Oct

9

How much homework is enough?

Filed Under "At-risk" students, The Way I See It | 5 Comments

How much homework is enough? Well, like so many other things in life, the answer depends on who you ask. For some of my students any amount of homework is too much. For others, no amount of homework is too much. Ask teachers and parents, you get the same range of answers- for some any amount of homework is too much for others no amount of homework is too much. It all depends on who you ask.

When I talk to my students about homework, some of them tell me that they don’t do homework. They’re at school all day long, and they’re not going to take school home at night with them. School’s school, and home’s home, and apparently the twain should never meet. Some of my students tell me they have no time to do homework. They have to work after school to help support the family. Other kids I teach tell me they want homework, the more homework the better. They want to take school home with them so they can earn those high marks that will enable them to get into the university of their choice and have the life they want.

Just an aside here, I really haven’t heard any kids say that they want to do homework for the love of learning. Maybe doing homework for the love of learning is too much to ask of students. There’s no grade given for the love of learning, and it’s probably just as well because it seems to me that kids don’t have time to love learning. They’re too busy doing projects, writing essays and studying for tests and exams.

Kelly Gadzala in her excellent article Too much homework is wrecking kids’ social life cites the experiences of two students who do a lot of homework. One student said that while she was in grade eight she did 20-25 hours of homework a week to help her get to the top of her class. Another student in grade 12, Ana Miranda notes

If there’s an assignment involved then I’ll do four hours, if I have a test five hours and if it’s just chapter notes an hour and a half,” she said. “I usually get two tests in a day, so five hours is studying for both of them.”

There’s no doubt about the pressure students feel about having to do homework. They tell me this all the time. It seems that so much is being packed into kids lives these days with all sorts of extra curricular activities going on. Some kids can’t handle the pressure of doing homework and go to extremes. The pressure of homework seems to be pandemic. One extreme case I came across was of a student who called in 100 bomb threats because she didn’t have homework completed. She said “I was burdened with a lot of homework, both from school and from my private tutor. I couldn’t finish them, so I made the calls”. She wasn’t the only one to do that.

How much homework does the system recommend? While, I haven’t heard of any hard and fast rules about the amount of homework kids should do, The Toronto Board’s Homework Foundation Statement recommendations for homework are based on a child’s grade times 10, so that grade 2 students should be getting about 20 minutes of homework and grade 12 students up to 120 minutes per night. Interestingly though, the amount of homework kids should do has become a political issue- if you can imagine. I was reading the paper this morning and saw that one of the major political parties running in the October 10 provincial election is telling us that if we elect their party on October 10, homework will be limited to the 10 minutes per grade that the Toronto Board recommends.

Now, if you ask teachers how much homework is enough. Again, the answer you get depends on who you ask. Some teachers think that students should do lots of homework. There’s lots to learn after all, and there isn’t enough time in the school day to learn it all so students need to continue school at home. Other teachers think that what’s the point of giving homework , the students aren’t going to do it anyway, and there are teachers who say it depends on the students.

I like Damion Frye’s approach to homework. He teaches grade nine, and for the last three years has been assigning homework to parents. Yes, that’s right. He’s been giving homework to parents. So how does this work? Well, students work on assignments in class, and then parents are expected to respond to their child’s work via an on-line blog or email. If parents don’t do the homework, it can affect the student’s grade. Why give homework if it isn’t going to count. He believes that involving parents in their children’s education improves the children’s educational experience. Frye says that parents complain they never see their kids’ school work. Now because of his homework policy, parents know exactly what their kids are doing , at least in his class.

When I first read the article by Tina Kelly about Damion Frye’s approach to homework, I’ll be honest, I had to chuckle. But more importantly, I realized that he’s on to something here that encourages communication between teenagers and their parents. From what my teenage students tell me, there’s not much real communication going on between parents and kids. Oh sure they talk to one another but not really. Now that I think about it, I don’t remember having many real conversations about school work with my own kids when they were in grade nine. I would ask them how things were, and they would say fine and then they would go to their room and do homework or whatever.

Damion Frye has other supporters for his policy of assigning homework to parents. Carol Jago, the incoming vice president of the National Council of Teachers of English says

“This is one of those really good ideas that has the potential to do what we really want in society.

“It has to do with what we talk to our students about, and what kind of models we are for our children as readers,” she said, adding that in her 32 years of teaching, she has often asked parents to forgo hiring tutors and instead just read the books their children were reading.

“With 10th graders, the parents often really did tell me that it was the one place where they could talk with their student without fighting, without arguing about their hair

I couldn’t agree more, and it’s important for us to hear and remember that message.

I’ve had lots of conversations with teachers about homework and have found that they do modify their homework policy over time. Teachers like Jill Burton , a teacher with the Toronto District School Board, have modified their homework policy over time because they have come to realize that it’s about quality, not quantity. She used to feel obligated to keep up with the new school curriculum and so assigned her grade six class up to an hour of homework a night. Now, she maintains it’s important to choose a few things and do them well, and she assigns about three hours of homework for the entire week . Homework includes any work not finished in class, one-half hour of reading per night, math exercises or other projects.

