Follow up on the use of The Homework Trap

Last week, I reported an example of success using the Homework Trap model. I just received an update that the child continues to do well, and that the parent has now identified the types of difficulties the child was having.

In my model, I advocate for time bound assignments and for parents to transition from acting as enforcers and, instead, becoming observers. Once you cap the time and dispel the belief that all homework must get done, you can stop and step back, and figure out what is happening with your child. As an observer, you can obtain information and share it with the teacher, with the goal of ultimately helping your child. As an enforcer, you get caught in an ongoing and inevitable, unproductive battle.

_{For more information on Dr. Goldberg's model, read other postings on this blog, visit his website, The Homework Trap, or read his book, The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers.} 

Good article by teacher on rethinking homework

Here is an article by a teacher who has rethought homework. His comments are good and worth reading. I have a few comments of my own, regarding the points that he makes.

In his first point, Mr. Spencer talks about giving after school help to students who are struggling. I have no question that, in today’s environment, struggling kids go home with assignments they cannot manage. They stare at them blankly and end up getting zeros for the work they cannot done. So to move “homework” into the school with a teacher present, is a major step forward to helping kids out. But it is also important to keep in mind that people generally put their energies into the things that they do best. We ask, in fact demand, that children go to school and learn things they may find hard. To expect that they will give up time and stay in after school is over, and learn, is a large expectation. If we are going to ask them to stay after school, it is incumbent that the time be planned and well spent. I think a lot of “after school” help is unfocused. It comes at the end of the school day when the teacher may be tired and ready to go home, and may require that the student be able to articulate what he does not understand and finds hard to do. There may be several students there and the teacher may not have considered what each student needs before he has arrived. There is risk that the extra help is not helpful at all. Before acting on point one (a point with which I generally agree), it is important for the teacher to consider how that time will be used, and what is needed so that a short period of time with a tired student (and possibly a tired teacher) is truly productive. If the student does not experience the time as helpful, it will feel like a detention and become counterproductive.

It is also important when considering this point that some students are not going to come to the after school help session. Do we fail them? Or do we consider, educationally, how to best teach them (even if they learn less than other students) with the time we have them in class? This calls for a professional consideration of how to help, in class, students who lag behind.

The other point that generates a comment from me is Mr. Spencer’s last point, “Empower parents with the skills to push for authentic learning at home.” This sentence is followed by “Teach them …” I think Mr. Spencer’s point would have been stronger if he stopped with the first sentence. There may be some parents who are open to being taught, but parents are adults with lots of things to do. They know what they know, and that may be enough. So I would keep the emphasis on “empower,” which, for me, carries the notion that the parent is the one in charge of the home. If teachers accepted the fact that parents were the ultimate authorities on all matters in the home, they would have to rethink homework, in particular, and teaching, in general, with that concept in mind. Once teachers accept that they have no right to enforce behaviors in the home, they will adapt and come up with superior teaching techniques that bank, primarily, on the time they have with the students in their class.

Those points notwithstanding, this is a find article and worth your read.

For more information on Dr. Goldberg's model, read other postings on this blog, visit his website, The Homework Trap, or read his book, The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers.

Well meaning teacher

Here's a link to a blog post by a teacher who obviously means well. She is trying to come up with ways to encourage kids to get their homework done in a positive way. Her report of the frequency of homework noncompliance matches what I've said in my book. Here is the comment I left to her blog:

In my opinion, those 20% of your students who don't complete their homework is an expected number (I always estimate that 10 to 25% of all students have serious homework problems). For those students, continued efforts to make them do all their work and the practice of continuing to mete out low grades is causing harm that they will carry with them far beyond the third grade. I daresay that many kids who end up highly dysfunctional and on drugs in their teen and early adult years have problems that were fueled by unrelenting homework policies. I explain this issue in my book, The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Teachers and Students. I know you are a caring teacher and do not want to harm the children you teach, but the reality is that you have to back down on the demands or you will harm them.

