There is no way to tell everyone on the first day of school – or even the first few days – everything they need to know about “operating” the classroom. I pick the most basic things, managing supplies, using the hall pass, getting lunch, knowing what to do when you come in the room, what to do when you finish your work, how to politely get my attention…and I work on putting those procedures in place right away. The more the kids learn to do on their own, without my direction, the more time I have, and the better they use their time.
Most of last week, the first week, was spent in error mode. I try to keep my explanations short and to the point. I say a few introductory things, and then move in to some easy activity. Invariably, something happens to interrupt the flow, and we have to stop and have a “mini-lesson” on how a particular micro-process should work. We don’t get a lot of schoolwork done early on, but I expect that. The fourth-graders have to listen to me tell them that they’re intermediate level students now, and…and…I’m glad I don’t have to listen to myself.
Last Friday morning, when the first homework assignment was due, the excuse machine was on overload and was in danger of overheating. When a student told me, “You forgot to tell us to take our math book home, and….” I stopped her in mid-defense.
“No, no, no. My ears are hurting!” I told her and the 5 or 6 woeful little faces standing near me. “Stop now. This is too sad for me to listen to anymore.”
This was No-Excuses-Friday. I stood in front of the class and let them know that I could not help anything that happens away from school, and that I’d heard too many reasons why something didn’t get done. “Better,” I said, “if you tell me when you’ll have it here.”
I decided to institute a Homework Policy that parents would sign. I plan to hold noncompliant students in from recess until they notify their parents, or satisfy the deficiency. This, of course, destroys my lunch period. But I have few options other than ignoring the whole issue and letting the slackers off the hook. I’ve tried that, and what happens is that parents yell when they see the report card. My hope is that if I am firm in the beginning, I will not have trouble later. But who am I kidding?
When I started composing my policy notice, I went online looking for research findings that would justify my expectations that students do their homework. As we all know, if we can say, “Research shows that…” people will be more likely to believe us. I discovered that there is little current research showing a benefit to homework in elementary school. My experience reflects much of what Alfie Kohn has to say about the Homework Myth.
I wish I didn’t have to assign it, grade it, or monitor student/parent compliance. Most homework is a waste of time and a headache from start to finish. The homework that I do understand is the classwork that needs a little more time, or gives parents more information about what their kids are doing in class. Like it or not, it’s part of the culture of school.
The beginning of the academic year is about establishing norms for participation in the classroom. This year I’m keeping track of as much of the social learning and teaching as I can. That’s the stuff that gets taken for granted later on. I want to have the kids generate a Classroom Operating Manual on a wiki. A student ethnography project like that will be a great introductory writing venture for us.
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My few teacher homework tips:
1. It’s ridiculous.
2. They know it.
3. It’s that Buckminster Fuller thing-shouldn’t teach to unteach. So…it really should be “go home and bake some good apple tarts and come in here tomorrow and feed us your treats….or go home and watch the stars, or read a great mystery and share with us who dun it….
Given that homework and spelling are often the centerpiece of the teaching universe I have developed a wonderful relationship to the subject. I pay it off with chocolate and I allow kids to do paintings(for instance) that bring it, this year you get a Beanie Baby for a month’s worth of weekly packets. Bribery all the way. Yes I am sorry to those who thought I held a higher ethical thread. I’m pretty sure this is the way i’m going to go on it tho.
Yes of course I’m attempting to teach the entire curriculum through the packets-oh just kidding..I always praise getting it in and I try not to mention it when they don’t. I have a very hands on relationship with kids so I do tend to get it (but not always and those stay with me afterschool as “late birds”…) then I file it, or sort it and generally wonder about it.
I started sending home better books, books I bought in sets and would read half the story (like Artemis Fowl) and then “allow” them to take it home. Mr. Popper’s Penguins was never read with that much enthusiasm-had to get it read for the spoilers. After awhile they want to read the end ahead of you so they take it…well as you can see I use teasers.
In first grade this year I played my Bootsie Barker Bites tape (and read book). If you don’t know it Bootsie is a bully and this tale is a captivator…. and now its a hot “to go” item. I call certain things “To go ” items and they get read as homework with the entire class hot to get it-of course that’s a real on target NCLB based activity.
Literacy passion. It’s a big part of my homework rituals. I have the scary book box….for the very brave. I loan out a tape recorder and my cassettes of songs and lyrics too. (read those tunes) I have a few older students that like to grade the homework from the scripted requirements at recess…one particular favorite of mine is the “contest” homework. For good essays or stories you get a Friday luncheon with teacher….or at times a popcorn bag shared with a buddy.
So yes, I’m buying it….sorry, Alfie Kohn, it’s all wrong. But it takes creative play. It’s just play really to me. Sent home playdough this week with the orders, “mix it”, and the homework is to “play with it”. But there are other things in there too. I have a toy mouse in a bag that goes home and writes down a story about you and comes back in to tell a tail….. I liked the year I had the kids keep journals in which they could only write about “other people” each night, or one where they kept it all year pretending to be someone fron “history”-the one I always recall is the 6th grader that wrote for a year about our days and school as if he were a young Karl Marx. It was genius.
