Observations from a Waiting Room
Earlier this week I spent a good chunk of time in a waiting room at Children’s Hospital Boston. The patients ranged in age from infants to the early 20’s. One thing was common for all the school/college age children, everyone was doing homework and every parent, myself included, was trying to get their child to focus on schoolwork.
I heard echoes of the following:
“Please just get your homework done, I don’t need another call”
“You are missing lots of school that is why they put you in the after school program”
“I know you already know how to do this just do it again.”
While some children were doing homework – parents were feeding them through feeding tubes. Other children were trying to untangle themselves from IV tubing so they can write in notebooks. The rest were just feeling lousy. These are chronically ill children. These families do not have “family time” or “home time” these family have “medical time.” I just sat there dumbfounded. What are we doing?
With all the pressure of accountability and the new evaluation system tied to student progress and in the future teacher pay, there is even more pressure being placed on teachers and therefore students and parentes to make progress. What we need to focus on are the things the actually effect learning and student progress. We assume more work, means more rigor and if students practice a lot things will be better. Is there evidence to supports this? What are we doing to our children?
Are educators and schools passing on the pressure and stress we are under to our students and families?
Food for Thought:
Rethinking Homework, Alfi Khon
Synthesis of Research on Homework, Harris Cooper
Differences in Homework Assignments, Ulrich Trautwein, Et al.
5 thoughts on “Observations from a Waiting Room”
Beth, this a sobering look at our educational system. Definitely a symptom of the times, and a sad commentary on what the current trends in education are doing to our students and families.
Hi Ms. Kittle,
I think you have made a valid argument about what really matters in our children’s learning process and student progress. I think that practice is important with learning but it can become overboard. I think some pressure needs to be placed on the students and parents but just some. I really enjoyed your post.
Hi Kelsey, I am not against homework in general. It is just in my experience it is not always useful. For example if a student can receive scores of 90%+ on assessments and does not do homework, then is that homework essential for that student? Or a student struggled in class on the work and then is asked to do more of the same at home, how is that helpful? If homework was targeted and purposeful to each learner then it would be more effective. But given just to give homework is not always useful.
In the example above some of the children have high absentee rates, so the children are placed in extended day and after school remediation by their schools. Some of those parents viewed it as punishment for illness and felt if the children worked on what they missed it might be useful but many of these programs have their own curriculum and expectations.
We are trying to “fix” individuals with programs, policies and procedures designed for groups. A little thought and individualization would be more effective in my opinion. But then it is harder to collect data, see trends and gather evidence if we individualize things.
I like this post. It’s not that homework is a problem…homework is a good thing. However, it has to be used correctly.
Homework is to help students obtain mastery. It shouldn’t be a blanket assignment that all students are required to complete.
“How can you assign some students homework and not others?” …”That’s not fair!”
On the contrary…fair is giving each student what they need in order to succeed…not everyone the same thing. It’s not fair to make a student waste his time on a task he has already mastered.
Hi Ms. Knittle,
My name is Meredith and I am a student at the University of South Alabama.
Homework hardly ever helped me while I was in grade school. I was the student that struggled in class and had to continue struggling when I got home. I understand that some homework is necessary, but when a student gets too stressed out, they’ll just give up.
We need a better system when it comes to homework. More work doesn’t mean more learning. It just means more stress.