Here's the follow-up comment I left after reflecting on my first comment and concerned that she might find my thoughts harsh. I certainly support teachers who care about students. I'm just concerned that they don't understand the reality which is that some kids are going to get harmed by the homework system if they don't get relief:

By the way, I did not mean to discount the value and creativity in the plan you describe in your article. I'm just saying that, push come to shove, you have to be ready to back down from the requirement if your incentive plan does not work, or does not work for some of the kids. Perhaps, half the kids will do okay, but you'll still have that 10% who won't and have to have homework relief.

*****

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg, is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Teachers, and Students, published by Wyndmoor Press.

 I recommend giving copies of the book to the teachers at your child's school. Discount purchases are available through Wyndmoor Press. Single copies can be purchased at Amazon.

 

A Letter to Kingston

Dear Kingston Residents and School Personnel:

I’m pleased to read that you are going to look at your homework policy again. As you may know, I reviewed your draft policy and offered some comments in a prior blog.

As you move forth in developing you policy, let me offer a suggestion.  Typically, communities form task forces and develop surveys to find out what different community members want and what they think the policy should be. I don’t think they ask the opposite question, “What would things be like for you if we did things the other way”, referring to an approach they might not like.

Think about it. I may “want” an expensive car, but I chose a cheaper model. It gets me where I want to go and makes it easier for me to pay my mortgage and buy my children food.

Teachers: What would it be like to teach kids with no homework at all? Could you do it? Would the students still learn? What about homework that could not count for more than 10% of the grade? What if you had guidelines like the ones the Race toNowhere team proposed to the National PTA this past summer? What if you had free reign to give homework, but the parents had the final say on whether it had to get done?

Principals: What do you think would happened with these different proposals? Would they diminish or enhance your control of the school? Might you see a reduction in disciplinary situations? Do you think you could keep standard test scores up? Would the children still learn?

Parents: How would these policies affect your home? Would they enhance or detract from the quality of family life? Would they give you relief for your homework-trapped child? Would you start having problems with your homework-compliant child if some of his friends were given homework relief and he was still required to get his work done?

If you study the impact of proposed homework policies, rather than settling for what people prefer, you might get a better sense about how to proceed.

My guess is that, if you pose your questions this way, you’ll find that, because most of your teachers are highly skilled professionals, they are perfectly capable of teaching children with or without homework.

Those are my thoughts. I’ve gotta go to get so I can get to my office on time (in my economy car even though I might like to drive a BMW).

*****

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg, is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Teachers, and Students, published by Wyndmoor Press.

 I recommend giving copies of the book to the teachers at your child's school. Discount purchases are available through Wyndmoor Press. Single copies can be purchased at Amazon.

Are teachers trained or born?

In today’s Washington Post Answer Sheet, there is an article “Are teachers born (not made)?” which question the emphasis being placed on teacher education. The article suggests that there is something inherent in an individual, something that person possesses from a very young age that destines them to be a good teacher. I get that in a way. I think I was born to be a mathematician. I excelled in math throughout school, majored in math at Tulane University and won the Glendy Burke award for being the top math student in my college class. I went on to obtain admission to Columbia University as a National Science and Woodrow Wilson Fellow for graduate studies in mathematics. There is no doubt that much of what I understand and could do was a gift, not something I was taught in school. Of course, I could never have succeeded at Columbia without having had courses in mathematics, and the fact is, today, over thirty five years later, I don’t recall a lot of what I learned. I doubt that I could solve theorems like I did before. I chose to become a psychologist and it is clear to me that there is an underpinning of the natural mathematician in me in my work as a psychologist. I see things from a different angle than some of my colleagues and I can root that in my prior experience as a mathematician. That said, I could not function as a psychologist without the training I had in graduate school and I could not have functioned as a mathematician, if that is what I had chosen to do, without courses in mathematics. And the reality is, there are lots of people in math or math related fields who may not have been as natural at it as me, but still work in those fields and contribute with what they do. After all, we don’t just need great teachers, we need a lot of good teachers, too. We need trained teachers, and along the way, we’ll get a few great ones.

