teaching

Should I ban homework on weekends?

Posted on by Mark Isero

hwfavicon Some people want to ban homework entirely. It’s just busywork, it makes kids hate school, and it disrupts families from spending quality time together.

Others say homework is equal to rigor. If students aren’t doing homework, how exactly are they supposed to learn anything in depth?

I tend to fall in the second camp. If the 10,000-Hour Rule, popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers, is true, then students need more time studying and pursuing academics. That’s the rationale behind Chicago and other school districts’ decisions to lengthen the school day.

But Alfie Kohn and other anti-homeworkers say that children need time to explore instead of being forced to complete boring teacher-assigned tasks. Although I agree with Kohn in principle, I’m pretty sure most teenagers, given free time, aren’t exactly going to open up a Physics textbook.

(Does this make me cynical?)

I’m thinking about all this because I’m wondering whether I should ban homework on weekends. I’ve found that my students do very little homework on weekends. Here’s today’s example: Last week, the homework turn-in rate was 87 percent. Today, it was 61 percent. No, this isn’t a coincidence.

My students turn off on the weekends, and they consider their weekends as their own time away from school. Even my AP English students would argue that weekends are “their” time to spend with family, friends, and themselves. Besides, my class does wonderfully during the week, but once the weekend hits, my class scatters. We’re no longer on the same page. Come Monday, we’re behind.

An easy solution would be to assign no major homework on weekends. Perhaps I could keep my Weekender, a more enjoyable, online assignment that doesn’t involve reading or heavy study. Getting rid of homework would mean that nobody would fall behind over the weekend.

But I resist this temptation. After all, if I got rid of weekend homework, that really means no homework on Fridays, Saturdays, or Sundays. Particularly in an AP class, I just can’t get behind the idea of assigning homework only four nights a week.

Instead of making a rash decision, I’m likely going to continue giving homework every night. Although Kohn and others would disagree, I feel that if I didn’t assign homework, I’d be lowering my standards. I believe strongly in consistent study, and I also believe that students must learn how to continue learning on their own, on their own time.

What I will do next week, though, is have an honest discussion with my students about homework. I’ll show them the data and ask for their thoughts. Lately, we’ve been talking about how important it is to seek support, create study teams, and encourage each other outside of class time. What was a normal thing for me in high school is not normal for my students.

Too often, my students, once they leave our school for the day, feel very alone. Instead of doing what’s necessary to stay engaged as a serious student, perhaps they retreat into an identity that’s more comfortable. It’s my job to make sure they don’t disconnect entirely.

What do you think? favicon

technology

“Mr. Isero, you’re everywhere!”

Posted on by Mark Isero

favicon I’m pleased to report that my new text-me-your-homework experiment is working. My students have had three text assignments so far, and reading is up, homework turn-in is up, and better discussions are happening in class. There’s a good energy.

It’s been pretty easy, actually. I use SmashText to send out the questions and collect my students’ responses on Google Voice.

Doing that would be enough. But I’m also posting their responses (without any editing) on my class website, iseroma.com. Here’s an example. Each class, my students and I have taken a few minutes to look at the responses.

An interesting thing has occurred: The quality of the responses has improved (without any prompting). The texts are deeper and have fewer grammar errors. Is it possible that publishing their posts online has motivated my students to try harder? I hope so.

What I love about this texting experiment is how it’s not a big deal. It’s just one question. It takes just a minute of my students’ time. But it reminds them to stay consistent on their reading homework. It makes reading — which usually is invisible — more public.

In addition, it quickly and somewhat-unobtrusively lets me enter my students’ lives after school, when they want to tune out and turn off. For college-prep students, school can’t end at 3:30. You can’t go home and forget that you’re a student.

Yesterday, I asked my students what they thought about the texting assignment. The vote was unanimous; they like it. Several said the texts are combating their laziness. One student remarked, “Mr. Isero, you’re everywhere!”

technology

No YouTube at school? No problem.

