Why do some parents feel the need to question the relevance/importance/difficulty of the homework I send home? In September of every year I tell the parents, “Homework should not be difficult. Students should be able to complete the written portion in less than 15 minutes and feel successful. We struggle in the classroom, not at home by ourselves. “ I feel very strongly about this homework policy and always back it up with research about how over worked our children are.
What ever happened to down time? My students go form after school classes to piano, to Karate and then home to eat dinner and do their homework. They have schedules like this 5 days a week with gymnastics or team sports on the weekends. Anyway, I digress.
This week one of my students sent back a piece of incomplete homework with a note from his mom scrawled across the top, “This is to hard for my son.” It was a crossword puzzle using his spelling words. My assistant thought I should correct the spelling of “to” and send it back. Instead I wrote, “Please help your son complete this homework. All of the other students were able to solve the puzzle. I’m sure, with a little help, your son can do the same.” Sure enough, it came back completed the next day.
I happen to know that this student’s sibling’s teacher, (did you follow that?), gets the same kind of notes on her homework from time to time. Every teacher wants to know when work is overly challenging. If I didn’t teach it well enough the first time, I’d like to try again. In most cases, however, it is just parents trying to get their kids out of doing homework. That doesn’t help at all.
