I just read the “losing the homework battles” thread from February and have to add to it.
To make a long story short…we asked for special education testing back in September. Now we are in March and the school psychologist/flower child just finished testing my 11year old ADD daughter (diagnosed in first and third grade) and of course she said…. ” your daughter is absolutely not eligible for any services from us” and she suggests we find her a nutritionist (she has a weight problem). To add complete insult to injury, her homeroom/math/science teacher is making us make up all the classwork and homework she missed during the testing days!! Go ahead school district…kick us when we are completely flat on the ground.
For the last six years (and three school districts), homework has occupied our life. From 6:45 AM until 10:30 pm, we fret about homework because our daughter would rather cut off her arm than do it. And you know, after she suffers sitting there in classes that to an ADD child sound like “blah blah blah blah” I almost don’t blame her.
And the projects are just beyond stupidity. One Sunday back when she was in first grade, her math homework dictated that we drive around and chart the path of single family homes, apartments and condos on the way to and from school. In 5th grade my ex-husband and his new wife stayed up until 1am, finishing her conestoga wagon. Just last week we scrambled to finish a board game for health. ” THE MENSTRUATION GAME”. No, I am not kidding and for all the work we put into it, I think she only got a C. That delayed making up the math work sheets we didn’t get to from her special ed. testing absences. And you see…we have Everyday Math…no textbook. Hundreds of worksheets out of order in her backpack. There is also no textbook for science. The teacher makes her find her own topic on the internet to write a news article on science. She wants it typed just like a college paper. Guess what she said? “Your parents are helping too much.” This is supposed to be an academically great school. It’s a house of horror for us. The 6th grade guidance counselor said to her in the beginning of the year, “I don’t know what you did at your old school, but at this school if you don’t do your work, we will hold you back.” I know she said it, because in her singsongy voice she said it back to me exactly as she said it to my daughter. Way to boost my daughter’s confidence, lady.
My ex-husband and I just yesterday, added up the time we spend on all this homework agonizing. We split a pie chart, and realized it is taking a third of the time to find the order of her homework, a third the time understanding the homework, and then if we are lucky, a third of the time teaching her and helping her with the homework. I decided we needed to add a fourth category…giving up and letting her go to bed and doing it ourselves rather than have her flunk. We don’t know what has come before and what is coming after, without any textbooks. We have no map for her subjects, and this year is really devastating because now she hates science, hates math and really hates school.
So…we quit. We are going to take a lawyer in as we contest the denial of Special Ed services, we are going to demand a 504 even though that won’t make the homework let up. And at the end of the year, we are going to say, thanks anyway, and tell them they have to pay for us to put her in Cyber School (they have to, this is Pennsylvania and Cyber is a Charter school). That way, she will have 5 hours of instruction a day between my ex and me, and she will be done. No stupid projects, no stupid repetition that ADD kids despise, no patronizing teachers, no heavy hearts when an assignment isn’t done and no more going back to school 3 times to get 400 hundred assignment instruction papers from her locker that she forgot. She will get personalized art and music lessons, she will learn she is a smart and productive kid again, she will get back her self esteem (in time) and we can have our lives back (yes we are aware how hard homeschooling will be).
Homework has driven us out of school.
I am sorry, I said this would be short!
Re: Losing the homework battles part 2
You are not alone and I often think if I had it all to do over again, I’d homeschool my younger son. As a teacher as well as a parent, I believe homework is simply out of control in our schools. And so much of it to my observation is not creative or instructive - it’s just plain silly busy work.
The amount of homework assigned in modern education is disrespectful to families. These days with many parents both working outside the home and getting home very late in the evenings, it’s wrong to have to come to face hours of homework. Parents and children alike deserve to spend their few hours together in the evening in activities of their own choice.
I celebrate that you’re stepping off the homework treadmill even while I’m sad that our educational system drove you to it.
Re: Losing the homework battles part 2
Thank you for your kind words, especially since you are a teacher. It will make my ex-husband feel better that a teacher feels the same frustration we do. Also, I reread my letter and didn’t make it clear that this is her first middle school year, and her first year in this school. Her teachers in another district in Elementary school were wonderful, and individually helped her get through without an IEP or a 504. The kids were kind of rough, but the teachers were outstanding, and I deliberately kept her in that school a year longer, because the teachers were getting us through with A’s and B’s and I know she was learning. This year, her homeroom teacher won’t help. I asked her to roll a tape recorder for my daughter during the Math lecture, and she said it was okay to tape it, but she wouldn’t be responsible for hitting record. My daughter won’t do it, because the kids would tease her and bug her about having to tape the class. In college you wouldn’t think about not taking notes, or recording the lecture, or borrowing notes to get through the tests…and of course you have a textbook. Here, we have no notes, no tape and no textbook. There is a workbook, but there’s also this binder with about a hundred worksheets and the teacher skips all over the place. The school says, “yeah, and next year it will be worse.”
Not for us. We are saying ‘uncle’ now.
Detention for forgetting!
In the continuing saga, my daughter’s homeroom teacher gave her detention today, for forgetting to give us a sheet to sign about an upcoming science project. We have asked and asked that they email us those projects knowing she forgets, and she has too many “long term projects” to keep track of. Obviously, I called the school and said, no “forgetting” detention for a kid with ADD. Unbelievable.
Re: Detention for forgetting!
Good for you Audrey! It will take you less time to have her do all the cyberschool work at home than the homework. Then your daughter can get on with her life, because I am sure she is a very creative kid with great potential. I have always been anti-homework. I don’t think I ever did my homework in all my 12 years of public education. But back then, you could get away with that and not fail. My two daughters are in the PA cyber school. Feel free to e-mail me if you have any questions.
Re: Losing the homework battles part 2
Wow, how sooo sad this is…….. I’m a sped teacher AND a mom of a 10 yr. old ADHD son who goes to MY school! I do know professionally and personally how sad this story is and the fact you are going to pull her is even sadder!
I’m just finishing a long term project tonite, at 8 with my son who could care less about the research behind building a model of an energy station IF their were life on the moon….. He just wants to put the project together and call it good, he’s done parts of the project, the written part but “Mom it’s in my desk on paper lots of different ones, think if we go in earlier than we usually do you could type it up?”
I do hear you alllllllllllllllllllllll!
Our Principal is pushing to get rid of all homework, I’m still in favor of some, that is truly something they can do independently and that only ADDS to their grade, self esteem and work ethic, not one that reduces their average……… LINDY
This is so scary to me, because I can see the future when I read your post. My son is in 4th grade and I’m just worn out. Good for you for deciding to pull your daughter out of this misery.
Until then you can, however, absolutely get modified amounts of homework as part of a 504 plan.
And thanks for the laugh. I cannot imagine anything more ridiculous than the Menstruation Game assignment.