Posted on by Mark Isero

favicon Yesterday, I wanted to show my class a brief clip of Chopin’s Prelude No. 24 in D minor. After all, this is the prelude that enchants Edna Pontellier, protagonist of The Awakening, and stirs her passions.

Too bad our school’s filter blocks YouTube.

Sure, I could have downloaded the video the night before and come to school prepared. But sometimes, ideas don’t happen that way. Good teaching sometimes happens in the moment.

So instead of nixing the idea — or playing just the audio — I just found the video on my phone, put it underneath my document camera, zoomed in, and pressed play.

It worked perfectly.

My students didn’t care that the video was coming from my phone.

Sometimes, workarounds are easier than we think.

It’s easy to complain about technology in schools — how we’re way behind, how the filter blocks too much content, how it isn’t worth it to use technology in our classes.

Maybe that’s all true. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be resourceful and figure things out. Sure, it’s hard to find time to seek grants and to post projects on DonorsChoose. But for right now, what’s the alternative? favicon

reading/technology

Another feel-good Kindle story

Posted on by Mark Isero

favicon The Classroom Kindle Project is definitely picking up steam. Word is getting out that there are Kindles to check out, and students are flocking to my classroom to borrow Kindles, buy books, and talk about what they’re reading.

Here’s another feel-good Kindle story:

My colleague, who is teaching a classics unit in English 12, checked in with a student today on her progress on The Catcher in the Rye. At the beginning of the unit, the student had expressed frustration and called the book boring.

My colleague knew that the student struggles with reading. So she suggested that the student check out a Kindle.

Apparently, the Kindle has made a huge difference. My colleague said that her student loves her book now. The reason: being able to change the font size. The Kindle’s adjustable text sizes allow the student to enlarge the typeface and increase the amount of space between lines.

In other words, all that was necessary to connect a struggling reader with classic literature was a larger font.

When I heard this story, I was elated. This student is just three months from graduation, and reading has frustrated her for many years. Because she trusts her teacher, however, the student was able to open up and seek support.

And now, reading on her Kindle, the student will likely complete her first book in her high school career.

* * *

The story doesn’t end there. Today at Lunch, the student entered my classroom and gave me a copy of today’s San Francisco Examiner. “You should read this, Mr. Isero,” she said. It was an article about the effects of state budget cuts on community colleges.

It might be a stretch to say that the Kindle caused her to become interested in reading the news and sharing articles with her teachers. But it seemed like a strange coincidence.

teaching/technology

Your homework is due tonight…via text.

Posted on by Mark Isero

favicon I’ve started a (very small) movement. It’s called, “Your Homework Is Due Tonight.”

Homework is no longer due at the beginning of the next class. After all, if students don’t complete their homework, then it’s too late for me to make changes to my lesson. We’re not all on the same page. Mini-chaos ensues.

This year, homework has been due at 11 p.m. on the night I assign it.

The results have been excellent:

1. The turn-in rate has been high — as high as, or higher than, the turn-in rate before I introduced the new policy.

2. If a student doesn’t turn in her homework, there’s still plenty of time for me to intervene and for the student to catch up.

I’m happy to announce a new idea that I’m trying this unit with Kate Chopin’s The Awakening: the nightly text.

Each night, students have reading homework. In addition to reading and annotating the text, students will respond to a question I send to them via text, which they’ll get in the afternoon. They’ll have until 11 p.m. to text me back.

Some teachers may ask, Why go through all that trouble? Why don’t you just have them write their answers down on paper? Why not give them the question in class?

My response is this: In order to motivate students to do homework consistently, there has to be something dynamic about it. There’s nothing engaging about reading a teacher-assigned book at home alone. But the reading has to be done.

Therefore, time outside of school — when students often tune out and forget their academic selves — needs to be interrupted. As the teacher, I have to enter that space. And using technology is the best way to do that.

I’ll let you know how this experiment works. If it goes well, I might switch the nightly text assignment over to a Google form, so that it’s easier to collect my students’ responses. That way, we can look at them in class on iseroma.com, our class blog, to spark a discussion.

What do you think? Please let me know your ideas. favicon