blog : What About Homework?

01/19/2011

I am not sure when it happened. As a mom, I am increasingly stunned that our children are expected to know calculus by first grade. Well maybe that is an exaggeration. When we assign too much homework, the positive effects where off. Worksheets, endless problems, and textbook questions turn our kids off to learning rather than engage and develop skills.

I will be the first person to advocate that homework CAN be a good thing. Out students do need to read and practice newly learned skills but there is an absolute balance. It is when we lose this balance, probably due to the pressures of high stakes testing that we actually create a detrimental effect. I couldn’t believe the Facebook posts of the parents and kids that I know lamenting about the amount of homework that they had over the recent winter break. Good grief! I teach graduate students and I don’t require assignments over the semester break.

Let’s think carefully about what we assign for homework and what it means for our kids.

Here’s an article from the Huffington Post on homework:

http://www.takepart.com/news/2011/01/14/the-homework-dilemma-how-much-is-too-much-

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