When I look back at my whopping 10 years here in the Education field, I think so far my job has been fun. I think of the times I get the most frustrated and it is usually when the beloved homework doesn't get turned in! It is usually a repeat offender. The occasional student who missed one assignment the whole year will usually make it unscathed in my room. The real question is always, why did "Johnny" or "Sally" forget their homework for the 3rd time in 2 weeks? Well, when as a teacher you stop seeing the big red F on their paper (yes, some still love to put the F in BIG RED LETTERS!) and look at the real reason they are not getting their work in we see some of the other factors going on in that students life. One of my first years of teaching I had one of those students, rarely did the work get in and if it did, it was because of some serious bribes. After some "much needed" lounge talk, a veteran looked at me and said, be happy you even got that student to do it. They never do their work outside of school. Well the new "I'm going to CHANGE THE WORLD!" teacher in me had just been hit blindsided. Why wouldn't someone turn in their 4th Grade Math homework? Its the most important thing they are doing! Why else do they have to do? hmm..... maybe worry about where their next meal was coming from, worry about the crying little sister at home, and the older siblings on top of everything else.
I look back and think, was the work that important? Why did they need to do 30 problems of lattice multiplication? I was then told only 40 minutes of homework a night MAX!!! Oh and don't forget our school has a mandatory 20 minutes of Reading every night. So that cut everything I thought was important into a short 20 minute time slot each night, well we can't forget about their Spelling words (yes, in my eyes they study EVERY NIGHT! hahaha) so that takes at least 10 minutes. So in all reality I'm down to about 10 minutes of homework I can assign a night. Well throw in a Science Test and a Social Studies test for the week and you can count Math and English out for that week.
It was during those times I looked at how much time I spent lecturing and thought about how long it takes to loose a student during the lecture. The longer you talk, the better chance you have of losing them, the less time they have for work, the less time they have for work the better chance I wasn't seeing that paper again!
Now remember, I am an Elementary Teacher! I can control how much work they get from each class and I know the work they get from me better be meaningful and worthwhile. I have never give a ton of homework, unless they deserved it! (ha ha another teacher joke!)
I have always probably been labeled the easy teacher, but I look at the life lessons they learn. I really hope that they learn a little about themselves when they leave my room and how to live a good life too. Now of course, we can't forget about the Common Core! They need that too!! Yes, my room might be too noisy for some, but when you look around, there is a love of learning going on, a love of reading, and hopefully a lot of trust too. I give them enough work to get done in class, but enough to keep them busy when they are working hard. I have cut Math assignments some, because I can tell if they understand it in one worksheet instead of two. I also have really looked at some of the worksheets I give and ask myself if it is worth while and going to actually teach them what it is they need to learn. I am looking forward (yes a little) to the deeper thinking our Common Core is going to bring to us, it won't be about the quantity but about the quality.
I worked in a Reading program called Success For All once and it was a lot of work for me, don't get me wrong here, but it was one of the better ways to teach some of the deeper thinking. Each Reading day consisted of some team work building (group work) along with a short reading passage and usually only about 5 questions for the day. Those questions could ONLY be answered with a sentence and had to restate the question. Yes, it was fun to teach that, but hard to grade. They had to really think and agree on questions with their group. There was a lot more to our 90 minute reading block, but the majority had to do with quality not quantity! It was wonderful to see those kids deep thinking.
So I guess you could say as I read the book I understood a lot of what they were talking about and I'm really looking at using some of the parent surveys, and in my level, the cute little smiley faces if I need to assign some homework and hopefully get some good feed back from each parent. I know everyone is different and I sometimes look back at my education career and I know why each assignment was important no matter how much I hated doing those Anatomy Coloring sheets! :) I learned and I think as long as we all remember how important it is to make sure our work is of value to these students we will make a student more successful regardless of the amount of work that goes home. Each of us has our own philosophy and that's what builds a stronger school. We help the students learn that each person in life is different, no matter what your job is when you are an adult you have to learn to work with (or for) anyone.