But let’s get back to teacher training and the specifics of what teachers do, and on that score, I am shocked and dismayed by the dearth of preparation teachers get in the theory, research, and practice of homework. Perhaps, your child’s great teacher was just born with a gift for relating to kids in a very special way. God knows it’s not me. I may be bright, but if I taught school, I think I would need to work at it hard. 20+ kids in a room every day, I’m booking the other way. That doesn’t mean I could not have learned and adapted to the setting with time. But it’s not what I chose nor what I think would have been natural for me.

But let’s take that “great” teacher, the natural-born one. How does that teacher know what to do about homework? I’m sure there are many excellent teachers who have learned over the years that homework has less value than it was touted to have and that it has some truly negative effects on children.  But what does that teacher do on the first day of class of the first year he or she is teaching? The fact that she may be destined for an excellent career which will evolve over time does not mean she is excellent that first day. She needs to know what to do and she needs to know what to do about our general societal expectation that she give out homework assignments. And as she proceeds down the path of a sterling career, she is vested with huge amounts of power to make decisions about what will go on in her students’ homes.

As those who follow my writing know, I’m a psychologist, not an educator, and I focus on homework since that is the primary issue related to school that comes to my attention. People don’t bring their children to me because they had trouble with a subject in school. People come to me when they are pulling out their hair, sandwiched between their child’s insurgency and unrelenting demands that are coming from the school. So there may be many issues that are critical for the budding, albeit natural-born teacher, to learn in school to get her up to speed. Please, let’s start adding homework to the curriculum and let’s wise up teachers to the fact that no matter how important you think tonight’s assignment may be, you are still operating on someone else’s turf.

*****

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg, is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Teachers, and Students, published by Wyndmoor Press.

 I recommend giving copies of the book to the teachers at your child's school. Discount purchases are available through Wyndmoor Press. Single copies can be purchased at Amazon.

Setting Students up for Success

Here's a very interesting article: Setting Students up for Success. One cannot question the wisdom of this article. I posted a comment and I hope to get a reply. There is a natural transition from this article to a criticism of modern homework policy. I wonder if teachers will recognize that issue.  Here's the comment I left:

This is a very interesting article. Now, let's apply it to homework.  The author makes it clear that a teacher can think through the physical setting of the classroom to maximize learning. The teacher has no control over the physical setting of the home. So why do teachers put so much emphasis on homework as part of the learning process? It would seem to disempower teachers to base student grades on work that is not done in class.

Second, the author here talks about must do and may do assignments. When, if ever, do teachers give homework assignments with the labels must do and may do? The author here talks about using this technique in the service of helping children learn to manage time. Without those distinctions, homework works against learning time management since the allocated time can spread out through the night.

*****

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg, is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Teachers, and Students, published by Wyndmoor Press.

  

Homework Abuse

Two examples of homework abuse showed up in the nose. In one, the child was forced to brush his teeth with feces.  http://tuoitrenews.vn/cmlink/tuoitrenews/society/man-beats-son-violently-forces-him-to-eat-feces-1.48994. For the other, a school district punished homework noncompliant children with a cold lunch. http://www.abc57.com/news/local/Students-who-fail-to-do-homework-get-cold-lunches-177346551.html. These situation may shock us, but, in subtler ways, homework child abuse occurs far often than you would think.

*****

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg, is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Teachers, and Students, published by Wyndmoor Press.

Excellence in Teaching

On Valerie Strauss’ Washington Post education blog, there is an excellent article, “How long one teacher took to become great,” that highlights the evolution of a teacher, throughout her career, from a good teacher who followed the rules to an excellent teacher, who came to understand what teaching was all about. Her story parallels mine, as a psychologist, to some degree. I was trained in the standard techniques of psychotherapy which I practiced until I realized that the work I was doing seemed flat. Over my 35 years of work, I have become more engaged, more respectful of the world from the client’s point of view, more centered on the here and now, and, in general, freed from the constraints of my early training. This is not meant to knock my early training, just to highlight that with experience, one begins to challenge some of the “truths” that persist in a field. As a clinical supervisor, I have often seen young therapists burdened by attitudes I was taught, and through my work with them, I have tried to help them grow.

Obviously, one has to start somewhere, so it is important for anyone in any professional field to begin with a basic set of concepts that apply to that field. Yet, maturity and experience will lead the thoughtful professional to challenge prior thought.

