Refusal to do schoolwork

How old are these students?

<>

The ones I am particularly concerned with range in age between 10-14 years old.

Marilyn

In our school district, we use a behavior intervention program called “BIST” http://www.ozanam.org/bist.html

Here’s what would happen to a 4th grade child w/out disabilities.
1. Conference about why not completing work and letting child know that we don’t want them in trouble for not completing work. Expectations stated clearly and consequences are logically outline. These could be loss of recess time or stay after school (if transporation available. Our school provides a late bus for kids who need more time to finish work…or who have the privelege of being in clubs and activities) or go to office to sit and complete work until it is finished.

2. If conference doesn’t get it or after school homework help doesn’t get it, we put our money where our mouth is: Next may be what we call “team focus.” Where child would go to another classroom with assignments and books to complete work at a desk in isolation. We try to keep student with similar-age class or to office or in-school suspension room. They are free to re-join their friends as soon as assignment is completed. Some of our more stubborn customers have been known to take several days. The assignment has to be finshed to the specification of the classroom teacher. Meanwhile, other work that they’ve missed must be completed before they can “get out.” One of these marathons does the trick for most of the moderately obstinate types.

We keep at this until we have the student ready to come out and do fun stuff. They know what they are missing in the classroom. Fun stuff with friends.

Now, lest my parent friends on these BB’s jump my case—I handle it differently w/LD or sped kiddos. Their assignments are modified so that they can do them independently: Book on tape—respond in tape machine. Reduced assignments. What ever is needed.

Bottom line—lots of kids just don’t want to work. When that happens, we help them be successful by eliminating the extraneous issues.

I love BIST. I was prepared to hate it because it is somewhat scripted. It helps w/ chronic classroom disruptors (sped or non-sped).

I am a parent of an LD child. I know my idea is probably going to be a shock to some administrators, but why not ASK the child why he/she is not getting the homework done? And then listen to the answer.
I am so frustrated with teachers and administrators coming up with more and more and more rules and consequences and spending less time being humans with the children.
I know from working with my son that he is already exhausted from the struggle of working all day and he needs the evenings to regroup for the next day.
Look for the reason.

Susan:

Thank you so much for your suggestions. I shall surely check out BIST. It sounds like it could be very helpful. I must say that some of those suggestions have been tried, but maybe not the marathon that you described. Some of these older kids that I am referring to are beyond obstinate. They tend to behave well, otherwise.

Marilyn

<>

My question was not referring to the LD child who has difficulty getting the work done. My question was referring to the capable child, who, after testing, turned out to be on grade level, and was refusing to do the work at all costs! These same children have scored near or at mastery on state tests.

And please: don’t think we haven’t asked the child why he refuses to do the work. His answer is that he doesn’t want to or doesn’t like it. There is no good reason!

Marilyn

blaming my kids poor behavior and refusal to do work on other people—like teachers and administrators. When I finally saw the light, he turned the corner.

Re-read my post. #1 is a conference w/the student about how we don’t want them in trouble for not doing their work. BIST is very human—but doesn’t let anyone off the hook for their poor behavior.

As a parent who needed a twelve-step program to stop enabling my kid w/ld to get out of doing stuff he was capable of doing, I’d invite you to our next meeting…but I’m sure we’re states apart.

See Jim Faye: Discipline with love & logic.

all kids have to get some work done in school. Modify assignments, differentiate instruction to the correct level, make assignments that little Joey is able to do independently. Then make him stay till they’re done. Period. Tell him you miss having him in class while he’s getting his work done. And mean it.

Joey will thank you for it when he is twenty.

I was myself, to a degree, one of these students. I wrote slowly and with difficulty, and quite honestly, a large amount of the work required was an insult to my intelligence. I did enough to get by in elementary school, and luckily my schools were actually interested in intellectual development and not the Puritan ethic. I blossomed in high school when there was some real work to do.
My daughter also had great difficulty writing and was always in hot water for not filling in pages of junk. I gritted my teeth and we got through. She also blossomed in high school.

A serious question, which I had with my daughter and have seen even more so with much of the work I see discussed here: what kind of work is being asked, how much, and what is the purpose of it? Are the students loaded down with three hours’ worth of copying sentences from one place in a book to another, repetitive pages of calculation for the sake of calculation, lists and lists of spelling words that are never used in speaking to them (nobody talks in some classrooms because they are too busy filling in worksheets), and other work that is an insult to the intelligence and a waste of time and paper?
There is a fine line here — yes, you do have to learn to do things that are required of you whether it’s always fun or not and there is nothing wrong with some practice and hard work; but no, the work in school shouldn’t be soul-destroying.
If there is so much work of so little interest and relevance that a large number of students would prefer constant punishment to doing the work, maybe the workload should be examined for both quantity and quality.
Also some schools take the approach that all the fun stuff, making cookies and having bake sales and indoor winter pool parties and talking with friends and so on is done in the classroom, and all the dull and hard stuff like reading books and writing papers and practicing your addition is done at home by the parents. This is an unfair reversal of roles and some families draw the line; academic families like mine consciously and verbally, and others less consciously by developing an anti-authoritarian stubbornness.

