teacher comments on homework
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teacher comments on homework
| Sat, 10-16-2004 - 4:37pm |
I hear you loud and clear...on one end, I'm assigning homework and on the other end I come home and have about 30 minutes to 1.5 hours of homework to deal with on this end of things. So I hear you. If you really want to get things to change, you have to go right to the top and direct your complaints to the federal government and state government and school board because THAT is where the push is coming from...these are people that are working for you, you voted them in. You don't like the impact of No CHild Left Behind on your family life, then write directly to Bush.
Do you know that back in the day if your child came into kindergarden with about 5000 words, that was great? Children are coming into kindergarden now with a word back of 50,000!! My friend's nephew at three can tell you about the planets, their moons and a whole bunch of other trivia. Can your child compete with that? I know that mine couldn't. The implication is that if your child doesn't have this required bank of words, the achievement gap is only going to get worse and worse for her as she gets older. The pressure that your teacher has to bring your child 'up to standard' is great. The school will not make the grade, the funds will be cut, etc. Complaining to her is inadequate. Her hands are tied. It's like complaining to your local beat officer about crime...big deal. Be political and write a lot of letters to the people who set up the rules. Vote.
On the pedagolical side of things. She's not passing the buck to the parent. The same way that you expect your teacher to carry the ball when you hand over your child to her, you have to follow through and not for her, but for your child. You can tell your child that education is important, but if you DON'T back your words with behaviors to reinforce how important reading is, how important getting homework done is, and you don't give her a quiet space and time to do her homework, forget it. People who do the research say that if a child doesn't have the homework thing down by fourth grade, it's just going to be an uphill battle for them...you can't just expect them to become efficient at completing their homework over night. The teacher isn't expecting you to teach your child, she's expecting you to help your child practice what she is teaching your child so that she can accelerate the program. I know that your child is in the second grade, but for me in high school, I have to move pretty quickly because April and May are just shot with standardized testing. I can't teach anything during those months and then we have finals and the year is over. So because of No Child Left Behind and other testing, I have to input, practice, drill and evaluate nine months of schooling into seven. And yeah, I expect my parents to give their child a quiet place to study, to sit there and help their kid master the material and practice. The kids making it into four year colleges? They've got parents who know what it takes to get into those schools. There are tons of studies on that, that you can pretty much guestimate how far a child will get to in their own schooling based on the mother's education level. It's not written in stone, but it's a good indicator.
I hate not being able to go out to dinner on a week night and hit the mall to run a quick errand, I hate not being able to watch an entire movie in a sitting with the kids...but I'm on the other end of things and I see where my kids have to get to. I changed their school because the first one's standards were too lax and my children were never going to make the grade. My kid's a brainiac and I've got my eye on one of the best high schools for him and then Brown or Berkeley or MIT after that. I'm not going to stand in the way. His fourth grade teacher complained to me about his homework sloppiness, his dad and I got right on it.
Second grade isn't what it used to be...neither is high school. It's really cut throat.
Do you know that back in the day if your child came into kindergarden with about 5000 words, that was great? Children are coming into kindergarden now with a word back of 50,000!! My friend's nephew at three can tell you about the planets, their moons and a whole bunch of other trivia. Can your child compete with that? I know that mine couldn't. The implication is that if your child doesn't have this required bank of words, the achievement gap is only going to get worse and worse for her as she gets older. The pressure that your teacher has to bring your child 'up to standard' is great. The school will not make the grade, the funds will be cut, etc. Complaining to her is inadequate. Her hands are tied. It's like complaining to your local beat officer about crime...big deal. Be political and write a lot of letters to the people who set up the rules. Vote.
On the pedagolical side of things. She's not passing the buck to the parent. The same way that you expect your teacher to carry the ball when you hand over your child to her, you have to follow through and not for her, but for your child. You can tell your child that education is important, but if you DON'T back your words with behaviors to reinforce how important reading is, how important getting homework done is, and you don't give her a quiet space and time to do her homework, forget it. People who do the research say that if a child doesn't have the homework thing down by fourth grade, it's just going to be an uphill battle for them...you can't just expect them to become efficient at completing their homework over night. The teacher isn't expecting you to teach your child, she's expecting you to help your child practice what she is teaching your child so that she can accelerate the program. I know that your child is in the second grade, but for me in high school, I have to move pretty quickly because April and May are just shot with standardized testing. I can't teach anything during those months and then we have finals and the year is over. So because of No Child Left Behind and other testing, I have to input, practice, drill and evaluate nine months of schooling into seven. And yeah, I expect my parents to give their child a quiet place to study, to sit there and help their kid master the material and practice. The kids making it into four year colleges? They've got parents who know what it takes to get into those schools. There are tons of studies on that, that you can pretty much guestimate how far a child will get to in their own schooling based on the mother's education level. It's not written in stone, but it's a good indicator.
