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Facebook graces my desktop and phone daily. I won’t lie. I love it. It allows me to see what the people I care about are up to and stay in touch with family and friends. Some of the posts my make laugh, some make me cry. Some of the articles make me angry and some entertain me. One that graced my social media feed this week had led to more discussions with other parents than I have had in long while.
A teacher in Texas sent home a note to parents saying there was a new homework policy. She stated:
There would be no formally assigned homework sent home this year, only assignments to be completed if they were not done so in class time.
She took a step further and said:
“Research has been unable to prove that homework improves students performances. Rather, I ask that you spend your evenings doing things that are proven to correlate with student success. Eat dinner as a family, read together, play outside, and get your child to bed early.”
Imagine.
Some teachers I know locally are cheering. The parents I have talked with at the bus stops, the gym, and in Target are cheering.
When I first read this, you guessed it, I ‘shared’ it on social media. I asked everyone who would see it on my page to share it as well. Obviously, it has been making the rounds.
I was thrilled that a teacher had the good sense to stand her ground on what she believed and obviously, what so many of us parents and guardians believe.
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When we first moved here nine years ago, our son went directly into middle school. The amount of homework he received from day one was mind boggling to me. After working half my life in education in one form or another—I had never seen so work piled on students outside the classroom. Often times, my son would be up well past 10:00 p.m. doing assignments. He was exhausted and frustrated and so were we as parents. We did homework in the car, while I cooked dinner, while we ate dinner. Forget about any extracurricular activities—there was no time in our schedule for that. (But, we were ‘foreigners’ and when in Rome…)
The clincher came when it was time for summer vacation. Pages and pages of math and science and history, plus a few novels and book reports were to be completed over the summer. My son and I were overwhelmed. I literally cried.
When we returned to Nova Scotia for the summer and my friends (most who work in education as well) heard and saw this, they were dumbfounded. No one had ever heard of all this work. I was livid. When I spoke with a former principle I had worked with, she and I agreed if there was this much work, there had to be either flaws in the curriculum and its administration or incompetence in the classroom. When I told her this was what it was like from elementary to senior year we agreed the loss of values—family and individual rights for children to actually be children— were likely the cause. Regardless of what we thought, it didn’t solve the problem or shorten the workload.
Normal homework—finishing what you didn’t during class time makes sense.
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So my thoughts when I saw this post on Facebook?
I was thrilled that a teacher had the good sense to stand her ground on what she believed and obviously, what so many of us parents and guardians believe. I don’t think too many of us do not want our kids to succeed. I do think the majority of us want our kids to be early to bed and early to rise so they can be healthy, wealthy and wise.
I think that more ‘shares’ of articles and letters like this need to go viral. More teachers and educators, as well as families and kids need more time to just be themselves and breathe a bit. We all need to play more, eat healthy and get adequate sleep. It’s not rocket science in my humble opinion.
Normal homework—finishing what you didn’t during class time makes sense. It was always what was ‘normal’ while we were growing up. Yes, sometimes you had to study for a test or spelling but not every night and certainly not over your summer break. That’s why they called it ‘break’ right?!
High fives and A+ to this teacher for bringing it back ‘Old School.’
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Photo: GettyImages