Going back to the Washington Post article, I scanned the article for the word homework and found it used only once, in describing the writer’s work before her evolution. I think this is a telling fact and coincides with every account I’ve read pertaining to excellence in education. The H-word, homework, is never there.

Since teachers are taught by people who have been teachers themselves, I challenge those professionals in the field to bring up homework as a topic in the schools of education and begin to address it more thoughtfully than it has been so far. For administrators, keep in mind that, while your young teachers are learning their craft, they are given too much power over activities in the home, and that you should set limits on what they can assign. And for parents, respect and support your children’s young teachers. They mean well and they have to learn. Just draw the line on how much authority you are willing to give them for what goes on in your home.


Visit The Homework Trap website

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg, is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Teachers, and Students, published by Wyndmoor Press.

Wyndmoor Press now offers bulk rate discounts to parent, school, and community groups. We recommend Amazon for single copy purchases.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/10/09/3858677/balancing-act-column-on-homework.html#storylink=cpy

Third grade teacher offers homework menu

I came across this interesting approach to homework used by a third grade teacher. It is a menu of homework options. Here is why I like it:

1. It sounds like fun, not drudgery.
2. It involves choices. The child can experience satisfaction and reward without being locked into a single task.
3. It creates time boundaries. Every choice involves the same amount of time. Those who have followed this blog know I place great value in teaching children to use time well, rather than demanding that they work, without boundaries, until the work is all done.
4. It support parental authority. In the end, the parent is the ultimate decision-maker about whether or not the work has been done. One of the major problems with homework is that it traverses the boundaries between home and school, diminishing parental authority over the home.

Thank you Ms. Brooks for your excellent ideas.

Visit The Homework Trap website

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg, is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Teachers, and Students, published by Wyndmoor Press.

Wyndmoor Press now offers bulk rate discounts to parent, school, and community groups. We recommend Amazon for single copy purchases.

Implementing The Homework Trap

This is the first of four messages I plan to provide on implementing the principles of The Homework Trap. When I speak, I generally find that people agree with what I have to say up to the point of implementing these ideas. It is not uncommon to receive feedback that my ideas make sense, but how are we going to get teachers on board? Frankly, I have a lot of respect for teachers and confidence in their desire to learn (after all, they chose the field of education). I also understand how important it is, if teachers are to change, that the change makes sense to them.

Today's video introduces the concept of implementation. I will follow with three more blogs addressing what one can do:

In the home with or without change at school.
In cooperation with your child's teachers.
In the school-community at large.

Depending on what comes up in the news, there may be some intervening blog posts, but I expect that within a week or so, I will have covered each of these issues with a specific comment.




Visit The Homework Trap website

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg, is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Teachers, and Students, published by Wyndmoor Press.

Wyndmoor Press now offers bulk rate discounts to parent, school, and community groups. We recommend Amazon for single copy purchases.

More on respecting teachers

Yesterday, I commented on an article in the Washington Post. Today, there is an article in the New York Times addressing the question of respect for teachers from a different angle. In this article, the author focuses on how teachers are portrayed in the media. Here's the comment I submitted to the New York Times in reference to this article:

There will always be movies, TV shows, and books that take different positions on all types of professions, some serious, some comical, some honoring, some caustic, some satirical. But if we want to understand what is happening to the teaching profession, we need to look at the ways in which pressures have moved teachers away from where they do the most good, in their direct relationships with their students. Some of this comes from outside – our obsession with stats and evaluations. Some comes from the profession – its obsession with homework. The author refers to “To Sir With Love.” How did “Sir” succeed? He did not do this feeling pressured that his students get high scores on the test, and he did not weaken his authority by making his teaching dependent on his students’ parents making sure they did their homework. If anything, he accepted things that were out of his control, and stayed centered on his role, teaching his students while caring for them deeply through the process. And what do we with our underachieving schools? We give them more work to do at home and lecture their parents (some from the pulpit of the presidency) on what those parents must do at home outside of loving their children and doing their best to keep them fed and put a roof over their head. Revise homework policy. Encourage teachers to be fully present with their students in class. And you will see improvements in education and in the ways in which we view our teachers.

