Homework Rant

[AICM]

As a teacher I'm taking a risk ranting about parents on this site but I thought you might like to see the other side! Here goes. Some comments about my homework ALL from parents evening last week:
Homework is too hard.
Homework is too easy.
There is too much homework.
There is not enough homework.
I'm too strict about deadlines.
I'm not strict enough about deadlines.
Homework should only be academically focused.
Homework should be more fun.

I appear to have upset everyone!

On a serious point what do you want from homework?

loving [take your second paragraph]

Schools would not collapse because the government would have to take responsibility....................but teachers have always done this so it would take years probably decades to reverse it.

It is not just a teachers problem it is a national problem that lots of employers are getting work done but not paying for it because mugs take it home, and then just moan about it.

If you are on a salary you seem to just suck it up.

But this is another thread sorry to divert it to something else.

HOMEWORK---NO

POSITIVE HELP AT HOME WITH LEARNING -----YES.

Unfortunately, there would be a period of time between teachers stopping taking work home and governbment taking responsibility. During this time only the children would suffer.

The other thing is that teachers do not have a contract which states any kind of daily hours. Teachers' contracts state that they will do whatever hours are required to do the job. Which is basically what they do.

My DH is a lawyer. He works away a lot and can often be found working in a hotel room at 1am. When he's home we have a rule that the study door must be closed by midnight. Yes, he loves his job but he simply couldn't fit everything in during office hours to enable him to be fully prepared.

There would indeed be a period of time which is why it will never happen.

I am afraid I have a work to live lifestyle not live to work.

Work never takes over anything is this house, a bad ethic some might say but one which has kept us very happy as a family.

I believe ''loving'' that we agree on some things if you read deep enough [lol] and disagree on others.

But at the end of the day it is the children that are important something I thing we both agree on.

AICM sorry have only read your OP ( as yet) but here is my take on HW about the ?there is too much HW camp?.

I was a parent of primary school children for 8 years before starting recently to volunteer in school. When I was "just" a parent I was struggling enormously with one of my Dcs as they simply hated HW. What would usually happen on HW days was: us coming back home after school, have a little play and have a snack, all going well. As soon as I opened my mouth to say "time to start your HW now" I got hell breaking loose! Screaming, crying, shouting at me that I was unfair to ask them to do it... I have more often than not been able to get them to do it but the entire session was done with both of us shouting at each other, me always losing patience and getting really angry and DC getting really upset and angry. It got so bad that at time I had to leave as note to the teacher saying that it was just impossible to do the HW that particular week. The note I got back were always really encouraging, telling me "not to worry" bla bla bla " was not a big deal..." I got reassured that maybe sending both of us to the verge of a nervous breakdown maybe was not necessary and from then on still started doing HW with DC but stopped insisting when it started going downhill too much.

Now forward to me starting working in a class where at least one child is exactly like my DC and their exercise books were coming back in with the very same comments I use to leave. From the other side I have heard the child being called a lazy so and so and the mother got really criticized for her lack of support for not getting her DC to complete his HW every week.(I am being very moderate as to the language that was actually used)

Sorry for long example but I will try to get to the point I would have preferred being told by the teacher that I should by all means find a way to do the HW whether it was eating us both inside or not rather than realising after a couple of years that my son also was labeled lazy and myself incompetent. My view is that some children are really enjoying HW and do not get enough of it (I have got 3 of this kind) and some children give all they have during school hours and have nothing left to give, all they want to do after school is PLAY (got one of those) With hindsight, I think some children should simply not get any HW, not because they are lazy but because HW does not bring anything positive to them. I think that in the same way the planning of the teacher in the classroom is tailored to each child so should HW be. Either that or give parents a crash course on how to motivate an exhausted child into doing yet more academic work at home. I find as a parent I was not equipped to get him interested in anything "schooly" after school. I feel that I was asked to do exactly what school was not able to do either but being the only one having to carry the burden of it IYSWIM. In short what I am trying to say is really discuss with the parents that complain about the overload of HW what really is the problem before passing judgment on them. When two people as emotionally involved as a parent and a child come to breaking point and are at each other?s throat for hours about HW that is supposed to take ?20 minutes maximum? there is really something wrong, not just to do with child/parent incompetence or laziness.

I do not think you will ever please every single parent of the children in your classroom (because it is simply not possible, not because of any weakness on your part) and I am very conscious that us ?complaining of to much homework? parents (and as I said previously, only ever had to do it for 1 of my 4 DCs) can be real pains in the neck but we do sometimes have real concerns about the amount of work for one child in particular and the effect it has on the rest of their family. [hsmile]

AICM................................you have raised a topic there that could be a thread all of its own.

What the teacher actually says to you sometimes is not the same version as to what is said in the staff room.

Popadup,

Funnily enough, I trained as a teacher (as a mature student) simply BECAUSE I could take work home, and this fitted far better with family life than the kind of job I did before children.

