Why does Deal assign SO MUCH HOMEWORK?
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Anonymous
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It is great that there's an organizational club at Deal; I bet that would help a lot. At our school -- not DCPS - the counsellor runs a group for kids who need help with organizational skills. Maybe Deal has similar counseling resources.
I think the Lab School offers a summer course that is meant to enhance Executive Functioning, although I have no direct experience of the program. All this to say that I would try and work on organizational skills before cutting off my DC. I am not sure that I would want to send my DC to such a large middle school with such an opaque grading scheme, but I know Deal is an excellent choice for many, and it may be that OP's DC is just going through a period of adjustment. |
Anonymous
Thanks. This is OP. The advisory ends this Friday--I'll try to push him across the finish line for this term--but starting next term--I will try to have that type of conversation with the teacher and the kid as a 3 way --but I worry he will feel ganged up on...and then he will reallyact out by not doing the work. |
Anonymous
| As a teacher, I can tell you that this amount of homework is indeed a lazy teacher's way to have the kids teach themselves the information. In middle school, absolutely NO assignment should be worth 40% of a full course's grade. I teach middle school, and I would never even have one assignment be 10% of a grade. That's absurd. |
Anonymous
| ...well, I feel a lot better about not being in the Deal Boundary! Tuition is tough, but my unfocused 6th grader has absolutely blossomed with the smaller class size and individuation you couldn't get at Deal. The big picture is, it's a great school for high achieving, self-directed students but not ideal for everyone. Even though it's free. |
Anonymous
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OP - Re: the organization club - I asked my daughter and your child can get help with organization during ZAP time which happens at lunch. I believe its offered for all of the teams. I would also check in with the guidance counselors for more support around organization and they should be able to give some helpful tips. Also how are your child's friends handling the assignments?
And just to set the record straight 2-3 hours of home work per night is not the norm at Deal and kids are not teaching themselves. I think the expectation is that the child is managing all of their work and is proactive about getting help. Also don't forget that your child can retake tests! Those usually make up a big percentage of the grade. When my daughter is unhappy with a grade on a test - she schedules time to retake it. She also takes advantage of any extra credit assignments to keep her grades up. In one of the weekly Deal Bulletins they included an article about the importance of allowing kids to re-do tests and assignments. HTH |
Anonymous
| Homework and classwork should have a balance. Inquire about the school work and recorded grades. |
Anonymous
The OP at some point mentioned her kid had organizational issues, though she/he did not seem willing to call them ADHD. However I can tell you as a parent of a kid with ADHD, homework that takes everyone else 10 minutes can take such a kid an hour. Homework can take on the perspective of a crisis without some significant management. Middle school is also a common point were kids with ADHD that had coped because of fairly organized parents and teachers fall apart especially if the parent does not believe in the diagnosis. I am not judging the OP, but I think she needs to really look at what is happening here and see if there are additional interventions that are needed due to the particular issues her child has. |
Anonymous
Grades matter to whom? If there are time guidelines that nobody sticks to, whose fault is that? Nobody cares about your 6th grader's grades except you. |
Anonymous
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HW is only worth 5% of grade at Deal. They have a standards based grading policy - as in if you mastered it, you get the grade that reflects that. Not a grade as a result of your hw frequency.
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Anonymous
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So what are appropriate homework amounts per grade level? The old rule of thumb was 10 minutes x grade level in elementary, and then about an hour and a half in middle and high school (on average).
Does this still hold true? I'd say my third grader does about 30 minutes per night on average--which feels right to me. |
Anonymous
| FWIW, I also have a sixth grader at Deal and we have found the amount of homework to be just about right - typically about 45 min. a night, or even slightly less. There are bigger projects sometimes, but we are also pleasantly surprised that these projects have involved a significant amount of in-class preparation, planning, and execution, and the remaining work that needs to be done at home has been done with NO parental input. The projects also seem interesting and actually tied to the curriculum. It is a marked change from the JKLMM we came from, where "projects" seemed to be almost entirely parent-designed and -executed. To mirror what another poster said, if you're having a dramatically different experience, it may well be your child rather than the program. |
Anonymous
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The idea that the kid figures out how to navigate the system, proactively seeks out resources and help, asks to retake tests (!) is highly unlikely for 1) shy children; 2) children who don't want to call attention to themselves and wish to fly under the radar; 3) disorganized kids with executive function issues. I can see a highly motivated, mature girl doing this but I really can't see very many of the 6th grade boys I know (who can barely figure out where they are and what they should be doing at any given moment) tackling the Deal infrastructure for themselves.
Kids should learn these skills (self-advocacy, etc.) but over time and they have to be taught. To throw an 11 yr old into Deal with 1000 kids (even though the teams only have 75 or whatever) and expect the kids to sink or swim... well a heck of a lot of them will sink. That only leaves the option of hovering parents to advocate for the child, which is not fair for the kids who parents can't navigate the system. And it's no fun for the parents either. |
Anonymous
Thnks pp. To be honest, my ds doesn't have any close friends at Deal yet--so I really don't get a sense of that. It seems like all of the kids he went to JKLM with are on the honor roll though, so they are handling it, to say the least. |
Anonymous
| I suspect the honor roll kids are super self starter kids--and their parents are heavily involved in their homework, despite their protestations here and elsewhere. It is very fashionable to say, "oh I don't care how or what my kid's homework is" at the JKLM schools, I've noticed. Since pre-k, everyone acts very detached but the reality is they are constantly pushing the kids. It's insane. The demands on family time are just increasing--6 hours school day+1 hour study hall +2 hours of homework= barely enough time to sleep, dress, eat and poop. Forget hanging out in a non stressful way with your parents or friends. |
Anonymous
Wrong. Kids are graded on what happens inside the classroom. As someone mentioned before, homework is a small part. |