Just an aside here, personally, I think that the half-hour reading a night is one of the most important things a student can do to improve reading and writing skills. My students who are reluctant readers have told me this. I’m going to explore the topic of reading and improving literacy skills in a future post. Now, I just want to say that at our school we value reading to the point where every one in every class stops what they are doing and reads for 15 minutes each day. It called DEAR-drop everything and read. Doing this sends a message to the students that reading is so important that we are prepared to drop whatever we ‘re doing and read. It doesn’t matter if we’re in a math class, a science class, a gym class or whatever, we drop it and read.

Some question the efficacy of homework, especially for younger kids. Alfie Kohn, the author of The Homework Myth argues

The sad irony is that there is absolutely no evidence that homework is useful at this age.. . “In fact, no study has found any academic benefit to giving students homework before they’re in high school - and even at that point, the evidence is dubious that it’s necessary to make kids work what amounts to a second shift after having spent six or seven hours in school.

Jill Burton also maintains that doing homework doesn’t necessarily guarantee better grades. She says

Not every student will benefit from homework because some will rush through it just to get it done, while others will “slave away” at it and get nothing from it..The students who are really keen and who do homework well will get better grades… but it’s not necessarily the homework as much as it is the students’ keenness that earns them higher academic standing. I don’t think homework in general is going to make kids (academically) better,…But meeting deadlines associated with homework teaches them responsibility…“effective homework for certain things is practice. You can’t progress unless you understand the basics — especially in subjects like math and English as a second language

I think that Burton has hit the nail on the head when she says that it’s the student’s keenness that is the significant factor in a student’s success ,and I also agree that the practice part of homework is very important. When I talk to kids whose learning style is hands-on, I tell them that doing heir homework is extra important because that’s where they get their hands-on learning experience. They learn by doing, so doing homework helps them learn. I know this from personal experience. I learn by doing. So that means I have to do many of those new math questions in order to learn how to do them. Kids don’t look at homework that way. I’m sure there are many people who don’t see the connection between hands on learning and homework.

John Rosemand makes an excellent point about the unintended consequences of doing homework, specifically when parents help their kids with homework. While it is desirable that parents get involved, there is the danger of parents being guilty of McParenting.

“McParenting is parenting with short-term objectives in mind,…”It’s ‘Let’s get him through Friday’s spelling,’ or ‘Let’s get him into the gifted program.’ It’s all short-term objectives, and short-term objectives sacrifice long-term goals.”

And it’s starting to create long-term problems, Rosemond adds. “People in the business and corporate world are pointing out more and more kids coming out of college lacking a work ethic. They lack the ability to hang in there with a task that is demanding and to get something through to completion. They have a low tolerance for frustration and expect on any given situation for someone else to solve the problem for them.”

We certainly don’t want that unexpected consequence to happen. That’s just the opposite of what we want. I’m sure that when we help students with homework we are not doing it to help them develop a learned helplessness and lack of perseverance. I guess we need to keep the dangers of McParenting in mind. For that matter, teachers need to keep the dangers of McTeaching in mind too. When I think of it, I might be guilty of McTeaching from time to time when I work with my students who need additional support because they have a learning disability. They just kind of sit there lost. Maybe they’ve already learned to be helpless.
Parents are also divided on the homework question. Some parents expect teachers to give homework. After all, they reason, school is all about doing homework. Doing homework gets you good marks. Good marks get you into the university of your choice and that will secure your future. Other parents think there’s no point in giving kids homework because often their kids come home with homework in a subject and have no idea how to do it. Parents say they can’t help their kids with homework because they don’t know what to do either. So homework becomes a source of frustration for kids and parents because no one knows how to do it. Some parents even say that the fights around getting their kids to do homework is affecting the quality of life at home, and they wish teachers didn’t give homework.

A mom suggests there’s more to life than homework. She laments

Teachers have become like dental hygienists. Dental hygienists think there is nothing in the world more important than flossing one’s teeth, and that one should devote large amounts of one’s “free” time to it. Teachers think there is nothing in the world more important than school and homework.

She then goes to suggest that other things like sports, religion and can play an important part life in a child’s development by provide opportunities to develop life skills that doing hours of homework doesn’t.

Yes, there is more to life than homework. There’s more to life than any one thing for that matter. But, before we throw out the baby with the bath water, lets keep in mind that doing home work does have benefits, different benefits for different students. As teachers, lets try to meet the needs of our students by assigning the appropriate type and amount of homework. What exactly is that? Well, that depends on who your students are and their learning styles. Homework doesn’t always have to involve pencil and paper or a word processor. In fact, homework doesn’t even have to look like homework. Sometimes it can look like fun.

 
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