Why do parents think it's ok to toss out homework? What do teachers think of this?

[Anonymous]

I'm joining this late. I'm a teacher and have a second grader. She is given a ridiculous amount of busy work that I amend. The teacher either doesn't know or doesn't care. If the assignment is write each spelling word three times, I don't make her do this if she knows how to spell them already. I also don't make her write each of the fifteen words in a sentence because I've been a teacher and I know an assignment like that will end up with children turning in sentences like "I am excited. I am hopeless". Instead I'll have her write maybe two really strong sentences. She also has to write a paragraph using one or two of her spelling words. I'll have her dictate a long descriptive paragraph to me and then she'll either recopy it over (and correct my mistakes) or I'll dictate it back to her.

The paragraph writing especially teaches her to think through her story ideas and edit her work, something that most teachers don't spend enough time on. In all honesty, I'd prefer she not have to do any of the sentence writing or spelling busywork so we can concentrate on science, history, and piano at home.

I know her needs better than the teacher does and her education is ultimately DH and my responsibility.

[Anonymous]

I toss a lot of homework. DC is in Kindergarten and we get a pile of useless worksheets each week, reading logs, coloring, etc. I choose one or two things a night to do and throw out the rest.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm joining this late. I'm a teacher and have a second grader. She is given a ridiculous amount of busy work that I amend. The teacher either doesn't know or doesn't care. If the assignment is write each spelling word three times, I don't make her do this if she knows how to spell them already. I also don't make her write each of the fifteen words in a sentence because I've been a teacher and I know an assignment like that will end up with children turning in sentences like "I am excited. I am hopeless". Instead I'll have her write maybe two really strong sentences. She also has to write a paragraph using one or two of her spelling words. I'll have her dictate a long descriptive paragraph to me and then she'll either recopy it over (and correct my mistakes) or I'll dictate it back to her.

The paragraph writing especially teaches her to think through her story ideas and edit her work, something that most teachers don't spend enough time on. In all honesty, I'd prefer she not have to do any of the sentence writing or spelling busywork so we can concentrate on science, history, and piano at home.

I know her needs better than the teacher does and her education is ultimately DH and my responsibility.

That's fine but you also can't complain when her grade for homework completion isn't 100%. I'm a teacher too and I can see your point especially about the spelling words she already knows how to spell correctly. But you are also teaching her that it is okay to tweak assignments to fit her needs. What will happen when she gets older and starts questioning her teachers' assignments then? I'm all for critical thinking but she will also need to understand that it will probably not go over well when she gets older. In high school and college, either she does the homework or doesn't. They don't care why she doesn't do it. They'll just give her a zero.

[Anonymous]

I don't complain at all about her grades. I've monitored them to make sure she's not losing credit on account of me. She's doing better than fine and hasn't lost any points at all. As I said I'm not sure if the teacher just doesn't notice or doesn't care.

As for college, it was a long time ago (20 years), but I was very rarely given homework that was turned in to be graded (biochem degree). Problem sets were homework, but they were never turned in and while I did them, I did them to learn material I didn't already know or to prepare for exams. I don 't consider papers homework (and really that's the part of her current homework I keep). The only assignment that comes close would be lab write-ups.

[Anonymous]

My son didn't start getting letter grade until last year in 3rd grade. Homework is 20% of the grade. Keep that in mind PP. His homework is checked daily for completion.

[Anonymous]

What kids do in early elementary with respect to homework doesn't set their thinking and actions about it in high school. These are entirely different situations.

[Anonymous]

I think that this of you who override your child's teachers need to change schools. You are teaching your child disrespect for the teacher and the school. If your school is so awful and assigns souchh BS, please do your child a favor and switch. I teach MS and without exception all of my strong students do their work (which does account for 15% of their grade) and those who don't do it do not end up doing well, and of course their parents beg for extra help or extra credit assignments right at the end of each quarter. BTW, I teach a foreign language.

[Anonymous]

Sorry about the typos and auto correct, on my phone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think that this of you who override your child's teachers need to change schools. You are teaching your child disrespect for the teacher and the school. If your school is so awful and assigns souchh BS, please do your child a favor and switch. I teach MS and without exception all of my strong students do their work (which does account for 15% of their grade) and those who don't do it do not end up doing well, and of course their parents beg for extra help or extra credit assignments right at the end of each quarter. BTW, I teach a foreign language.

Um, not sure how you go about switching schools since it is determined by address? Are you suggesting I lie about my address or abandon my mortgage? It seems to me those are more important lessons to teach my child rather than copy a word three times.

[Anonymous]

Sorry, I teach at a private and was thinking along those lines.

[Anonymous]

I think most of the posters have been referring to homework in the early grades. I hate the busy work and so we have selectively completed homework over the years . Oldest DD is now in middle school and always does her homework. Same with my 5th grader. Starting in 4th grade, when the worksheets disappeared, we found most assignments to be reasonable. In the early grades, the kids turn in a packet and it's never reviewed in class. My kids had no problem transitioning to completing homework when the time came.

A few of our early teachers (including 3 different K teachers) told me they only assigned homework because it was required. No grades ever suffered from skipping assignments.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think most of the posters have been referring to homework in the early grades. I hate the busy work and so we have selectively completed homework over the years . Oldest DD is now in middle school and always does her homework. Same with my 5th grader. Starting in 4th grade, when the worksheets disappeared, we found most assignments to be reasonable. In the early grades, the kids turn in a packet and it's never reviewed in class. My kids had no problem transitioning to completing homework when the time came.

A few of our early teachers (including 3 different K teachers) told me they only assigned homework because it was required. No grades ever suffered from skipping assignments.

The only times I can think of when my kids were getting ridiculous quantities of busywork as homework were in 1st grade, and it was coming from inexperienced teachers.

I would never complain about my kids' grades for any reason (and my kids have lost points occasionally for things I think are unreasonable, but that's life and my kids need to get used to it). But I'm not going to push a six-year-old to spend half an hour filling a page with mindless crap.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Well teacher, you will not need to give our child a zero because we send them to an school where they don't assign meaningless drivel. Further, there is no homework in the early years.

What school? I'm sending my kid there.

[Anonymous]

In all this discussion, I don't see any mention of the child's own personal responsibility. Isn't there a value in letting a 2nd grader do or not do homework and learn the consequences so it doesn't become the parent's fight? I'd much prefer my 2nd grader rack up zeros rather than establish a pattern whereby I'm responsible for fighting with him and then let him flail in college.

[Anonymous]

In my experience, most teachers penalize students who don't do homework with bad grades.