I used to be a middlish manager in a large multinational. 8 - 7 days, one week a month on long overseas trips, several shorter European trips a month. OK, no work to bring home - very much a 'once I'm out of the office that's it' life - but not a life that was compatible with having and enjoying children, especially as my DH had a job with very similar hours and expectations of travel away from home.

I became a SAHM when I had children - but I have a brain, a degree, a PhD and a serious work ethic, so while I was happy as a full-time SAHM while the children were at home full time, once both were in school I needed to re-enter the world of work.

For reasons too lengthy to go into here, I decided to go into teaching. Partly, as I say, because of the opportunity to 'split' the 'standard professional length of day' (almost everyone I know who has my kind of qualifications works c. 10 hours a day) to be more family friendly. So instead of starting at 8 and finishing at 7, I start at 8, leave school at 4.30 by arrangement with my head, do 'family' stuff until 8 pm or so when the children are on their way to bed, then do the remaining 2.5 hours of the 10 hour day at home.

It's not poor time management - as I say, the doctors, lawyers, accountants, architects, university lecturers, other teachers and head teachers, middle managers, consultants etc who were educated with me do very much the same hours (the theatre director / playwright and the composer / orchestral manager work similar hours averaged out but it is much 'lumpier' over the year). It's just how those hours are arranged within the day that have changed for me.

If you fine that working from 8am til 4.30 and then from 8pm til 10pm ish enhances your life who am I to argue.

I would like to ask though when do you get any 'me' time or time with your OH?

I myself would find YOUR WORKING PATTERN it a nightmare.

It gives me time with my children and while they are still young (now 8 and 10) that is the critical thing - the thing that my previous working pattern could not possibly have given me. 8 - 6 or 7 pm days would give me no time with them at all.

'Me' time and time with OH I get during the holidays.

Can I pick up on an earlier point, though? You have said hat there should be no homework, but that parents should give positive help at home with learning.

That contains a huge assumption - that all parents know what positive help at home with learning looks like, and that all parents have the skills to do that. In your son's school and in your social group, that may well be the case. The school I teach in has a much more 'mixed' catchment, and it is not an assumption that we can make.

If I were to give a blanket instruction 'there will be no homework, but please help your child at home with learning', then the majority of the parents (though very willing to support their child) would simply ask 'how?'

So, if you like, the homework I give - reading, spelling, learning times tables, short pieces of writing or maths exercises, are just an answer to that 'how?' question. They set out for parents and children what 'positive help at home with learning' looks like. As mentioned, I do also have to plan homework activities that do not reply on the skills of the parent, so as to facilitate even illiterate parents in giving the positive help at home with learning that you advocate.

You may not ned the guidance that the type of homework I give provides. A few of the parents in my class don't need it either - but it is unfair to those who DO need the guidance not to give it to them so that as many as possible of the children can benefit...

And popadup, I am sure that you would find my working pattern a nightmare. I might find yours a nightmare. I am just trying to point out that 'taking work home' can be something that is neither 'poor time management' nor 'bosses taking advantage', simply a way of creating a working day that fits in with a family's needs.

I am sure you would find my working pattern a dream................

10-2 mon-thurs.

But I do agree that not all parents are able to help their children.
But surely they could not manage to help with homework either if a problem occurred.

As I said before [I think] I have looked on line and ordered books to help me learn the new ,lingo when teaching maths.
I have an O level and a A level in maths but when my son cam home and was ''chunking'' mutiplication I did think what the heck is that. So I took it upon myself to investigate and be one step ahead of him.

I agree it would not be fair to give half the class who needed the help homework and the other half who didnt need it nothing.

So the brighter children who do not need the extra help are made to do it, that does not seem fair either.

What the answer is I have no idea, unless the parents filled a form out at the start of the year and agreed to homework or not.

"I agree it would not be fair to give half the class who needed the help homework and the other half who didnt need it nothing."

That was precisely NOT the point I was making.

I give 'guidance on how to help your child at home' in the form of (differentiated) homework, to everyone. A minority of the parents in my class might not need this guidance, as in they would be able to 'help their child at home' (something you say SHOULD happen) without it being explicitly laid out as homework.

All children - as you have said - deserve and should get positive support with learning at home.

There are not many, if any friends or colleagues we have in professional jobs who could work 10-2 so you are very lucky if those hours provide you with both professional satisfaction and/or financial reward.

When I was teaching, I often left at 4.30 so as to be able to spend some time with my kids then did the rest of my work later in the evening. In that sense, teaching offered a little flexibility. But I hated missing sports days and nativities etc and whilst the school hols certainly helped in terms of childcare, I often felt emotionally drained and DH would complain that I cared too much-easy for a corporate lawyer to say!