I suppose in the end my only real strategy was to make homework fascinating. I like response journals. They answer my five questions, I answer their’s and we pass back and forth to be done at home but I turned that into Email a few years ago. Also when we were in San Diego working at the reservation school I had quite a few willing to write Fan Fic which I would read and count as a part of the writing…sometimes.
All you really want to do is teach “initiative” and getting into something and maybe also doing something “you don’t want to do” that mainstay of life. I have a friend that gives thousands of model projects-like dodecahedrons to take home and create as one aspect of his homework to look forward to in the packet. Somehow I motivated a 6th grade group to do Cornell notes and I ‘d say “don’t you ever outline those chapters” for me and they’d delight in bringing it in done, but that 6th grade was a very contrary group. I still laugh about how that evolved…
My daughter’s drown in homework as Oxnard loves the theory, “more of it”, to try to get scores up. Once in awhile they get creative and that’s when it comes alive and we can do something of value. Mostly it’s just a way to memorize the mountains we all need to recall.
Sometimes, with certain kids I learn the hard way….if I had to go live their life, sometimes I find out, I wouldn’t do any homework either. What always amazes me is just how hard some kids try to do it well. Praise that. Buy some really nice Almond Roca’s. Think of yourself as deserving it and munch some…I told them I microwave the math and they always bring it in just to see if I’m serious…germs, I say.
The excuses and the homework compliance have both fallen to undetectable levels. It comes back, but now only from the true believers. Some kids will miss recess regularly – and I’ll get no peace at midday – rather than do it. I have a hate – hate relationship witht the subject. Spelling, too, as you mention, is among the pantheon of Paper Gods. There’s no power or glory there.
They need to hire a homework cop to call the parents at work and make their lives miserable every day. I haven’t any time to care. I’ve downgraded the points given for it so the zeros don’t hurt too much.
They’re making us send math homework home – the Studylinks from the Teaching Masters book – so my old way of sending dead-head do-it-yourself papers won’t work now. Many of the parents can’t figure this stuff out – the ones who care to try.
As for bribery, I’ve tried that, too. I made a list of “fun” things for second graders to do, and told the kids if they brought back a journal of their week’s efforts, I’d buy them an ice cream sandwich. Eventually I made it all the way down to zero. I tell the kids about that now, and they’re sure that they’d cash in big time. But I’m not that much of a sucker. I know something about human nature. And I know myself well enough to understand that if I don’t care about it, neither will they.
I’ll try the microwave, but (and you inspired this thought) what would really work is lighter fluid. I want to take the homework out on the playground and torch it. They’d bring it in just to see how big a blaze we could light. We might weigh it, first, and I ‘ll give them that many extra minutes to read whatever they like.
Wow, 2nd grade. What an awesome web site for that grade…
Today I have a new assignment:
Think of a thousand ways to stop an ant invasion.
My room is covered.Again.
So I hope monday brings in “solutions”(Raid being my first solution).
I read your homework comments with much joy. I know, odd that I am.
Shall we do the Field of dreams…’If we build it they will come?
only in my perfect world without something to keep me hopping.
sarah…who is counting homework as we type…
No, no. My students now are Fourth-graders. Second graders are a big part of my history – but I am too grumpy and gruff anymore to tie shoes and clean up spilled milk.
Better to think of ONE solution for a thousand ants. I’ve tried the thousand-solution approach and it is a losing proposition. I poisoned myself, and had the ringing in my ears for a few days. I learned from an exterminator that the job is done by getting a little bit of poison on every ant, and have them all carry it back to the nest. So, like many other things, we are really trying to apply leverage to the ANT hole.
It’s sad to say, I’m so thrilled its fourth. cause my first looks better to me now.I was suffering a crisis of quality.
As for ANTs. I have them in my pants.By days end I was OVER it. WE had so many big dramas over the ants it got to the point where I was no longer saying “Let’s try to put them outside.” . I was saying…”I’m going to kill these little buggers….” and other assorted totally correct for young minds thoughts. When I looked up and saw thousands on the blind pulls coming down from the windows at ceiling height I thought, is it possible that this is happening? I have a vacyumm over at school as I sometimes clean it-I emptied the bag three times full of ants. I just seriously pulled one out of my ear…homework was reduced to “Bring a can of Raid and get a PE activity”.
The Williams lawsuit prevents our using it though.
Sarah
sorry, spelling goes when an ant pops out of your ear….
No doubt, when they are on YOU, it is personal. You have no doubt broken new ground for classroom procdedures with your efforts to control what sounds like a horrendous situation.
Honestly, we had hoards of them in our house, and I called an exterminator who came with a tank and hosed the house inside and out. He told me that I could do the same with a product (not aerosol) that comes from the home center. That’s what I do now. One application a year. Window frames and doors, and around the foundation. They’re disoriented and lost for a few days, and then they disappear.
I can’t imagine trying to teach anything on the standardized menu with something like that going on in the classroom.
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