Visit The Homework Trap website

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg, is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Teachers, and Students, published by Wyndmoor Press.

Wyndmoor Press now offers bulk rate discounts to parent, school, and community groups. We recommend Amazon for single copy purchases.

Respecting Teachers

Today, the Washington Post reprinted an article extracted from a blog written by Corey Robin entitled “Why people look down on teachers.” Mr. Robin’s opinions are based on his experiences as a student and a teacher and he comes to the conclusion that teachers are perceived, in our society, as those who were not able to achieve as well as doctors, lawyers, and other professionals. He points out that, although teachers vary in their abilities, this is true of people in all walks of life and not a reason to put teachers down. He points out that one or two teachers can truly enhance the course of a young person’s life.  Although I agree with these points, I think Mr. Robin fails to understand the most important reason why many parents have problems with teachers.

As a parent and a psychologist, my experience tells me that the primary issue is that teachers encroach on the parents’ turf, where they insist on using techniques that don’t actually work. I believe that negativity toward teachers is a backlash rooted in their intrusion on the home.

I am a parent of three children. I recall feeling excited walking my oldest son to school the first day. I listened intently at Back to School Night to everything that his teacher said. I didn’t care if he had the best teacher in the world, or one who was simply qualified to teach the class. I expected him to listen to and respect his teachers, and I gave them the respect they deserved. Along the way, I had doubts about a couple of his teachers, but that did not matter. For the most part, he was given an excellent education, and had the good fortune to meet a few exceptional teachers along the way.  My second child’s experience was similar. I respected both children’s teachers and their teachers respected me.

With my third child, my views changed.  Like his older siblings, he was bright, personable, and able to learn, and would have if his teachers had stayed focused on his education and what happened in the classroom. But he did not do his homework, which I understood was a problem that I needed to address.  I was unprepared to learn how powerless I was in deciding what to do. If a problem had happened in the class, I would have readily deferred to the teacher’s judgment. But this was my house, and the authority should have been mine. It was not. I had no power to decide on the best course of action, and as a result, his education went downhill.  In the end, his teachers had authority over me and had the right to fail him, to detain him after school, to detain him on Saturday morning, and to exclude him from sports over my better judgment.

I’m a psychologist, so I started listening to my patients from a new point of view. I began to realize that the bulk of behavioral problems that were brought to my attention were actually homework problems, and that the source of homework noncompliance was not a lack of motivation or deficits in the parents, but learning problems in disguise. By disempowering parents rather than addressing the learning problems, the children acted out at the cost of their educations. Again, homework is a moot point if your child does well, as was the case with my two older children. When there are problems, which I estimate apply, at varying degrees, to 10-25% of all children, the results can be devastating.

There is an important fact about homework that the public does not know, which is that teachers are not adequately trained to give homework. Open a catalogue of any school of education and look for the course called “Homework.” Visit a website that is designed for teachers and see how many articles you find on homework. Look  at the program of a teacher’s conference or convention and see if there are sessions devoted to homework. You’ll be surprised at how little attention teachers give to a  professional technique they regard so highly (and factor heavily into the grade).

The writer of this article bemoans the respect teachers are afforded in comparison to those in other professions.  But don’t we expect that doctors will be trained in the things that they do? I’m a psychologist whose practice consists of therapy and testing. I had courses with titles like “The theories of psychotherapy,” and “The principles of psychological testing.” Ask your child’s teacher at Back to School Night what courses or continuing education he or she had to support the approach to homework that teacher uses.

I think we should respect our teachers and I certainly do. I respect any person who can meet with 20 to 30 children, sustain their attention, maintain order, and teach them the things they need to know. I didn’t choose that field and frankly I don’t think it is something I could do.  I’m frankly awed by teachers.  If they stayed on their turf and focused on the things they were trained to do, I would respect them even more.

Visit The Homework Trap website

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg, is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Teachers, and Students, published by Wyndmoor Press.

Wyndmoor Press now offers bulk rate discounts to parent, school, and community groups. We recommend Amazon for single copy purchases.