Webinar Poisoning

So I just sat through a webinar and I learned something really important.

I fucking hate webinars.

Luckily it was a free webinar because paying for it would have been as bad as that time I paid for a dinner that gave me food poisoning.

Reasons I Fucking Hate Webinars, An Annotated List

• You can't pause them. I like to control my experience. It's why I like road trips more than flying. You can't pause a flight, either. 
• The learning never surpasses the bullshit. There's always some kind of sales BS and there's always more of that than helpful information. 
• You can't use it as a reference. I mean, I know I can use my notes. I know that I survived college and grad school with live webinars (aka 'classes') only. But those classes had textbooks. 
• Funny people don't make webinars. This was going to say "Nobody is interesting after 30 minutes straight" but that's not true. Great stand-up comics and actors are. But they don't making fucking webinars. 
• I hate knowing something is a sales tactic before it even starts. And you know there is no other reason to do a webinar besides sales. It's 2019, for fuck's sake. 

Right now you might be questioning why in the hell I sat through the damn webinar and honestly I don't have a good answer. There was a promise of a free workbook at the end. Also, I did want to learn about the topic and I was under the impression that the dude was an expert in it. 

This impression was wrong, by the way. Pretty sure the guy's expertise is in sales. In fact, I started taking notes on sales tactics about halfway through - when I wasn't checking my email, looking at Facebook and doing research. 

Apparently I should have been researching how not to get suckered in by free webinars. 

I was thinking about signing up for an online course or two but now I'm afraid it'll just be a webinar that I can pause. 

God, I miss learning from regular books. #cronethoughts

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?

Teaching Tuesday: Math Is Important Too

Last night during dinner, Lovebug wanted me to give him some "hard" math problems. Mostly because his sister, who had proclaimed math "boring", was getting attention from my lovely cousin and her terrific boyfriend to prove that math was not boring.

I would venture to say it's their school's math curriculum that is boring, because both kids seemed very entertained by math at the dinner table last night.

Coming up with challenging problems for Lovebug was actually entertaining me, because I was trying to come up with ones where I too could figure out the answer in my head. I decided to throw division at my second grader because nothing else was challenging him enough. After I explained that division was breaking numbers up into smaller, equal groups, I tried this:

Me: What's 100 divided by 2 plus 4? 

Lovebug: (practically without pausing) 54

Clearly I'm going to need to use a calculator to challenge him from now on. Just as clearly, the Bedtime Math Hot Guy has been doing with the kids is very effective.

I used to hate math. First it got boring, probably in fourth grade or so. Piles of worksheets will do that to a kid. Then it got harder and then I started to hate it. Hell, I remember dreading the math courses I had to take to become a teacher. . . .

but those courses were different. Not only did I understand their purpose, we actually talked about math and wrote about math and no one gave me any worksheets. I had stopped hating math. Years later, during training for a math curriculum that my district adopted (and that I wish my kids' district would adopt) I actually started to see why people said math was fun. I mean, I'd still rather read a book, but I'll play a math game without complaint. And I can figure out a tip without using that formula that confused me and annoyed me throughout sixth grade.

But you'll notice that most of my Teaching Tuesday posts have been about reading. I'm still more comfortable talking about reading than talking about math. A lot of the people I know - especially a lot of the women I know - will describe themselves as bad at math, or hating math. And that kills me. A facility with numbers - whether it's figuring out sale prices versus coupon prices versus regular prices, or mutual fund performance, or interest rates - is a key part of future financial health. From being able to calculate checkbook balances in your head to being able to judge whether the new couch will fit, math comes up all the time (just like reading).

So let's stop badmouthing our math skills in front of our children and start giving our kids the confidence and skill we didn't have. Let's problem solve at bedtime. Let's not let our discussions of math taper off after our kids learn to count and recognize patterns. Let's not let (often weird, or boring) math homework be the only kind of math our kids see at home.

Ways to Promote Math at Home:

• Are your kids asking for a dog? Have them calculate how much it would cost, or how much time they will have to put in each week to take care of it. 
• Use the digit cards from a card deck (or use index cards to make your own) to play "Make 10" instead of Gin Rummy. Instead of matching digits or finding consecutive cards in one suit, look for cards that equal 10 for addition, 5 for subtraction, 50 for multiplication and so on. 
• Use math fact flashcards to play memory, with cards that have the same answer being a "match". 
• Help them use a checkbook ledger to keep track of their allowance, gift money and what they spend it on. 
• Do a fun math problem before bed each night, like calculating the number of servings in a bag or pretzels or one from a book like "Bedtime Math". 
• Tanagrams, Legos and pattern blocks are all toys that promote spatial awareness and skill. 
• Have them figure out stats (or what the stats mean) for their favorite sports teams. 
• Let them cut out and keep track of coupons, then add the savings they found to their allowance. 
• Encourage them to play math games on their device of choice (look for suggestions in Friday's post). 

Teaching Tuesday: Homework, The Sequel

We all know how I feel about homework in general. But let's just say that your kid's homework is appropriate and enriching and everything. Or we can say that you think even repetitive homework teaches valuable life lessons, so would I please shut the hell up about how much I hate it?

Fair enough. 

So, your kid has to do his homework. How can you make that happen without wanting to commit grievous bodily harm on yourself, your kid and/or the teacher? 

The first thing to realize is that you can't. You set up the right conditions, you can have expectations, you can even have rewards and consequences in place, but ultimately homework is your kid's problem. Do not, under any circumstances, do it for her. The teacher does not give a shit if you know how to multiple double digit numbers, okay? S/he wants to see if your kid can. And if your kid can't, it's best if the teacher finds that out as soon as possible. Preferably by looking at your kid's homework. Your job is to check that your kid completed the assignment and followed the directions (such as multiplying the numbers, not adding them). 

