Look out!  I’m on the warpath…

I went to my eldest daughter’s curriculum night (she’s in 8th grade) tonight, and I heard a somewhat familiar refrain from each of her teachers: “I don’t give much homework.”  Well, why?  I don’t think 30 minutes to an hour is too much for an 8th grader, and I want her to have study skills for high school and college.  I realize her school is on a block schedule; therefore, her classes probably get a lot done at school.  I still think it’s odd that they give so little homework.  I realize some people believe homework interferes with family time, but I think students need to learn how to juggle all parts of their life.  If they have homework, they need to set aside time to do it when it doesn’t conflict with family time.  For instance, I used to do my homework as soon as I came home from school.  If I recall, I almost always had about 30 minutes to an hour of homework in middle school.

Also, my daughter’s school has a policy whereby teachers are required to give incompletes if students have missing work.  Students must do the assignment and get some credit for it, no matter when it’s done.  Frankly, I think this is really unwise.  What kind of responsibility is the school teaching its students regarding turning work in on time?  My daughter turned in a Spanish assignment well over a week late last year, and her teacher gave her a 100.  I talked with her and told her I didn’t think it was fair; plenty of students turned in the assignment on time, but it made no difference.  She got extra time and got the same grade!

I don’t give homework every night, but my students do a fair amount of homework in preparation for class — mostly reading homework.  And I give quizzes to hold them accountable for it, too.  They have 20 vocabulary words every two weeks and have to complete vocabulary cards.  Of course, this wasn’t the case when I taught at a rural school — most of my students spent an hour or more on the bus in the afternoon, and they wouldn’t have done the work anyway.  We were on a block schedule, so I wound up assigning a lot of classwork to break up the long periods.  But my daughter is not in a rural, underperforming school.  She needs academic challenge.

What do you do about homework?  What factors do you have to think about?

Image credit: squarepants2004j

[tags]homework, education[/tags]

Hipteacher tagged me for this Teaching Meme.

1. I am a good teacher because… I am reflective of my practices and honest with myself and my colleagues about my strengths and weaknesses.
2. If I weren’t a teacher I would be a… lawyer, but not a trial lawyer. I don’t think I’d like the courtroom. I do like research, and I could see myself doing that.
3. My teaching style is… undergoing some change. I realize I spend too much time in some areas that don’t benefit my students, and the positive reaction of the students I taught in a summer seminar to a much more discussion-based course has convinced me I need to basically eliminate reading in class altogether. Also, I have realized lately that while I love to be read to, I dislike having handouts read to me. Ugh. I will never do that again, and I don’t care whether that means I have to worry the students don’t read them without me. I am also working on making my assessments more authentic.
4. My classroom is… very neat (because school hasn’t started), bright, clean (but my desk is not), and airy.
5. My lesson plans are… fairly organized, as one of my goals this year is to approach my curriculum according to the principles of Understanding by Design.
6. One of my teaching goals is… to help my students become better, more confident readers and writers.
7. The toughest part of teaching is… balancing work and home. It is very easy to spend all of my time working, but my family needs me, too.
8. The thing I love about teaching is… interaction with a collegial faculty and students. I feel fortunate to be in a profession that enables me to learn new things all the time.
9. A common misconception about teaching is… that teachers have a lot of paid free time — entire summers with nothing to do, holidays, long breaks. Our contracts are based on the days we work, but are often divided over 12 months for our convenience. Anyway, most teachers I know do some work during those times, and most teachers I know also do a lot of work outside of normal work hours.
10. The most important thing I’ve learning since I started teaching is… document, document, document. It’s much harder to convince others of a problem if there is no pattern, and documenting also enables teachers to make sure they are fair.

I tag Robert, Clay, Clix, Reflective Teacher, Nancy, and Ms. George.

By the way, Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach tagged me for the 8 Things Meme, but I did that one already.

[tags]education, teaching, meme[/tags]

Here in Georgia, we start school early in August for some reason I am unable to fathom. It is cooler in Georgia in June than in August, so it stands to reason that we would be better served in terms of cooling/electricity costs if we started in September and went through later in June. However, no one asked me. I don’t think it would overlap with college semesters, which was the ostensible reason given for starting in August.

At any rate, my own three children started back last Monday, and my students will start on this coming Monday. My eldest is in 8th grade, my middle one is in 1st grade, and my baby started pre-K. The eldest is happy to be the big cheese in middle school. I asked her language arts teacher which books they might read (because I’m nosy), but she hasn’t definitely decided yet. My middle one’s teacher is on maternity leave, which is tough for transition, but there’s not much to be done, I suppose. My youngest is in a great special needs pre-K class — five students — with an amazing teacher who already has my undying gratitude and loyalty.

Which leads me to a question I wanted to ask you all. What does it for you with your own kids’ teacher(s)? What I mean is, as teachers yourselves, what do you look for or notice that makes the difference for you between a good teacher or a great one? Given what you know about teaching, what does your own child’s teacher have to do to make you sit up and take notice?

I realize my son’s teacher (as a special ed teacher) simply has to go the extra mile because the nature of working with special needs students requires it. She has shared photos with us on Snapfish (I cannot link to her photos, nor would I if I could due to privacy concerns), created journals so we can share information back and forth, and responded promptly to e-mails, but more than that, she did little things to make me feel comfortable leaving my son in her hands. She gave him a picture of herself before school started so he could get used to her face. She gave me an exact copy of their schedule so I can see what he’s doing during the day. She is arranging parent night around all our schedules because we have kids in other schools (his school is not our “home” school because our home school cannot accommodate a special needs pre-K class). You just can’t imagine how scary it is to send a child like my son to school for the first time unless you’ve had to do it, and it’s been an amazing experience.

So what about you? What can a teacher do for your children that wows you? And what do you plan to do to wow the parents of your own students?

[tags]education, teaching[/tags]