A homework argument already

[WhyCantIuseTheNameIWant]

Ds has started at big school now. Year 7. Bus trip, several villages away.

They get homework every night. Nothing new there...

But the maths teacher has set homework today. Due in tomorrow. And we have spent all evening at the school "parents q&a evening"

His after-school time went roughly...

4:00 bus arrives in our village
4:15 meets me and dd in park
4:30 has ice cream with a friend
5:00 in the car to go back to school
5:30 snack before meeting
6:00 sat in hall
7:30 driving home via chippy as nobody has eaten
8:15 home and he tells me he has homework
8:30 shower as he stinks
9:00 finally gets out of shower
9:30 packing PE kit etc for tomorrow.

I know he is a boy and takes forever to do things, but a poster. For tomorrow. On parents evening night?

We all had to go and sit in the parents eve thing. As it explained how school works. It's website. Sickness procedures. Streaming. Etc...

Both me and ds need to know all this stuff, apparently.

[Flutterbutterfly]

He could easily have done it instead of a half hour shower...

I think he goes to bed very late!

[squidgyapple]

Too much snacking (is he overweight which is maybe contributing to the BO?)

talk about reading too much into a few words and damning the poor OP and her son and going completely off-topic!

[balletgirlmum]

I value education.

Dh is a teacher

My children go to private school

We don't do next day honework.

[balletgirlmum]

They are in bed each night by 9.15pm

[teacherwith2kids]

"And you also know that you have that work to do and can plan your life around it."

My children have a homework timetable, and can plan their lives around that?

"I need your assessment details on these pupils all colour coded in for tomorrow"

Yes, that happens too. It's normal, and as you say, part of the job. I'm not complaining, just saying that there are many walks of life where an overnight deadline is simply part and parcel of doing the job - and for many secondary pupils, fitting in homework, whenever they do so, is part of their life.

"There's no point to most homeworks!"
There's no point to most PRIMARY homeworks - except for reading and learning times tables. For the reasons I gave above, with a very small number of exceptions (often early in the year) most secondary homeworks that my DC have been set are clearly useful.

[teacherwith2kids]

"We don't do next day honework."

Why not?

Surely it is just a question of phasing? There is no difference, in terms of time spent, between DD doing 6x overnight homeworks, each taking half an hour, or 6 x 2 day deadline homeworks, each taking half an hour. She would have to do 30 minutes a night whichever way round she does it...

[balletgirlmum]

Exactly ego

Something happens one night (like a concert, play rehearsal, sports match or family problem) & you spread out your homework to the rest of the week

[teacherwith2kids]

Ego,

As I keep saying, it is only for 1 tyerm that DC's school do this, and ubnderstand why they do it to set good habits for the vast majority of children - DS, for example, started off with excellent 'in from school, snack, homework' roputines which he would not have acquired had the school not had that initial expectation. Now in Y10, when many homeworks may well take hm longer that he can manage in 1 evening, he doesn't have last minute crises because he's never starting a homework the day before it's due, he starts it the day it is given and gets a good idea of how long it will take.

It is mildly problematic, for those 12 weeks out of a school life, for exceptionally busy children like DD - but as i said, her formidable organisation and workrate were developed at that time, and have stood her in good stead ever since.

[balletgirlmum]

Most of dds deadlines are 7 days.

Ds seems on average to have got between 3-5 days so far meaning more can be done at weekends when there is more time

This weekend he has school play rehearsal 10-4 on Sunday & football 10-12 in saturdsy. So he knows hechas to do extra tonight when he's in earlier plus not go out all saturdsy afternoon.

[teacherwith2kids]

I suppose the point for us was that there were no 'easier' nights - no nights WITHOUT matches, rehearsals, dance lessons, music practice.... There was nowhere to 'spread' any homework to, so nothing to plan it around, and so for us the phasing made no difference.

[teacherwith2kids]

"Would you rather be told you must do 3 hours planning and marking every night this week - or be told "I expect the planning and marking done for next week, it's up to you how you plan it""

It is a wholly theoretical argument, of course - being in primary, planning and marking ALWAYS has to be for the next day, no choice about it! But I do have the choice to do it at any point between 3.30 and midnight, which is a flexibility I hugely appreciate.

[Shiningdew]

Well I'm a lazyarse secondary teacher and I do it whenever and I still think homeworks a waste of time and I don't make my son do it, although he does mostly choose to.

[teacherwith2kids]

I've gone part time, mostly because I couldn't juggle teaching and being a good mum for very, very busy children - that feeling of maximising the progress of the 32 children in my class but completely failing my own.

Still planning to return to full time - first review of that is after DS has done GCSEs in a couple of years time.

[00100001]

The message you send when you say thing like "we don't do overnight homework" is that my individual needs are more important than that of the rest of the class, school and teacher. So, you decide to say it's OK for your child not to hand in homework at the deadline and perhaps waiting two days. Your child has not consolidated their learning before the next lesson, so are now playing catch up and struggling perhaps to understand what is going on in the lesson after. Then you hand in the homework, a day later, which the teacher has already marked, giving them additional work that evening. Your child has also got one extra piece of homework to do on top of everything else.


It's just fucking selfish to allow your child to not do school work, just because you've decided it's not important, or that a dance class is more important.

[Theycallmemellowjello]

He had an hour between getting back to village and having to go out again! More than enough time. Not really seeing the issue here. But anyway, it's not your battle is it. He has to tell teacher he hasn't done it and argue it out himself.

[Shiningdew]

If the homework had any point in the first place 00.

[redskybynight]

OP's DS had a 1.5 hour meeting to go to in the evening. School finished somewhere around 3.30 and he was in bed after 9.30 - so 6 potential hours to do it (not to mention the next morning). No different to a child going to scouts/guides/sports/music activities. The issue was the child not remembering until 8.15pm that that he had homework - not that he had no time to do it in!