Homework

Recently we have been hearing of some students who are having difficulty completing their homework in a timely fashion. Students and parents alike are reporting time spent on homework that is well beyond what we expect. At our staff development meeting on Friday we discussed this issue at length and have made some decisions that we hope will help to alleviate the problem. The faculty is committed to homework as a reinforcement of learning and as a way to prepare students for the learning that will take place on subsequent days. They are also committed to reasonable time frames for the work that is to be done. In an effort to realize those timeframes, teachers often give assignments for multiple days with the idea that the students will divide the assignment into manageable chunks rather than waiting until the last day to complete the two or three day assignment. We also recognize that projects sometimes overlap and that students often find themselves with due dates that require them to expand the time spent on homework. Another important aspect that your faculty recognizes is that young children and adolescents in general lack executive functioning. Research shows that the part of the brain (the pre frontal cortex) that helps us organize time and activities efficiently is underdeveloped in most children. For example, many children when faced with a temporary setback in achieving a goal will quit the activity. They don’t have the executive function to decide on another route to completion other than the original plan. The bottom line is that we have to be their executive function. With all this in mind (so to speak), the teachers have decided to post a calendar in the lobby on which they will list all projects, long term assignments and major assessments so that you and your children can clearly see what is due and when. From there a plan can be made to help your child meet deadlines by “chunking” the work into reasonable time periods. This calendar will also help the teachers to know about projects, etc. that are due in other classes. We believe that this transparency of assignments will help you and your student organize the time more efficiently and thus not have to spend so much time on any given night to completing homework. With all that said, if there is still a problem, please contact your child’s teacher. The faculty wants homework to be a productive part of the learning process, not a meaningless drudgery. There are also some good web sites out there such as http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr255.shtml that can give all of us some helpful hints about how to structure homework time.