The No Homework Post

Laurel's school has a no homework policy for their primary building, which houses K-3. It has been a blissful experience to not have to deal with a packet of worksheets every single week. I used to be in charge of curriculum for an organization that provided after-school care at many different schools around the city. It was an ongoing fight to ever get the staff to do anything fun, enriching or related to a book, because of those damn worksheet packets. It's not that they weren't interested in enrichment, it was just that the worksheets endlessly flowed from the children's backpacks. Nobody was ever done. And we spent a lot of time deciphering directions and examples and having conversations with the children where they swore they had never seen a problem like that in their life.

I also spent 5 years as a classroom teacher and yes, I must confess to have sent home some pretty dumb homework assignments. Nobody is a good teacher in their first year, or usually second or third. But I learned over time and also tried to find ways to make sure my students did their own homework assignments, as it had become a bigger and bigger problem over the years with parents getting a little too involved with them.

All that to say that I think homework is usually pretty dumb, and kids who have spent most of the day inside, around lots of other people can probably benefit from being outside, or alone with their thoughts, or perhaps both, if you can swing that. I was very pleased that her school had this policy.

I pick her up from school a little before 4pm, so there isn't a lot of time. We play outside unless the weather is truly terrible. She reads or draws while I make dinner, or sometimes plays Legos or some other make-believe game. She reads before bed every night. None of it is very structured, but I know from years of curriculum-writing how every one of those activities aligns with a standard, strand, anchors and eligible content.

But this year, her teachers were sneaky. They started out by sending email attachments of "optional" homework. Then a month or two after the start of the year, they sent home a permission slip asking if we wanted to "opt out" of the optional homework. I opted out. No thank you. Parents in the school yard agreed, little kids need time to play. But later  found out they all opted in. I felt pretty dumb about that.

And then the worksheets started coming home in the folder. I wasn't really sure what to do with them, so I just put them in another folder and stuck them on the bookshelf. The folder started getting really fat. At conference time, they said Laurel was doing well, excelling in all her subjects, reading above grade level, etc. etc. Very positive. No mention of the homework, or lack of completion.

Then one day, Laurel started working on the sheets that came home. She said she had to or she would have to go down to the lower math group. For the most part, she now seems personally motivated to get the work done at home and it's clear that they are spending time during every math class going over the answers. I dislike how this came about, but I don't have a problem with her doing a developmentally appropriate amount of homework on content they actually covered in school.

In my humble (yet experienced) opinion, all the math homework that kids do from kindergarten until they hit algebra or so could be skipped if kids had a lemonade stand (or sold Girl Scout cookies!) or got an allowance and handled more cash. If they used analog clocks to tell time a little bit more, and cooked on a regular basis, following and doubling recipes. Play some Battleship, the card game War and its variations, add in a little sewing or woodwork and you are set.

I'm a big believer that you should go all in with support for your kids' teachers and school. Do what they ask, as a sign of respect for their professional opinion. I was just mad about the fake "no homework" oh-no-wait "optional homework" no-actually-it's "required homework unless you want to be in the dumb math group policy."