{"id":1134,"date":"2018-04-09T00:05:20","date_gmt":"2018-04-09T04:05:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/?p=1134"},"modified":"2018-04-21T21:40:48","modified_gmt":"2018-04-22T01:40:48","slug":"do-you-have-your-homework","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/?p=1134","title":{"rendered":"H – Do you have your homework?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Did you do your homework?<\/b><\/p>\n

Otto\u2019s and Herman\u2019s wives both worked in the same elementary school. Lina, Otto\u2019s wife, was a 5th grade classroom teacher, whereas Minna, Herman\u2019s wife, was a teacher\u2019s assistant in 6th grade. Minna had a child in Lina\u2019s class. Outside of school, they were friends and often got to talking about school issues. Today\u2019s discussion was about \u201chomework\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Minna was annoyed. \u201cI can\u2019t understand why teachers give students so much homework? Kids work all day in school. Home should be a time when they can turn off their school heads and relax and be just kids!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Lina replied, \u201cSchool time only gives you a short period of time to impart skills necessary to become lifelong learners. If they are only allowed to think in school, then when they go out into the real world they will be unprepared to deal with it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat may be true,\u201d answered Minna, \u201cbut teachers are not consistent. Some teachers give \"\"<\/a>students the same work that they have done in school. That certainly is not teaching them anything new. Other teachers give them totally new things that they will discuss the next day in class. They call it the \u201cFlipped Classroom\u201d. I call it the \u201cFlipped teacher.\u201d \u00a0How can they do work that they\u2019ve never seen before if they have no experience dealing with it? And then there are those that give piles of homework because they are told that is what they have to do. Half the time they don\u2019t even go over it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTeachers work with what works best for them and what helps reinforce the work that they are doing,\u201d said Lina. \u201cHomework is meant to help solidify the work that they are doing. Flipped classrooms rarely require much work done on things they don\u2019t understand. It usually involves videos and lessons that teach a skill. Students that do have difficulty with understanding, at least have a framework of the knowledge they are supposed to have\u00a0so that they can ask relevant questions when they are re-taught and reinforced in the skills the following day.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Minna thought about that for a while and thought about her own daughter. \u201cWhy is your method of assigning homework so different from most teachers?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn some respects, I\u2019m more concerned about the life-learning skills my students leave my class with than the content of the material they learn,\u201d replied Lina. \u201cMy homework policy is time-based, not content-based. My students, as you well know, have to do 45 minutes of homework a night, whether I assign it or not. They are not to work more than an hour on anything unless they desire to. A note from you is all they need to tell me that they worked an hour. In this way, the hope is that they become self-directed. If they finish my assigned task in 15 minutes, they need to think of what they can do for rest of the 45 minute homework time. Practice math, start a project, do some writing or reading (within limits), be creative. It\u2019s up to them. Your daughter can never say to you \u201cI have no homework\u201d. Your reply is simple, \u201cSo, what do you plan to do for your 45 minutes.\u201d If a lot of them are working more than an hour or stopping at an hour, that is an indication to me that I need to adjust how I\u2019m teaching the material.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAnd what does this teach them?\u201d Minna questioned again.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI hope it teaches them that next year when they go to 6th grade and get a lot more work and long-term projects, they can think ahead and plan their own time to do things on time because they\u2019ve had the practice in 5th grade.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Minna still looked frustrated. \u201cThat sounds good, but unless everyone is doing it and the next grade teachers follow up with it, it\u2019s like everything else in teaching. You teach the students to be self-directed learners and the next year instead of building on those skills they learned in previous years, they just wait until their new teacher tells them how they are to think and learn that year.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSadly, that\u2019s the way of education,\u201d Lina agreed.<\/span><\/p>\n

—————————————-<\/span><\/p>\n

Author\u2019s note: Homework was always an issue in all my years of teaching, at a teaching level, parent level, administrative and Board of Education level. Homework policy was constantly being looked at and changed. Only in my last few years of teaching did I adopt the method that Lina was doing in her class. Sadly, if I was teaching today, that method would be more difficult to use, given the number of mandates in curriculum and testing that are being placed on schools. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Did you do your homework? Otto\u2019s and Herman\u2019s wives both worked in the same elementary school. Lina, Otto\u2019s wife, was a 5th grade classroom teacher, whereas Minna, Herman\u2019s wife, was a teacher\u2019s assistant in 6th grade. Minna had a child … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[111,10,7],"tags":[70,55,67,120],"class_list":["post-1134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-to-z-blog-challenge-2018","category-education","category-story-writing","tag-a-to-z-blog-challenge","tag-education-2","tag-harvey-heilbrun","tag-homework"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1134"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1210,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1134\/revisions\/1210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}