The teacher does also not need a note from you written on the homework explaining why little Bobby couldn't/wouldn't do it. If your kid really can't complete that night's homework because of some valid reason (death in the family, zombie horde attack), then write a note or email to the teacher explaining the issue and have your kid turn in the homework the next day.

Now, even though I'm not a fan of homework, I am a fan of school consequences for not doing it. Basically because if the teacher doesn't make kids accountable for their homework, they're not going to feel like they need to be accountable for any other work that s/he assigns. As for home front, I'm more of a believer in privileges. Like, no computer/TV/DS/phone/Kindle/Legos/soccer until the homework is done. It's a lot hard to pull them away from the Wii to do homework than it is to get them to hurry through their homework to get to the Wii (not that I know this from personal experience, cough cough).

If your kid knows there's no fun until the homework is done, there will (probably) be less arguing about it. If your kid knows that you're not going to do it for him, there will (probably) be less whining about it. Eventually.

And if you have all the supplies that your kid could possibly need already gathered in one place, there will be less time wasted searching for a red marker or whatever.

I love a good caddy. They're nice and portable. But if your kid has a desk in a quiet area, that works too. 

Another way to beat homework frustration is to stop sitting by your kid while she works. Unless he's supposed to being read out loud to you or something, leave him to his own devices. Sure, she may waste time. And it's more likely that he'll misread the directions, or have messy handwriting. And that's okay. If you're talking her through every step of the way, she'll never learn to do it for herself. Plus, you are much less likely to want to beat your head against the wall as you tell him to focus on his work for the 487th time.

One other thing that seems to be working for us (and may not work on older kids, I've never actually assigned to work to any kids older than fourth grade and my oldest is only in third) is the separation of reading and homework. As in, even if they are required to read for 20 minutes every night (as Ironflower was last year and Lovebug will be soon), I don't make them do that on top of their homework. They do the homework, have the fun activity and then at bedtime we start the reading. We've always read for fun before bed anyway, so it doesn't seem so much like work - and now Ironflower often goes off to read just for fun. She usually reads more than 20 minutes a day, actually. Another time we squeeze in reading is at breakfast, because I am not a morning person and the less I have to talk in the morning the better.

What are your homework strategies? 

Teaching Tuesday: Homework

I hate homework.

I hated it when I was a student. I hated it when I was a teacher and I hate it even more as a parent.

It is not that I'm opposed to learning out of school hours; I wasn't even when I was a kid. But it really irked me to have to write my (already memorized) spelling words 5 times each when I could have been reading a book or climbing a tree.

Which may have been why I hardly ever did my homework. When I was older and my homework mattered - for my grade, if not for my learning - I did it during a free period or before school started in the morning.

College was the only time were homework made sense to me and where I actually cared about it. Possibly because it never involved reviewing stuff I already knew in some utterly pointless way that involved no higher level thinking skills.


Which could definitely not be said for the homework I gave as a teacher. In my defense, I was required to give it. And it's not that my students didn't need to practice things at home, but many of them didn't have a parent or sibling who could or would help them even remind them to do their homework. So whatever I sent home, they had to be able to do totally independently. When you're talking about first graders, most of whom can't read by themselves, that severely limits your homework options. But I at least tried to make things short, sweet and relevant. Practicing spelling words they didn't already know, practicing handwriting, memorizing sight words and math facts. For the average first or second grader in my classes at the time, homework took about 15 minutes each night.

People still complained. I still hated checking it - it was rare that I learned anything about my students' learning from stuff they'd done at home, other than whose older siblings were told to finish their work for them when it got too hard. I hated it and I hated myself for not being more instructionally creative with it.

Then I went from creating the homework to reading the directions on the homework. And learned what hate really means. Well, that's not entirely accurate. Kindergarten and first grade were fine. The homework was short, simple and not too repetitive. But last year Ironflower hit second grade and I wanted to hit somebody.

So. Many. Worksheets.

The math was all worksheets - usually "Reteach" pages from the curriculum, so that Ironflower, who already claimed to be bored in math, was practicing (but not extending or extrapolating) the stuff she already knew. The spelling was a choice of simple, worksheet-like activities. There was a reading log and and requirement to read 20 minutes a night, but they never had to do anything with that reading. And sometimes it would take her an hour, even though it was all easy for her, just because there was so much of it.*

If you look at the research, this is neither appropriate, nor especially helpful. To summarize the (long, as far as the internet is concerned) article, research says homework should be:

• Purposeful: introducing a new topic, practicing a skill they can do independently but not fluently, elaborating on what they've learned in class or researching a topic that interests them.

• Carefully monitored so that it does not take too much time - one formula is ten minutes times the grade level, so a third grader would have 30 minutes a night. Other studies show that homework does not improve academic achievement in the elementary grades at all. The effectiveness of homework increases as students get older; but the effectiveness decreases altogether if students get too much homework.

• Designed to maximize students' chances of completing it. Meaning that it has to be challenging enough to retain kids' interest but easy enough so that they have a lot of success with it. 

• Involve parents appropriately. If parents have to teach material or hover for their child to complete the work, that's a concern. Parents should be used as a sounding board for ideas or for reading aloud.  

If your kids' homework doesn't fit into the criteria, try talking to the teacher. And the principal. And anyone else who will listen. Ask if you can do alternative activities, like a family journal, reading, a dictionary of new words, pictures books that illustrate science and social studies concepts, building a go-cart or a treehouse or a table, writing and performing a play for the neighborhood or running a lemonade stand. 

*And no, it wasn't stuff she didn't do in class because she was playing around. I checked.