“I’ll tell you what my problem is.
You know I love sending the kids to school. I want them to go out in the world and meet different people and get exposed to different ideas. I want them to learn. I think school’s do a half decent job of educating most kids even though they are chronically overcrowded, underfunded, and constrained by the yoke of institutional bureaucracy. Besides, it gets them out of my hair for a few hours.
But my problem. My problem is when the school system insists on thrusting the asinine prescriptions of institutional bureaucracy on our home life. I can’t engage my children in the learning opportunities they want and need after school because I need to stand over them, making sure they write the same sentence over and over until a seed of bitter resentment for all books and learning takes a firm root in their soul.”
I pick up a tea towel and walk into the next room.
“Ed? Are you listening?”
“What’s that?”
And this is why I have a blog.
My god, do I hate homework. I actually didn’t mind it when I only had one academically-inclined kid in school who was young enough that the teacher put the homework sheet directly into his backpack. I would sit him up at the dining room table and he would read the instructions and fill out the sheet. Easy peasy! Now, that same kid wouldn’t remember to bring the right books home if the Maple Leaf’s season depended on it.
Nonetheless, I was all set to send the kids back to school with the right “can do” attitude. I would simply be more organized and efficient and see to it that healthy homework routines became a priority. Cue Sunday night when I was lining up the kids’ backpacks and making sure they were cleaned out and ready to go. Crumpled at the bottom of my son’s backpack is a handout detailing the public speaking contest all the kids were required to enter and asking that an outline be submitted on the first day back. What. The.
Homework over the holidays?! A speech, no less! So clearly we had to spend all evening on Monday completing the outline which left no time for the other work he was supposed to do (not that he brought the books home anyway). Nor did it leave any time for me to oversee his first little sister’s homework or supervise his littlest sister instead of letting her log hours of screen time and then pull out every article of clothing she owns and strew them around the house.
My anxiety over my inability to keep up with the kids’ school work and also help them with areas they struggle with (ie. organization, reading, picking up after themselves) was mounting. Yes, I could hire a tutor or even just a teenager to oversee my daughter’s homework and help her with reading. But I only work while the kids are at school (or after they are bed when I have to). I have arranged my life so that I should have enough time for this stuff. I don’t even put them in after-school activities (except for one hockey practice per week apiece). I could hire someone, but I am the one who actually knows what they need.
And that’s when it dawned on me. I am the one who knows. I need to spend one-on-one time with each child supporting their learning every evening. I can do that, but not when that time is wholly consumed by rote learning assignments that squander whatever mental energy that’s left after the school day and leaves the kids spent. The number one most important thing for my daughter’s learning right now is to sit and read with me every single day, for example.
So that’s what I’m going to do. I will incorporate the homework and school material into our reading as much as possible, but I’m also setting a time limit on how much learning work they do each night. No more tears, no more tantrums, no more late nights. If the only half the homework gets completed, so be it.
I couldn’t care less about grades at this point, after all. (My kids are in grades 4, 2 and junior kindergarten.) What’s important is that they learn, have fun, enjoy school and establish healthy and productive work habits.