Then there is the question of what happened to natural consequences. School marks are supposed to represent a measure of the child’s achievement. So if the student doesn’t achieve, what happened to giving out an F?
Or, of course, if the student *can* achieve good grades on the work that counts, then why is the other stuff being required at all? If the work is being required for the sake of work because suffering through three hours a day of boring and utterly purposely work is good for you, then you should stop claiming that you are running an academic institution and admit that you are operating a workhouse.

That said, if you examine the work and it is worthwhile and the student needs it, than the recommendations given above of actually following through on discipline are good ones.

Victoria:

<> And so was my daughter in high school. But my daughter’s reasoning was if I can get A’s and B’s on tests and quizzes without doing the homework, then, why bother? She did all major projects, essays etc., but that was her homework policy. I don’t think she ever challenged a teacher regarding classwork, though. Also, she did get into her first-choice university.

<>

State mastery testing has played a major role in doing exactly that—making the work in school soul-destroying! You are Canadian, are you not? Perhaps you don’t see how this testing is affecting even the brightest, most capable students in our country, much less the academically challenged learners. It has become an exercise in cruelty for many children.

Thank you for your comments.

Marilyn

<>

That has not been a deterrent for the students that I was referring to: they’ve received many “F”s. It doesn’t matter to them. This defiance has become such a habit that by giving in and starting to do work would mean “giving in”, and they don’t want to do that at all costs.

Well, actually, I had provincial exams in many subjects in Canada, many provinces here kept province-wide testing all along, and a few provinces dropped it in the 1970’s but brought it back. Right now I am in Quebec, the second-largest province, which kept province-wide testing all along (from the 1940’s or so to the present). Every high-school graduate here has to pass provincial final exams in at least five major subjects, including both Grade 11 French and English and minimum Grade 10 math.[high school graduation here is Grade 11, followed by two or three years of *free* junior college.] Newfoundland and Saskatchewan also kept province-wide testing all along. British Columbia dropped it in the 1970’s but brought it back in the 1980’s. Ontario dropped provincial testing in the 1970’s and I believe they still don’t have any, but people there will have to update me on that. Someone will also have to update me about Alberta.

The big difference is that here essay-type exams were kept all along; no pure multiple-choice is used. The exams are generally marked by committees of teachers hired for the summer. Students don’t get their final grades until midsummer (and you know what? They survive quite well without instant marks!)

Having seen some of the proposals for the Virginia SOL’s when they were first brought in and I lived in the area, and having had my child strangely mis-evaluated by the Maryland state tests (MSPAP and Functional) between 1992 and 1999, I am the first to agree that many of these new tests are pedagogically unsound! The tests certainly need re-working to be age and grade appropriate and more flexible and to test what they purport to be measuring.

That said, testing as a general issue cannot be blamed for all the ills of modern education. As we were being prepared to write in-depth essay exams at the end of high school, my classes taught much more intellectually challenging and fascinating material than most college classes I have seen elsewhere. The soul-destroying work is a consequence of choices in teaching style, not an easy thing to change but you have to start somewhere. See the TIMSS study for some scathing comments on North American “teaching” of math. And the kids in other countries are doing *better* on a US-made test, with different approaches to teaching, so if the local kids are failing their own tests, with programs aimed at teaching to those tests, that says something, doesn’t it?

Your daughter seems to have a more objective view of all this stuff than you do. Let’s see, she gets good marks on her report cards, she got into a good post-secondary program of her choice, and she had some time to do what interested her and to keep a love of learning. So what are you complaining about?
Yes, it is a threat to the teacher’s authority when work is assigned and the students don’t do it. So, take a look at the work and decide if it is worth a confrontation and drawing a line in the sand of “You do this or else.” Let’s see, is this work necessary for a student to learn the material, do well on tests, do well on essays, or develop any other important skill? Clearly not, as your daughter and mine both have proved.
So, this is ritual work, handed out like the weekly spelling lists, not because it actually does any good, but because we’ve always done it this way and if we don’t do it people will be uncomfortable and the ritual-bound students and parents will complain. They want that weekly A on the spelling and are sure they deserve it, even if they can’t write a sentence.
You can draw the line in the sand and keep the kids away from any social contact and anything they enjoy until they cave, and most of them will cave (although you may hit the occasional young person who really has personal principles and will not give in to threats as a matter of principle, and then what will you do?). If it were a question of actually teaching them to read or do basic math, of preventing violence or vandalism or other crime, of stopping socially destructive behaviour, or of other issues that are major life issues, then yes, serious intervention as recommended above would be appropriate.
But this is a question of doing pointless worksheets and other repetitive stuff in order to keep the teacher’s authority intact and to keep up the so-called Puritan ethic. Are you running the place to produce workers who are nicely subservient to authority, or are you happy to see independent thought and judgement? Independent judgement, especially as children grow into young adulthood, means occasionally disagreeing with teachers and other adults; a little conflict is a sign of an intelligent and competent young person. Developing judgement also requires being allowed to make your own mistakes and live with the consequences.
So why not simply say that students who don’t do the homework get a mark of zero in the homework column, and that is the consequence. If that homework zero drops the course average from an A to a B, or from a D to an F, and if they don’t get into the college of their choice, or if they have to re-take English 1 because of the lower grade, that is the consequence. If you make this very, very clear to both students and parents on Day 1, and repeat it each parent’s day, those who want to avoid the negative consequence will take action themselves and those who don’t will live with it.