I hate not being able to go out to dinner on a week night and hit the mall to run a quick errand, I hate not being able to watch an entire movie in a sitting with the kids...but I'm on the other end of things and I see where my kids have to get to. I changed their school because the first one's standards were too lax and my children were never going to make the grade. My kid's a brainiac and I've got my eye on one of the best high schools for him and then Brown or Berkeley or MIT after that. I'm not going to stand in the way. His fourth grade teacher complained to me about his homework sloppiness, his dad and I got right on it.
Second grade isn't what it used to be...neither is high school. It's really cut throat.

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I'm not worried that dd won't be able to compete or go to a good college. And quite frankly, I don't care if she can't get into MIT. That doesn't mean she can't get a great job or be happy in her life and being happy in her life and being able to recognize that family and love and integrity are the most important things in life is what I want for her. Truthfully, it wouldn't hurt my feelings if she went to my alma matter, a small Jesuit college where even the intro classes are not more than about 40 people and heavily based on discussion and synthesis of information. Far better prep for grad school than my friends who went to large more well known schools. And as for whether she can compete without me spending all my free time on her homework--I realize that I'm in my early 30's so things are different but my grandparents didn't do that, something I confirmed with my grandma the other day in case I was not remembering correctly, and the school because it was small and didn't have a gifted program felt they needed to skip me a grade from 6th to 8th and put myself through a bachelor's and master's degree and dh has a bachelor's also all on his own.
But you are correct that a lot of the infrastructure has a lot to do with government and those are the political issues we take seriously.
My daughter gets a weekly homework assignment that she can not complete on her own. I was told I am expected to help her with it in order for her to complete it. I am more than willing to assist my daughter on her homework, but this assignment is so hard!
Every night ends in frustration over how hard this stuff is for her. Ofcourse it is not hard for me, but I end having to explain and re-explain things to her and my daughter is in tears because she feels she is inadequate. I can't stand it! I looked up the source of the materials, it is a book called "Wordly Wise 3000 book 3" This is a 6th grade level book and my daughter is in 3rd grade!
In your opinion, why would a teacher or a school assign work that is 3 grades ahead? and what is the best way for me to approach them about this?
Thanks!
I think you should run for the board, or at the very least, show up at the board meetings and be heard!
I didn't realize that the teacher was assigning homework on material that she hadn't gone over before...I would direct this concern to the administrator and if you don't get results there, go to the district superintendent. That is crazy to assign homework on stuff you didn't cover yet. I agree.
I think Jesuits schools are top of the line and you know that it's not just about your education, they focus on the whole person. You're lucky that you went to one. I do think that where you went to school counts in a lot of fields...and since we're talking about my son, it's sexist, but he will be the bread winner and where he gets his degrees will matter. I care about where he goes and I have every intention that he go to SI (our local Jesuit HS). I live in a highly competetive area and I know that many companies will not look at your resume if you didn't go to a top notch school. Again, it depends on your field.
The point of homework is to reinforce the day's lessons...I don't know what they're trying to reinforce when they can't do the homework and mom ends up having to do it for them. My children get stuff that's on par with their work in class.
But...DD (2nd grader) does have to read one newspaper article per week and report it to the class. When DS had to do this assigment by the end of the year he was reading them by himself, but in the fall we were reading it to him. Maybe there's a strategy at play here along the same lines?
Since you have already addressed your concern about this homework assignment with the teacher and you weren't satisfied with the response, go to the next level and ask the administrator the academic rationale for this homework assignment. Let me know what you were told, ok?
The point of homework is to reinforce the day's lessons..
TOO TRUE! THis year is Ty's first with a teacher that has this mentality. And it's going smoother in some respects. Not a huge workload. My only problem is that they aren't learning the multiplication in class (she's frustrated too, that her 5th graders are behind and SHE is having to backtrack. I know that wasn't in her plan for the year) becaues they don't have as much time. It should have been solidified last year. Oh well.
I've been reading the posts in this thread but haven't read all of them in the original post. I think all single moms struggle with homework. I know I do. I pick the twins up from the after-school program at 6:00 p.m. My twins are in second grade, and I just can't believe the amount of homework they get, and the type of homework. Every week, my son gets a sheet that goes with a story in his reader. On Monday, he has to look up the vocabulary words in the glossary and write their definition (I know I wasn't looking up words in a dictionary in second grade). Tuesday, he has to write a sentence with each of the 10 spelling words. On Wednesday he has to write a paragraph, and the subject changes every week. Thursday he has to study for the spelling test. And all of this is in additon to math or science or health homework (Health -- I didn't have health in 2nd grade).
