Throughout our college career, we have developed an appreciation for the full-time, salary-making teacher. As we all worked our way through college, whether it was in retail, food service, or just tutoring students to gain experience with kids, a full-time teaching job is looking like heaven by now. Let’s be honest, we’ve all had to wear a permanent smile on our faces to provide excellent customer service to the public, but that isn’t true self-fulfillment. We are anxiously waiting for the day to step into our very own classroom in hope to make a difference in our students’ lives. Once we fulfill this goal, we will then truly feel a sense of accomplishment and remember why we went to school for four (or five) years to become a teacher.

 Opportunity to collaborate with other teachers

So far in our small teacher education world we have had limited access to school communities.  The longest any of us have spent in one class room is two weeks. While that gave us access to real students, teachers and some parents it was not enough experience to gage what it is like to be a real teacher. Soon we will be students teachers and with this opportunity we will get a deeper experience of collaborating with teachers and getting to know parents and students. As rich as an experience as students teaching while be it is no comparison to being able to say teach at this school, these our my fellow teachers and these a my students.

The power  (and responsibility) is in our hands

For the first time we will get to make the decisions about how our classroom looks and operates.  We are excited about running the classroom the way WE want and getting to develop our identity as teachers for the first time.  It is definitely an exciting responsibility to take everything we have learned over the years and make it our own!

As we come closer to graduation and being hired (fingers crossed) these anxieties and exciting thoughts will only increase.  A little fear never hurt anyone, right?  Until then, we will continue to learn, motivate ourselves, and encourage one another to be the best middle school teachers we can be. Hopefully on that first day, excitement will outweigh fear, and we will rest easy, knowing we can do this.

Teaching My Children about the Importance of Voting

Since my two boys were very young they have joined me at the polls each election.  I believe it’s important for me to model the responsibilities of being a citizen in our country.  This year they selected to stay home and play soccer (the 9 year old) or Minecraft  (the 11 year old) rather than join me at the polls, but their education around voting has not gone awry.  In fact my 6^th grader followed the presidential debates with me, and he had his own opportunity to vote at his middle school’s mock election.  The results of Beaumont Middle School’s election will be announced tomorrow after the results of the real election are finalized.

This year I volunteered to help man the polls at the mock election and it was exciting to see all 6^th-8^th graders with smiling faces exercise their right to vote in the mock election.  Many students voted a straight ticket and others scrolled through the list of candidates, carefully making each selection.  It was rewarding to greet a handful of the sixth graders I knew by name, to explain the voting instructions to everyone, and to hand each adolescent a sticker, thanking him/her for voting.

Obviously, since I work for the school system, we are not permitted to promote any particular candidate while on school time or property because the goal is to teach children to make informed and responsible decisions.  Since they are too young to vote in the real election, mock elections are a great way to teach students about their rights and responsibilities.  It’s also another great opportunity to teach them higher order thinking (H.O.T) skills that will help them throughout their lives.  Making a choice about a candidate requires us to think carefully and consider all the evidence for our decisions.

My fourth grader has also been involved this year because he has participated in household discussions about the election and our favorite candidate.   He stopped playing soccer with the neighborhood friend long enough to inquire about where I was going and to ask upon my return if he could see my “I Voted” sticker.  This led to another discussion with my 9 year old and his neighborhood friend about keeping our fingers crossed today for our favorite candidate to win.  Most of all, I can relax knowing I did my part, and I modeled for my children the importance of voting.