Make The Shoe Fit

Filed Under "At-risk" students, The Way I See It | Leave a Comment

Previously I commented here about Ontario’s new law that threatens to take away the driver’s licence of students who quit school before they are 18 and have earned their high school diploma. It was with special interest that I read Monday’s Toronto Star. Marg Clarke, the principal of Sutton District High School, stated that she wasn’t interested in this punitive approach and has taken a positive step implemented a program that makes the kids want to come to school.

Last summer when I taught Camp I Can, I asked my students what I could do to help them learn. One student told me that I should make him want to come to school. Principal Clarke has done just that. She has made students want to come to her school. Erik Christensen told Tess Kalinowksi, the education reporter for the Toronto Star, that the new program is the only reason he came back to school in the fall. The shoe finally fits.

The shoe or program that finally fits students like Christenson consists of half a day spent earning academic credits and the other half of the day “breathing sawdust in the woodworking shop”. The combination of school and work is the motivating factor. It’s not that kids aren’t motivated to do things. It’s that they want to do things other than sitting on their butts in a desk all day. I can see that shoe fitting some of the kids I teach. It’s definitely something to consider.

Dec

18

Whoa! Let’s Rethink This Whole Homework Thing.

Filed Under "At-risk" students, The Way I See It | 2 Comments

Homework- “To be or not to be. That is the question.”
(Sorry Will- little did you know who would quote you for what reason.)

The question used to be how much homework should teachers give their students. Now, the question seems to be should teachers give homework at all. I’ve been asked many times about the appropriate amount of homework a teacher should assign. It is a perplexing question. We all know being a student means doing homework. One parent told me her child, a grade three student, gets three hours of homework a night. Yikes!!! Another parent told me his child, a grade nine student, doesn’t seem to get homework at all. Ok, so what’s the answer to the homework question?

Personally, I don’t give homework anymore. I found that most of my students won’t do school work at home. Igave detentions for not doing homework and then have to chase many of them because they don’t come for detentions. Then I got the office involved. I called home and parents tell me they are frustrated because their kid avoids doing or refuses to do home work. The whole thing turned into a great kafuffle. So, I have decided the prudent thing to do is to use the time in class to the best advantage. Over the years, I’ve learned many ways of keeping my students on task during class time so that they complete the work during my class. Not everyone agrees with my homework philosophy, but hey I can live with that. I look at the big picture, and I like what I see: my students usually do well; the classroom is a happy place, and my health is excellent. I can’t ask for more.

Recently, Kathryn, Head of Alternative programs at my school, brought this article about homework to my attention. It’s well worth looking at. In an interview with Kenneth Whyte of MacLeans magazine, Alfie Kohn author of “The Homework Myth” challenges our assumptions about the value of homework. Kohn tell us that research suggests:

Doing homework does not make kids smarter..
Doing homework does not improve their marks.
Doing homework does not teach good study skills.
Doing homework does not lead to parent and children spending quality time together.
Doing homework does not prepare students for the competitive world.
Doing homework does not improve standardized test scores.

Ok! Ok! OK! I ‘m sure you get the picture. Homework isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. (What it’s cracked up to be- that’s a weird expression now that I think about it) Does that mean there’s no point in giving homework? No. Kohn tells Whyte there is useful homework:

First, (homework) chosen by the students so that kids have some role in a democratic classroom community of deciding what is so vital that it ought to spill over into the after school hours. Second, it might simply involve free-choice reading rather than writing those gawd awful book reports that could destroy anyone’s love of books. Third, it might take the form of activities that logically ought to be done at home, like replicating a science experiment in one’s own kitchen, or interviewing one’s parents about family history, rather than the kind of stuff that could be and should be done at school. I guess my overall point is not, let’s get rid of homework altogether, but that we should change the default state. Right now, the default is to make kids do school work at home almost every day, regardless of whether it’s necessary. If the burden of proof, so to speak, was on educators to say that a given assignment is so useful that we’re going to presume to interrupt family time to ask you to do it, that’s a very different situation.

Homework- “To be or not to be. That is the question.” I like the answer Alfie Kohn gives- it depends on what you want the outcome to be.