I'm looking forward to retraining and the new challenge but I certainly don't expect it to be a job where I can walk out at 5pm.

I explained further up this thread that I set rehearsal homework, which the child should be able to do independently, precisely because parents cannot always help with homework if a problem occurred.

And I am available at many points in and around the school day to help the child with understanding the homework task should they need it (this is rare).

And again repeating a point that I have made before, in the most important homework task - reading - it does not seem to matter whether the person being read to is a parent or sibling, literate or illiterate, what seems to make the difference to progress is the process of rehearsing the skill of reading. You may not see reading as homework - I do, and I set it very explicitly, because if I did not, it would not automatically be assumed by the parents of the childrenI i teach that reading was soemthing that needed to be done.

Loving, Agree with you that working 10 - 2 would not be something I would enjoy (I am not quite full time, but significantly more full time than that, and am actively looking for a full time role) as it would not give me the professional satisfaction and ability to 'show what I can do to the utmost' that I need in a job. Horses for courses.

All this really boils down to is the teacher.

If TEACHERWITH2KIDS were my sons teacher and everything she says about her homework setting is correct I think I would be very happy.

I suppose I have had poor homework set quite often so my views are blinkered.

Loving, good luck with the retraining. I'm at a real crossroads with my career and can't decide what to do - missing out on all the children's school moments would be gutting, so I'm not sure whether f/t teaching is the way to go for me now.

pop, if we cut our hours parents would complain even more about what we do - a teacher's place is always in the wrong.

If you cut your hours as in job share someone else would be doing half of it.

Teachers will always get a bashing because of the hours and holidays you get. I know that most teachers will whine that they work longer hours and school holidays but if you add up the hours you probably are not doing anymore hours than another profession.

Popadup,

I do not whine. As I have said above, my total hours are very similar to those I worked as a middle manager in industry, and are also very similar to those of similarly-educated friends across a wide variety of jobs and professions.

However, those similarly-educated friends do not face daily accusations of 'having an easy life' or 'working 9 - 3'. Recognition that teachers work similar hours to those in most other professions (as you yourself acknowledge) would be a HUGE step forward.

What would you say to just having the normal 5.6 weeks off and then all the time the children were not there you could plan plan plan and attend the training days etc?

When commenting on what you do during a day ''i have to do this then that then this then that and then that goes wrong so back to doing this''

that to me is whining.

OP you cannot win. Even with the same parent you can't win.
DD1 took forever to learn spellings and do the smallest amount of written work. So HW was a pita. (she's dyslexic but it took till Y6 for school to recognise that blindingly obvious fact)
DD2 is the most literate child in the class, she knows her spellings after 10 secs and finishes written work almost as fast. She is needs some HW to stretch her and keep her away from the telly.
Both could have done with maths HW, dd1 because it's the thing she can succeed at and DD2 because she might have to think, but primary HW is always literacy.

What she needs is some HW, she wouldn't have written such gibberish and she's 10

Essentially, popadup, that's what I do.

I work every Sunday during term time.

I work half of every half term.

I work 1 week of every 2 week holiday, and 2 weeks of the 6 week summer break.

That brings me doen to a 'normal' level of holiday for the year. It is not possible, as you will realise from posts above, to plan a whole year's worth of lessons in the holidays - that genuinely does have to be week by week depending on how children progress. During the holidays I do longer-term assessment, longer-term planning, strategic things like subject policies (as a small school, every teacher has at least 2 subject responsibilities) and equipment audits, displays, research for new resources, analysis of data related to performance, develop programmes of intervention for my TA to deliver to the SEN children in my class (just under half of my class are on the SEN register), setting up the classroom for the next topic etc, and meet up with other teachers in school to do things like library and reading book reorganisation, common policies, setting new directions for this and that areas etc.

I don't recognise the part in speech marks as something I have said - could you provide the exact quotation?The adaptation of planning I described due to formative assessment and observation during lessons is simply a description of good teaching practice, and was described not as a complaint but as an explanation of why 2 hours' planning time a week (for the entire curriculum) is insufficient. Bad teaching practice is to plan once a week and then not adapt to changing circumstances and progress during lessons - and if that is what is happening in your child's school then I would be considerably more worried about that than about wordsearch homework.

Teacher explains v well why your logic doesn't work pop. Bottom line is unless you've been a teacher you have no idea of the hours/stress. I was a senior manager in a large NDPB before I went into teaching and my workload doubled on entering the teaching profession.

I love teaching and I'm not "whining" about it but the lack of recognition of hard we work and parents telling us how to do our job when they haven't got a clue what they're talking about are all very irritating.

"how hard we work"

What I wrote in speech marks was just generally you saying what you do on a day to day basis, and in your next post you did exactly the same.

All proffesions work hard [except mine ] and lots have people telling them they could do better [think nurses]
but none moan as much as teachers.

And none are quick to detail their daily lives in the workplace.