to give or not give homework

There are a small number of students who never do homework. Most of the students on my caseload (lucky you, I teach K-6 resource in a large elementary school) who have this difficulty have a serious case of ADHD. Their parents do a pitiful job of follow through at home. I do not refer to sitting and working with them, I mean in simply requiring their child to DO homework and helping to keep notebook/backpack organized and packed each evening for the return to school.

I find that I can assist organization at school, but if the whole thing breaks down at home, then my efforts never come to fruition.

I give very easy, independent homework that can be done in 10 minutes or less each night. I have several students who almost never return homework, and I have “hounded” the parents who always offer lip service. Sometimes the apple has not fallen too far from the tree, has it?

When someone finds the solution, they can make millions.

Well, being a sinner in this respect as both a student and a parent, I offer a different point of view. In *some* cases (not all, I realize, but some) there are good reasons for not doing that homework: a student with dysgraphia who is already fatigued in the extreme; a bright student who already knows the work and for whom the homework is a pointless ritual; a family occupied with other valuable activities that are worth a lot more both personally and educationally than filling out your “easy ten-minute” (not with our writing problems it isn’t) worksheet — honestly, if a student told you she had a choice between your worksheets and a live Shakespeare play, which would you tell her to spend the time on? All of these issues came up at one time or another for both me and my daughter, and we did triage on homework, handing in things that were clearly important, fitting in others in spare time when possible, and letting the worksheets slide. It doesn’t make ritual-bound teachers happy, but we maintain a love of learning unlike a lot of the “good” students who did all the work and learned to hate books.

I too came to the understanding that homework was not for everybody. It seemed to me that it was hurting more students than it helped. How can a child with no good home do ‘homework’?(I’d suggest a book called The End of Homework by John Buell if you’d like some pertinent reading) There is no study that suggests that homework has any real value for any student and recently there are some that suggest the more homework done, the lower the scores on standardized tests…

Yet there are those parents who do equate homework with learning and say they want homework assigned to their child. For those parents, I will give homework to their children. However, it is the parents’ responsibility to see the homework gets done then. I am happy to create the homework, and evaluate it if it comes back to me but I will not chase their child down for it.

Thank you for your input. I’m not going to stress or stress out my kids over this issue. I will pass this info along to a colleague who is having the same concerns.
I knew I came to the right place for help!

Sorry, victoria, I don’t buy your post. I give 10-12 spelling words per week. Homework is write them in ABC order, do a simple sheet, etc. I can vouch for the 5 minute rule, when they stay in at recess to complete, they are outside 5 minutes before the 12 minute recess is over.

Math homework is about 5 problems, also.

Finally, my students are not being dosed with culture. They might, once in a while, not do homework because they were at Little League. Usually, there is no reason whatsoever. This small number of parents give me lip service regularly, but the 10 min. worth of homework is frequently not finished.

I do not believe in homework for busywork. I understand youngsters who have disabilities, I teach them daily. By the same token, the children who make the best progress are those who have a work ethic, whose parents stand behind this and follow through at home. Some students never return to school with what they had when they left. All the time in the world doesn’t improve this sitution, nor do all the conversations with the parent.

I respect that some of these children have moms who are single working parents, but I teach with a number of women who are single parents who manage to teach their classes, do their prep work, grade papers and keep their own children on track, too. These hard working ladies don’t have much sympathy for the whining/complaining parents who just can’t seem to get a simple thing like assisting their child with organization at home together.

We’re rare, but we do exist! Dysgraphic, visually and organizationally challenged (and writing twelve words in alphabetical order is a nightmare and half an hour of stress and sweat) but academically talented. We don’t all go into the same pigeonhole.

Agree, but when the child can do the task in my presence, correctly, in the five minutes I predict the homework will take; the child is NOT DYSGRAPHIC. Besides, the three students I think of in this situation are NOT DYSGRAPHIC.

It sounds like you are punishing 80% of your class, benefiting from the structure of homework, because of difficulties with the 20%. And you’re demonstrating a simply wonderful lesson — if you hang on and don’t do somethign for long enough, people will get tired of it and stop making you do it. Granted, in this case the same students probably don’t see the change — unless they have brothers and sisters coming along.

Everybody has things they’re good at and things they struggle with. I would keep the positive stuff up for the homework doers — and find *other* ways to bring out the positive in the kiddos for whom it is not happening.

You may have a much bigger problem here. You are NEVER going to satisfy all parents. There will ALWAYS be some who think homework is too much, others too little. SOmetimes individual adjustments are legit and should be made — and if you’re going to err at this level, probably doing it on the side of less stress for the kid is a good idea. But deciding good work habits and practicing what you learn should be tossed out the window because 1 out of 5 of your students are bucking that is, IMHO, just reinforcing/sending the message that school is this place that you tolerate when you are there… when you are out you are FREE and it’s not fair to expect you to try to *learn* something on your own.

I’d agree with you wholeheartedly if what I saw and heard coming home was *learning* activity.
But instead most of what I see and hear about is pure busywork — copying a list of words five times, copying out a list of state capitals from a textbook, doing 100 math facts that you already know, and so on. Yes, copying over can be a useful memory tool IF the subject is one you need to remember — but these are usually not individually assigned “problem” words, which would at least make sense, but a random choice from a novel or a spelling book, without any regard to whether the student already knows the words. And if repetition is assigned as a memory tool, it would be nice if the teachers taught memorization techniques, but again in general I’m not seeing that, just the copying.
Tell me, if your boss was mad about how the office copier was being misused and assigned everyone in the office to copy out the machine instructions by hand five times and hand them in to him, or else he would cut your pay, how would you react? Yes, a work ethic is good — but there’s work and there’s work, and kids are smarter than many people give them credit for and they can tell when they’re doing busywork. Then, unfortunately, the negative attitude to years of busywork comes back and interferes with real work when they do get it.

I do not want to spend all evening doing homework and fortunately my son only get what I view as important homework. He gets spelling words to review and reading these subjects are O.K. with me.

The reason why it is O.K. is because he first does what he can then I review his work and we correct if necessary. The he reads if we didn’t have this I would have no way of knowing how he is progressing. Reading has been difficult for my son and he needs to do as much as possible.