What gets me (and I wonder if I am alone in thinking this way), things are done a lot differently now than I am used to. The way we learned it was you had a sentence, you had to underline the suject and the verb. Now they ask the kids to underline the telling part of the sentence. I had to read it 3 times to figure it out. Then my daughter is arguing with me over what's right and what's wrong. A friend of mine stopped by last night and she's older than me, but she agreed with me. The sentence was: I liked the big snake. Subject and verb is I liked, but the naming or telling part of the sentence would be the whole sentence. How can I help my child with homework if I don't get it? Has this happened to anyone else, or am I just stupid? And grammer/reading was my best subject. I can't wait til the twins get into hard math. I hated math and it was always my worst subject. I'll have to get someone else to help them. To add insult to injury, my daughter says, Mom, you should know this stuff. That was a long time ago that I learned that stuff. I graduated high school in 1983. Plus, I'm lucky I remember my own name some days. Anyway, I just wanted to add my two cents. I, like many of you out there, eat, sleep and drink homework every night. I try not to get too upset about it because I know there is nothing I can do about it. I just feel bad when the twins are up til 9:30 finishing homework and then they don't want to get up in the morning because they're tired. Just wanted to add my two cents.
Donna
Thanks for the feedback and for everybody elses thoughts too.
She has not tested at a 6th grade reading level...so I don't think that's it. If the assignment were designed for her grade level I would have no problem with it at all. But as it stands she is looking up definitions of words that have definitions she can't understand...so she we have to look up definitions for the definitions! ugh... and there's so much more about this assignment that just irritates me. It's all about civil rights and US History and the persecution of immigrants, and slavery, and all sorts of stuff that I just don't think she's ready for at age 8! Ok, don't get me going...
I haven't actually expressed my concerns with the teacher in detail yet. We just briefly talked about it during open house. I plan to speak with him about it at our parent/teacher conference though and if I am not satisfied with his answer I will make some noise!
DD just came home with a list of every student in her class and their addresses and phone numbers. Maybe I should start calling up some other parents and see if they are as frustrated as I am. There is strength in numbers after all.
Thanks again!
We had a horrific experience with our teacher last year in second grade so I know exactly what you mean. The homework made no sense to me. And I was always a straight A honor student. Plus I have college girls who help me with my business in the house and also with the babysitting. They could make no sense of it either. Since I am in a desk-top publishing business and work all the time with professional copy editors I feel I have one up with grammar.
Anyway, we got to the point that we would just do it for him and make sure he understood in the end. He was doing great on tests and we have other activities like swim team and playing outside. But it was always annoying. The teacher was really crass, a bad educator and a big big stickler for really stupid rules. She sent home a paper to sign in two places and I only signed one - and she made him sit out for recess. I feel this is unbearable for a 2nd grade boy and totally out of line.
I emailed the principal with my opinion and he said that is too bad.
BUT the straw that broke the camel's back was when a very badly written assignment on adjectives came home that I could not do and my copy editor could not figure out. I sent it back saying how I felt. She showed it to the principal and he agreed with me!!
You would think everything is fine but no - the crass teacher made a comment to my son in front of the whole class about how his mother did not understand the grammar.
So, I sharpened the ax and wrote a formal complaint about her to the principal and said I wanted to meet with both of them. I think you have more leverage with this in a private school. I typed up a complete list of complaints on her (my son has a peanut allergy and she was being mean and making him sit by himself on the floor in one field trip) and brought in examples of the poorly written curriculum.
The principal was appalled and agreed with everything and told her to work on it. The thing that really helped was that in our years there I have always been very cooperative, have volunteereed for many things and my son is a good student - never been in trouble. He sees that and that was in my favor.
The bottom line of this very long-winded story, and what I do differently now, is to communicate communicate communicate. I did mention in teacher's meetings that I thought the work sheets did not match the book and that I had trouble with them. But now I see that I should have been much more aggressive and talked to the principal much sooner.
This year, along with our prior years, has been just great at that school. The teacher we have now has very well written curriculum. I have nominated her for an award as well as written the principal a very nice note about her and I am active in classroom activities. She just gave my son straight A's and all outstandings for behavior.
Just my two cents worth - you are your child's best advocate and should not be afraid to go to bat, meet with teachers and tattle tale to principals!!!!!
I'm appalled.
She's so lucky it was you and not me. I would have become physical with someone who separated my son and put him on the floor during a field trip due to an allergy. And I'm not kidding. Someone would have had to hold me back. Pointing out that a kid is different and excluding them and pointing it out to the class destroys a child. And I know. My ex was destroyed as a child by his 1st grade teacher who used to lock him in the dark bathroom during oral reading because he asked too many questions and couldn't understand (it was discovered when he was in 3rd grade that he has a mental disability - he had to go to therapy for comprehension) and it disrupted the class. He never told his parents because he thought he was being bad and would get in further trouble at home. It wasn't until his mom came to school early one day, unannounced, due a family emergency, that it came out. That was 3/4 of the way into the school year, and it had been going on ALL YEAR.
Mindy
http://cosmosandcranium.blogspot.com/
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