I am totally FRUSTRATED! My son a “Language Arts” class where they have been working on the same short story for three months. This teacher has disected every word, every feeling, just about every quote by every character, and, as far as I am concerned, destroyed the love I have always had for this particular author and his work and any hope I ever had of getting my son interested in reading anything else by him. At least four nights a week, this teacher sends home a handwriten paper with lists, columns, notes referring to other notes on the paper, etc.that the kids have to re-write (sometimes, that is all the asignment is— simply rewriting her messy papers) or try to decipher and figure out what exactly she is asking for. Sometimes she wants them to write sentences, sometimes charts of some sort, sometimes how they feel about certain points the story makes, etc. I feel like most of this is simply drudgery and busy work and is not teaching my son anything. There must have been at least 50 or 60 such papers generated by this teacher regarding this one story in the three months they have been working on it. This is all completely frustrating my son who simply cannot keep up with the paperwork, and I am having the same problem trying to sort through it all, make sense of it, and help him get things turned in on time. It makes it all worse because it all seems so redundant and pointless. Does anyone agree? If so, what would you do about it?
Re: Is This Just Busywork?
I certainly agree that this kind of work is fairly pointless for children this young. How do other parents feel? Have you heard?
In the meantime, is he allowed to type his work? When I encountered these situations with my own son, I’d just do the work myself and type it.
What grade?
I”ve always maintained that English teachers should not use literature they want kids to love in order to teach the kind of analysis skills they need to teach, because the learning process is drudgerous and whatever you inflict it on loses a lot in the process. HOwever, it seems that this teacher ist aking this to its logical extreme. I know it was years before I could go back to A Separate Peace and read it as a book… on the other hand, I really did appreciate being able to apply what I’d learned in that analysis process. ON the *third* hand, the process was taught effectively — no copying of notes and assuming that we were understanding the no doubt deep and wise contemplations of our esteemed teacher.
Re: Is This Just Busywork?
Oh, sorry, my son is 12 and this is a 7th grade class.
He is allowed to type only because of accommodation and does (translate that— I type…). That’s the only way he gets through as well as he does. It takes a good quarter of the alloted homework time for this class just to figure out what it is that she wants.
I do remember analyzing literature— but that was in a high school 101 Eng. Lit. class, for Heaven’s sake, not 7th grade English! And, I remember hoping I would never hear the name Walden Pond again as long as I lived!
Well, thanks for the feedback. I will check with other parents, maybe this isn’t just us.
I think it is excessive, definitely. But some of that is test driven. Literary elements are heavily tested now and you can’t just enjoy the plot of a story anymore. I agree with you, though. Three months on one story is absurd! You know, if I ever homeschool, we’re going to read stories for pure enjoyment and greatly reduce that kind of stuff that kids never remember anyway.
Janis