On Homework, Part One:
What is an effective strategy to get most of your kids to do their homework? The best solution I've found to the homework conundrum is this: don't assign any. As I re-read that last sentence, I cringe: I can hear inevitable outcry. "We should have higher expectations than that!" Sigh. Okay. But I'm warning you, you're only making life more difficult on yourself. You'll spend all of this time and energy hunting kids down and practically begging them to turn in their work, or you'll receive work that's blatantly plagiarized. This is not a reason to become angry with the students. This situation is a result of conditioning: they've been trained to slack, to copy.
Do you allot a sufficient amount of each class period for independent practice? Your students should have a considerable amount of time each day to complete their work. In the classroom, they have the advantage of your presence: while they work silently, you move around and provide assistance where needed. Additionally, this gives you the opportunity to perform several necessary and pressing 'housekeeping' duties: you have to stay organized or you'll fall apart—put those files back, write that referral, grade and record that late-work before you misplace it. Hold quiet conferences with students who are frequently absent or tardy, who are behind, or who need to work on their behavior. Assign remediation. Find that transparency. If they're not working independently, they're not learning enough. If you're up there talking for 50 minutes, they're barely learning anything. AND you're working too hard. It's a lose-lose situation, trust me. Some of the things you have to do in order to be a good teacher may not seem selfless and noble to you, and they're not. Some of the things you have to do in order to be a good teacher—many, no, most, possibly even all of the things you have to do in order to be a good teacher are practical, and therefore inherently without glamour. Filing papers, writing memos, and recording grades aren't noble acts, but the aim is becoming organized, fair, calm, focused, together, responsible, professional, etc. Ultimately, you must manage your classroom in order to provide yourself with peace of mind (not to mention job security) and your students with effective instruction. You have to have good management in order to be a good teacher: the means aren't particularly selfless or noble, but that shouldn't bother you unless you enjoy feeling like a martyr. Management may seem selfish and ignoble, but the end is the most selfless and noble of all.
On Homework, Part Two:
Now that I've stepped down off of my soapbox, I realize that I didn't really address the question. Fair enough. I will. One last thing on teaching and then I'll move on: I don't want to sound uppity about teaching. That is, teaching is not in of itself an inherently moral act. Good teaching can effect lasting positive change, though, and that is pretty great, and eminently worthwhile. Ultimately, you should teach because you love it, because it makes you happy. The fact that my job has meaning makes all of the difference to me. I don't think I'd feel satisfied doing most jobs, regardless of salary. When I asked myself 'what am I doing?' I'd come up short. When people asked me at cocktail parties, I'd feel a little bit ashamed unless what I were doing made some sort of positive impact on the world around me. I'd be embarrassed to admit that I dedicated most of my life to making money, or even to doing something that I enjoyed for selfish reasons. It seems like a wasted life.
Homework solutions:
1) It's a major grade. Take off 10% a day for each day it's late. Remember, you have points at your fingertips: as many as you want, and only you control them! Points are your magic power. Take advantage of that.
2) It's tomorrow's quiz: if they did the homework, they can use it to answer all of the questions on the quiz (exactly)! If not, they're up a creek without a paddle.
3) Call parents.
4) Write up kids who didn't do it (former policy at Gentry, will only work if it's supported at your school)
5) Line them up, collect it at the door. Word will get around and you'll have a lot of kids scramble to finish before your class. I don't advise this because a) they're more likely to cheat and b) they'll be doing it in someone else's class, which is unfair.
6) Before grading, record who actually turned it in. Be obvious about it. This is because kids will tell you they turned it in later and accuse you of losing it.
7) Call out the names of kids who did not turn it in. This addresses the reason above and makes it more difficult for them to ignore/forget about it.
8) Don't let them make it up unless they have an excused absence. I haven't tried this, but it might be severe enough to be effective. Late work is a pain for you anyway.
If you assign homework, you must take it up for a grade! If you fail to do so or forget, you're being disrespectful to those students who did the work, as well as communicating to the class that it's not necessary for them to do their homework. Do grade these assignments carefully, and catch cheating the first time. Don't let them make up the work and give them a zero on the assignment. Return the assignments promptly and with comments. They will be more likely to do the work if they know that you're actually going to read it. Class work can often fall into the check/check-plus/check-minus (read: faster grading) category. Homework cannot. You must show that you value homework if you want it to be important to them. Again, I strongly discourage you from assigning homework on a regular basis. The kids who don't do the assignment are going to be the kids who need the practice the most.
