No homework???
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Anonymous
| Mine is FCPS and has homework. Because I give it to her. |
Anonymous
|
I just started teaching in FCPS. We give minimal homework and only because they said we have to this year. I have 90 minutes of planning time twice a week to get ready for 6 hours of teaching a day, plus all the ridiculous nonsense admin insists we do that does nothing but add work. We haven't even started the year and I've barely slept all week, hardly had time to eat, and am already feeling like I'm going to either cry or throw up at the amount of work I am expected to do before Monday. I haven't seen my children or husband all week, and the year hasn't even started. It's going to be a million times worse next week.
So no, I'm not sending a bunch of work home so you can feel good about it and it can add to my already enormous grading workload. I'm at my limit. Your kid doesn't need homework. Studies show it doesn't even make any difference. |
Anonymous
It works if it’s done right. Curious. What did teachers do 20 years ago when they were regularly assigning homework? |
Anonymous
Why do people like this go into the profession? The school year hasn't even started. Unreal. |
Anonymous
Not a teacher but I think part of it is that kids had textbooks back then. My teachers used them and did not invent their own HW. HW was “do questions 1-30 on page 123”. And there just weren’t really the IEP/504 mtgs and issues to deal with. |
Anonymous
And then we would swap textbooks and peer grade it. |
Anonymous
+1, it wasn’t additional work for the teacher. Back then if I asked a question in Geometry my teacher told you the page number where the ONE example was - there was very little teaching. Teaching was actually an easy job. |
Anonymous
Very good question. What did they do when teacher workdays weren't a thing either? |
Anonymous
Stayed up at night grading. Many many late nights |
Anonymous
What grade do you teach? |
Anonymous
I’ll bite. 20 years ago when I assigned math homework, we were on 45 minute periods. Between transition, warm up, homework review, we had about 20-25 minutes of time to do a lesson. There was no time to do practice in class, so I had to assign it at home. The homework was trash. I knew it was. The kids copied each other, or did it all wrong, or both. The lucky few had parents who could help. I’d guess maybe 6-7 kids per class took it seriously and tried. Of those, 2 probably could have gotten As without ever lifting a pencil, so maybe 5 kids per period benefitted, and the other 25 did not. Today? We are on block schedule. With the 90 minutes I’m given I have time to do two days of lessons AND build in practice time. The 10 problems I used to give as homework 20 years ago that kids copied or did wrong are now done in class, in my presence, where I can make sure they’re on the right track and utilizing their own brain power. The kids do just as much practice as before, they just do it in class now. There are still 2 kids who could get As with their eyes closed, so they still get no real benefit. The 5 kids who would have done it honestly and accurately at home still do it honestly and accurately in class. But now, the 23 kids who would have had no benefit from homework (possibly even a detriment from incorrectly solving 10 problems in a row and memorizing incorrect steps) actually get the benefits. If they don’t finish it in class, they can take it home to finish, but they have 8 correctly solved equations to reference in order to finish the last 2. I’m playing the game this year and assigning “homework” because we are required to, but it’s going to be 1-3 review problems (<10 min total) each week, and no more. I see no benefit to it when what I’m doing is giving me good results and happier kids. |
Anonymous
High school. And yes, I also taught back before it was like this. Before we had millions of meetings about nothing and when we actually had textbooks and were given a curriculum. I have been given nothing, absolute zilch. I have no textbook, no curriculum other than a vague list of SOL's in random order, no materials whatsoever, and classes with students that range from not speaking a word of English or having a severe disability to getting ready to go to college (all in the same class). I have four classes and three different subjects and two different grade levels and three co-teachers I am expected to plan with every day (but we have no common planning time, which means after school and weekends). Two of my co-teachers have never taught before in their lives and I am expected to teach them everything as well. I'm still grateful to have them, but this is the fastest I've ever felt this exhausted and burnt out in all my 20 years of teaching. I've been working twelve-hour days all week and then going home and working more, and now admin wants me to write every day's learning target on the board and they are going to come into my classroom and quiz random students to make sure they can tell them the learning target and also explain why they need to learn it. I hope they don't ask one of the kids who doesn't speak English yet. A lot of teachers just don't really care, and this is why. Because it's nearly impossible to do a good job in these circumstances unless you work around the clock, and then it's still impossible, and it's probably just easier to spend days posting learning targets and making sure kids are ready for random admin quizzes than it is to actually teach something. |
Anonymous
Back then we had 6 periods every day. I had 3 classes, 2 planning periods, and a lunch. Sometimes one of my planning periods was a study hall, but I never had less than one planning period a day. Lunch was 50 minutes (not the 20 I have now). Admin never came into class and we had very few meetings. We had textbooks for everything and were expected to use them. ESL and SPED were in separate classes and kids were ability grouped for advanced classes. We did take home grading, maybe once or twice a week, and that rarely took more than a few hours a week max. And that's if it was an essay or something. We all had classrooms in the building and no one was out in a trailer that required a 5 minute walk just to get to your next class. No one expected us to stand outside the door to our classroom during transition periods (we used them for bathroom breaks, which apparently aren't a thing anymore). It was always a job that required a lot of work and engagement, but it was never impossible to the absurd point that FCPS has made it. |
Anonymous
So the real problem seems to be student demographics are too difficult. Supporting parents are limited to ~20% of the students. And admin does even less to support teacher’s teaching. Students have advisory/homeroom that they didnt have before and zero days also eat into usable hours. I’d argue that current block schedule provides even less time to teach material. I’d say homework still works, and you admit so, but just not for our current demographics. Many grades in FCPS dont assign reading homework either. I suspect it’s for the same reasons. |
Anonymous
| Parents rights. Parent chooses how kid spends time at home. |