The homework debate
Hi you all, my name is Todd Cross, I am a high school special education teacher. This is a blog for a course at University of South Alabama, but anyone who finds this feel free to join in on the conversation. As a teacher of a self contained special education class with students with severe intellectual disabilities and behavior outbursts, I do not know what is going on in the general education settings. I spend all day in one room teaching high schoolers critical life skills such as to not bite people when they are mad. This is my first year in this kind of setting I absolutely love it, but I am 100% out of the loop, I do not know most of the school staff.
So I am going to bring this discussion around to where I was last year. I taught reading intervention classes in a middle school. My middle school students were very irresponsible as mostmiddle school students are. A huge issue I had was several kids failing because of homework not being completed. I want to know your thoughts on this. Is it best to keep giving out homework? ... because I know they needed the extra practice as it was very hard to get everything accomplished in our 50 minute class periods. On the other hand, I know these students lived very rough lives, often not knowing if they would get to eat dinner that night, so asking them to ignore big responsibilities to do some reading homework seems like a lot to ask.
My answer was to slow down on it. I felt like I was giving in and not teaching them to be responsible, however; failing a class due to homework was probably not going to get them far in life either. So what are y'alls thoughts on homework assignments? I had a professor once say that she never gave homework when she was in the k-12 setting because she got paid to teach them and it was not any one else's responsibility. I wanted to be that kind of teacher, but again I knew the kids needed more practice.
So I am going to bring this discussion around to where I was last year. I taught reading intervention classes in a middle school. My middle school students were very irresponsible as most
My answer was to slow down on it. I felt like I was giving in and not teaching them to be responsible, however; failing a class due to homework was probably not going to get them far in life either. So what are y'alls thoughts on homework assignments? I had a professor once say that she never gave homework when she was in the k-12 setting because she got paid to teach them and it was not any one else's responsibility. I wanted to be that kind of teacher, but again I knew the kids needed more practice.
First, I want to say, thank you for your dedicated services a s a teacher. It takes a very special person to do what you are doing and exhibit the amount of passion that you appear to have for your students.
ReplyDeleteMiddle-school students are at an age where they are discovering who they are, they are physically active and involved in forming relationships. Students attend school seven hours a day, five days a week for nine months. Homework for this age group should not require students to dedicate more than 30 minutes to 1 hour to complete.
I believe that a more effective plan for educators is to structure classroom activities so that students can work in groups (peer-to-per) on major assignments and projects. Introducing technology in the classroom breaks from the mundane task of reading the textbook. Teachers can also gauge students' understanding and retention of material via question and answer sessions, quizzes and classroom discussions.
Students who require extra help or homework may require a parent-teacher conference. Getting parents involved and engaged in their children's progress is one of the most effective strategies to assist students who are risk for failing.
I went to Phillips Prep for middle school here in Mobile. I spent 2-3 hours a night, and sometimes more, doing homework. I don't think it greatly helped me in my academic journey. It brought many students' grades down because it was hard to complete all the work. We sat in school 8 hours a day, so having 2-3 hours added on top of that would be hard for an adult to handle, much less an eleven year old. That being said, certain subjects such as math or foreign language rely heavily on repetition and reproduction by oneself. Reading of course requires reading. Grammar might not come naturally to most people which would require more practice. History at high school level requires reading. So while I don't necessarily agree with lots of homework, where should you make the cut? Which subjects take a back seat? I would think the better the teacher is at conveying the material in a way students understand, the less need for homework there would be. I think if their grades start to fall below a C, maybe they should have to do homework to catch up with the rest of the class, who did well enough without it. Like you said, some have rough homes and don't have time for homework, in which giving 0s on homework just makes it worse. The only solution I see for that is treating in a case by case basis. If the student is doing well, I think homework can be skipped without being penalized with a 0. If the student is bad, maybe the home work grade would not only help them improve their mastery of content, but also give a slight grade bump by grading the homework only by completion.
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