What is an effective strategy to get most of your kids to do their homework? The best solution I've found to the homework conundrum is this: don't assign any. As I re-read that last sentence, I cringe: I can hear inevitable outcry. "We should have higher expectations than that!" Sigh. Okay. But I'm warning you, you're only making life more difficult on yourself. You'll spend all of this time and energy hunting kids down and practically begging them to turn in their work, or you'll receive work that's blatantly plagiarized. This is not a reason to become angry with the students. This situation is a result of conditioning: they've been trained to slack, to copy.
Do you allot a sufficient amount of each class period for independent practice? Your students should have a considerable amount of time each day to complete their work. In the classroom, they have the advantage of your presence: while they work silently, you move around and provide assistance where needed. Additionally, this gives you the opportunity to perform several necessary and pressing 'housekeeping' duties: you have to stay organized or you'll fall apart—put those files back, write that referral, grade and record that late-work before you misplace it. Hold quiet conferences with students who are frequently absent or tardy, who are behind, or who need to work on their behavior. Assign remediation. Find that transparency. If they're not working independently, they're not learning enough. If you're up there talking for 50 minutes, they're barely learning anything. AND you're working too hard. It's a lose-lose situation, trust me. Some of the things you have to do in order to be a good teacher may not seem selfless and noble to you, and they're not. Some of the things you have to do in order to be a good teacher—many, no, most, possibly even all of the things you have to do in order to be a good teacher are practical, and therefore inherently without glamour. Filing papers, writing memos, and recording grades aren't noble acts, but the aim is becoming organized, fair, calm, focused, together, responsible, professional, etc. Ultimately, you must manage your classroom in order to provide yourself with peace of mind (not to mention job security) and your students with effective instruction. You have to have good management in order to be a good teacher: the means aren't particularly selfless or noble, but that shouldn't bother you unless you enjoy feeling like a martyr. Management may seem selfish and ignoble, but the end is the most selfless and noble of all.
On Homework, Part Two:
Now that I've stepped down off of my soapbox, I realize that I didn't really address the question. Fair enough. I will. One last thing on teaching and then I'll move on: I don't want to sound uppity about teaching. That is, teaching is not in of itself an inherently moral act. Good teaching can effect lasting positive change, though, and that is pretty great, and eminently worthwhile. Ultimately, you should teach because you love it, because it makes you happy. The fact that my job has meaning makes all of the difference to me. I don't think I'd feel satisfied doing most jobs, regardless of salary. When I asked myself 'what am I doing?' I'd come up short. When people asked me at cocktail parties, I'd feel a little bit ashamed unless what I were doing made some sort of positive impact on the world around me. I'd be embarrassed to admit that I dedicated most of my life to making money, or even to doing something that I enjoyed for selfish reasons. It seems like a wasted life.
Homework solutions:
1) It's a major grade. Take off 10% a day for each day it's late. Remember, you have points at your fingertips: as many as you want, and only you control them! Points are your magic power. Take advantage of that.
2) It's tomorrow's quiz: if they did the homework, they can use it to answer all of the questions on the quiz (exactly)! If not, they're up a creek without a paddle.
3) Call parents.
4) Write up kids who didn't do it (former policy at Gentry, will only work if it's supported at your school)
5) Line them up, collect it at the door. Word will get around and you'll have a lot of kids scramble to finish before your class. I don't advise this because a) they're more likely to cheat and b) they'll be doing it in someone else's class, which is unfair.
6) Before grading, record who actually turned it in. Be obvious about it. This is because kids will tell you they turned it in later and accuse you of losing it.
7) Call out the names of kids who did not turn it in. This addresses the reason above and makes it more difficult for them to ignore/forget about it.
8) Don't let them make it up unless they have an excused absence. I haven't tried this, but it might be severe enough to be effective. Late work is a pain for you anyway.
If you assign homework, you must take it up for a grade! If you fail to do so or forget, you're being disrespectful to those students who did the work, as well as communicating to the class that it's not necessary for them to do their homework. Do grade these assignments carefully, and catch cheating the first time. Don't let them make up the work and give them a zero on the assignment. Return the assignments promptly and with comments. They will be more likely to do the work if they know that you're actually going to read it. Class work can often fall into the check/check-plus/check-minus (read: faster grading) category. Homework cannot. You must show that you value homework if you want it to be important to them. Again, I strongly discourage you from assigning homework on a regular basis. The kids who don't do the assignment are going to be the kids who need the practice the most.
posted by Elizabeth at 7:30 PM
1 Comments:
Great post.
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