I really hate homework. Even before I had four kids of my own, I knew I didn’t like giving my students homework, but I just couldn’t really pinpoint why.

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Now, this is something that I have been thinking about a long time about making a post on. And, it came back up because my daughter is getting ready to write a persuasive paper for her class and she decided she wanted to write it about why her teacher should be giving them homework. At the beginning of the year, this same daughter of mine had written on her school contract that her goal for this year was to convince her teacher that she should be giving out homework. Well, she is taking her leap here, as they’re doing a persuasive essay, and she brought me her outline of her points. And I’m going to bring it up right here.

She makes some great points. I gotta tell you, I think she’s making a really good case here. She’s talking about how it will improve memory, it develops positive study skills, and it encourages kids to be able to learn how to use their time wisely. It teaches them to work independently and that they need to take personal responsibility. Now, as I said, I actually totally agree with her that homework does these things. However, I want to give you some of my points against homework.

In The Early Grades, It’s More About The Home Life Of The Child Than Their Own Personal Responsibility

So my first one is that in the early grades especially, it is not about the kid. It’s about the parents and their home life. Most of my daughter’s points were about time management, taking personal responsibility, working independently. And we all know that this isn’t really happening with someone like a kindergartner, right?!

It is more about the parent sitting down and making sure that they do their work. It is not the kid taking ownership of stuff. And if that kid has a home life where the parents are not involved for one reason or another, maybe they’re trying to work two jobs, and the parent is not there every night, that child’s grades are going to go down because the parent isn’t there to sit down and do homework with them every night. I think that’s wrong.

So really, only the children who are completing their homework, in a lot of the grade levels in elementary, it is because the parent is ensuring that it happens. Our students who have that type of home life are getting their homework done, which, typically, are the kids who are high socioeconomic, because they have two parents. They have two parents at home at night and they have someone there with them helping ensure they complete their work.

We already know there is a gap in our learning based on the socio-economic status of kids and those kids with low SES are just becoming lower and lower because they aren’t completing their homework. And we’re expecting homework to increase their grades, but it’s not.

Let Home Be About Being With Family

Alright, my second point comes as a parent, and especially a parent of four kids. My kids go to school at 7:30. We leave the house at 7:30. They don’t get home until 4:00, which means I have four hours with them when they get home. Personally, I don’t want to spend those four hours struggling through homework with my four kids. I want to have fun with them. I want to play games. I want to teach them how to cook. I want them to do their chores, all of those kinds of things. I want to go to their sporting events. And I want family time and I want my kids to have kid time. They are in school for approximately eight hours every day. I don’t want them coming home doing more school.

You may disagree with me, but I think kids should have time to be kids. So for me, schoolwork should be done at school and homework should be the work of being families. I want time with my kids to hang out and play with them.

If You Need To Send Homework, Make It Focused On That Child’s Needs

Now, my last point is if you really do need to send homework home, make it be focused on what that child needs to be working on. The thing that irritates me the most is when I get the packet that gets sent home of 12 worksheet pages and most of it my kids are able to do, and it just becomes busywork. I am busy enough.

I don’t need to be doing busywork with my kids. Now if my kids have a specific thing that they are needing to work on, then I will, by all means, spend time helping them with that specific skill or concept that they need extra work on. So, if you have kids who are struggling, send homework that is targeted to what they specifically need.

Now, really, all of these points are just in general about sending homework home in any subject, but in mathematics, it seems like that’s what tends to get sent home the most is the worksheets to be completed, the packets, that kind of stuff. So, I wanted to spend some time talking to you about that and my thoughts around how we can build math minds is not through sending home packets of worksheets, but make it targeted.

If those kids need something specific to work on, communicate with the parents to say, “Hey. I’m not sending home frivolous stuff. This is really something your kid need to be working on.” And, I bet the parents would be more than happy to do it. I would be, and I’ve got four kids. We have a busy life. But if my kid’s struggling and they need to work on something, I would spend the time doing homework on a focused set of concepts that my child needs to work on.

Alright, I hope that this helped you build your math mind but really, how we help build the math minds of our students.

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