Teaching Tuesday: Homework. Again.

"We don't have time for Harry Potter, do we?" Ironflower asked resignedly the other night. She had just completed her homework - after two hours of Theater Week rehearsal and an hour and a half of dance class. And a full day of school. Being pretty strict about an early bedtime (Lovebug gets up at 6:30am, every day, regardless of when he goes to bed - and that means the other two are always up soon after, regardless of when they go to bed) means that we don't get to Harry Potter some nights because Ironflower's doing homework too late.

And I loathe it. I guarantee my daughter learns more from reading Harry Potter with me and her brothers than she does completing the same kind of math problems she did in class that day and copying words she already knows how to spell.

I feel like homework was born out of some belief that kids don't learn from anything they do at home; that if we don't give them homework they'll fall behind. Which is bull. As if doing a worksheet can teach you more than reading, or figuring out how to double a recipe, or building a Lego model, or creating a game. I know of preschools around here that give homework; it kills me.

My kids go to this well-respected school with extremely high test scores. But the test scores have nothing to do with the amount of homework they are given. I don't even know how much the test scores have to do with the (copious) amount of test preparation that they do. The test scores have to do with the fact that the vast majority of the kids at their school come from homes where someone spent hours talking to them and reading to them when they were little, where someone took them to the park and the museum over the weekend, where someone is able to buy them plenty of healthy food to eat, where parents spend so much time and money on helping the school add things like Theater Week and science experiences and iPads, where their mothers did not drink or do drugs or starve during pregnancy, where everyone around them is encouraging and positive.

I would venture to say that our kids would do even better on the tests if we spent an hour every night talking to them, reading with them, making up games with them, playing games with them or taking them somewhere new instead of just supervising them doing their homework.

I think most parents get that learning shouldn't just stop at the end of the school day. But the countries beating us on international tests don't have their kids spend hours on homework. I think it's time to stop this (false) belief that homework will make our kids smarter. It's certainly not going to make them love learning, I can tell you that. The way my bright, curious kids talk about homework - and schoolwork in general - depresses the hell out of me. Teachers (around here, and in my old urban district, and probably in most districts) are required to give it, though - regardless of how they feel about it.

But I'm done. The next time Ironflower has to choose between completing her homework and listening to Harry Potter? I'm emailing her teacher and letting her know that I prevented Ironflower from doing her homework. And if anyone gives me any crap about it, I'm flooding the school board and the principals with data about how homework doesn't help elementary school students.

What are your thoughts and experiences on homework?

Is it too early to teach him, "The dog ate my homework"?

It started in sixth grade. And lasted until . . . um, when I quit teaching the year before last.

I'm terrible about doing my homework. Even in subjects I like. Even when my homework was simply grading my students' work (though I had no problem getting the grading done while I was physically at school). Even if it'll take me only five minutes.

This should no longer be a problem for me, but karma has a sense of humor.

Lovebug and I have homework for his speech therapy.

I have to make him do weird things involving his tongue and Cheerios. I have try to close his jaw while he holds it open. I have to try to make him drink out of a big boy cup.

I knew, of course, that the day would come when my children would have homework. But checking their work or reading with them isn't the same as this. In fact, I think this might be worse than the pages of long division my mean old fourth grade teacher, Mrs.Limbacher, assigned us. Because Lovebug is a passionate child. A child who has definite ideas about what he does (and does not) like. A child whose speech problem comes mainly from his strong attachment to sippy cups (according to the speech therapist, sippy cups are VERY BAD for kids learning to talk. Oddly, they didn't affect Ironflower in the least, but whatever) and his lack of interest in articulating correctly. A child who doesn't really like his speech homework.

Hot Guy's argument is that he is only two, we can generally understand him and that all of this is kind of ridiculous. Nonetheless, he will probably be better about Lovebug's homework than I will. I understand his point and I know that all the speech therapists I used to work with would never recommend a two year old who's only a few months behind in articulation (and ahead in comprehension) for therapy. But, to use the classic saying, we're not in Kansas (City) anymore. Around here, lots of toddlers and preschoolers get speech therapy. And I bet THEIR mothers do the homework in a timely and conscientious fashion.

So excuse me, I'm going to go teach my son how to pick up Cheerios with his tongue.