Question for teachers

Ema of 5

Mon, Jun 05 2023, 10:09 am

creditcards wrote:

My rule is that she needs to bring it to me with a pen to sign. I just ask her of she did it and sign. I trust her on her word. (Many teachers gave my daughter easier work so she can do it by herself, and easier tests as well )

My daughter won’t ask me to sign if she didn’t do it. Yes it’s her responsibility to get it done, but at the end of the day, because she will get in trouble, I will make sure she does it. Charts and prizes only helped for a short time.
My plan for next year is to tell her teachers from day one that I have too much going on, and can’t enforce doing homework. Hopefully as she gets older she will be able to do it on her own, but as someone else said, the skills being learned here are not in the actual work.

amother

Daisy

Mon, Jun 05 2023, 12:12 pm

amother White wrote:

I've taught grades 3 and 4 for 15 years. I gave 2-5 math examples a night and usually some sort of spelling practice.

Teachers cannot teach every lesson until 100% of the students have 100% comprehension. That would really be unfair to the average student to have to sit through yet another explanation of a concept they understood 20 minutes ago. For those weakest students, 5 minutes with a parent is worth more than 20 minutes in the classroom.
If your child is stronger, speak to the teacher. I was always happy to look the other way if the homework wasn't necessary.

Homework also gives the parent a peek into the child's levels. I was very upset when my child didn't have homework for 2 months, then had one night to review for the math test when I saw that she was struggling with some basic concepts. I couldn't help her in one night and she failed the test. If the teacher had given weekly homework, I would have seen that my daughter was struggling and would have been able to help her before it was too late.

I agree with all of the above! I am not a teacher but have two children at home that have nightly hw. One it is easy for and one it is not. I am not always on top of it, but wish I was. For both of them I find they do so much better and understand the material better with some review at home. Especially with math and chumash. Sometimes they just need that one on one to make sure they got a concept. Ideally it would be great if the teacher would be able to pick this up in school, but the teacher to student ratio is too low.

I think hw also teaches skills like organization and prioritization. One of my kids has learned that it makes more sense for her to get her hw done right away so she can then spend the rest of her day playing. Yes it is very hard for her when she hears other kids already playing outside, but it is a valuable lesson to learn for life. She has also made herself a schedule on how to study for tests. She has a vocabulary final coming up and she has 6 pages of review sheets and she plans to do one every day. One of my kids has a really hard time in school and she has to spend a lot of time doing hw and studying, but she has learned that working hard pays off. When she puts in the time, she can succeed.

creditcards

Mon, Jun 05 2023, 2:02 pm

amother Daisy wrote:

I worked very hard in school, I learned that when I work hard I succeed. I was a top student. When I grew up I was resentful that my mother saw the amount of time I spent studying and she didn't stop me. I gave away all my energy to school. I worked like crazy, I was under so much stress. Who says that's good? I learned from myself that doing well academically is not worth it at every expense. If it creates insane amount of pressure where you feel you can't handle it, it's not worth it.

amother

Daisy

Mon, Jun 05 2023, 2:19 pm

creditcards wrote:

Difference is that my child is not a top student so every bit of success if very important to their self esteem right now. Before they felt like they couldn't do anything because couldn't follow in the class, but with proper guidance and learning some skills and yes some hard work (not crazy hard work) they see that they can understand and accomplish things.

Ema of 5

Mon, Jun 05 2023, 2:27 pm

creditcards wrote:

And I learned that effort doesn’t always equal success. Being studious at the expense of everything else isn’t good either, as you said. However, your stress wasn’t coming from the teachers. I mean….it was, in that they expected you to keep up with yourself, but at the end of the day it was self imposed. You CHOSE to immerse yourself in your studies. You didn’t get in trouble for not doing your work, I assume. But that’s not the student I’m talking about. I’m talking about the student who WONT do all the work, not because she is academically not able, but because (for whatever reason) she won’t. It’s boring to be repetitive, she doesn’t want to sit, she doesn’t want to miss out on what’s going on around her….