Category: Curriculum

Knowledge versus experience

7/18/2016

My dad is the smartest man I know. Not only does he know the answers to most Jeopardy questions, he can also build anything, fix anything, sell everything, read people, problem solve, question the status quo, inspire others, crack jokes, remember just about fact every he’s ever heard, debate with the best of them, and invent ingenious products, in theory, every day. When I think of “smart,” he’s my benchmark.

Therefore, when I saw a graphic this past week made up of two frames, the thought of him helped me make sense of what I was viewing. In this graphic, the frame on the left was titled “Knowledge”; it was a simple box with a black outline, filled with random black dots. The frame on the right was titled “Experience”; this second box was exactly like the first with a simple black outline, filled with random black dots, but in this box the dots were all connected by thin black lines.

A simple graphic on the surface. Profound in its meaning for education.

My dad is the epitome of the “Experience” box. Sure, he would do well on Jeopardy because of his great memory for miscellaneous factoids, but it’s because of his life experiences he is so smart. It has been his experiences that connect his dots; his experiences that allow his knowledge to shine. Without a lifetime of opportunities to put his knowledge of math, English, history, language and science to work, these subjects he learned back in the 1950’s would be meaningless. Because he had opportunities in his life to work with the earliest computers, travel the world in the Navy, and experiment with his career, he can seamlessly make connections between seemingly disconnected events. He can find solutions to insurmountable challenges. He can make sense of the senseless.

What does all this mean for education, though?

It means our kids need opportunities to put their knowledge to work, because it’s these opportunities that will become the experiences, creating a generation who can build, fix, sell, question, inspire and invent. Our kids needs these experiences during school – time to volunteer, work part time, build small businesses, invent new programs, solve real problems, grow gardens, take apart old electronics, swim, play, travel. With these experiences, and with us supporting them along the way, our kids will walk out of high school with more than just a box filled with historical dates, comma rules, and memorized facts.

Our teachers can help by providing assignments with real audiences. They can stop with the meaningless, rote homework. Stop with the quiz, after test, after assessment cycle. Stop with the mundane worksheet lessons recycled year-over-year.

As a community, we need to ask our schools to start helping our kids not only fill the box on the left, but also make connections between those dots in order to ensure their success in our interconnected world. Otherwise, what’s the point?

Thanks, Dad, for reminding me that facts are the foundation, but it’s in the experience wherein the wisdom lies.

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Seeking election to Los Alamitos Board of Education

6/27/2016

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I picked up last week’s News Enterprise to read about our local news, and mixed in with news about charity drives, All-Star youth teams, heat advisories, the LA Fitness controversy, crime, and faith, I ran across the one written by Karen Russell, one of the three incumbents on the Los Alamitos Unified School District Board, writing on behalf of them all, about their intent to seek re-election in November.

I was shocked. Kinda. I just thought a combined 40 years on the Board for them would’ve been enough. Guess I was wrong.

Time to throw my hat in the proverbial ring.

I am seeking election for the Los Alamitos School District Board.

I read Russell’s article closely. In it she simply highlighted their “record.” Her rhetoric was more of the same: national awards, AP scores, modernization, ROP offerings, high standards, A-G completion rates, and safety initiatives. While all of these programs and successes are ones we celebrate throughout our communities, as they keep our kids engaged, inspired, and most importantly, safe, this “record” doesn’t address the issues about which our communities are growing more and more concerned. I ended the article wondering, “But what’s next?”

We are desperately ready to hear discussions about and solutions to the traffic nightmares in Rossmoor. We want to hear honest debates about the inter-district transfers that make up over 30% of our student population. We want to understand where all the money goes, including those dollars raised for individual classrooms, programs, schools, the ever-present district-driven fundraising events and the ubiquitous LAEF -- and why we need another bond measure on the ballot again this election cycle. We want to see teaching practices move into the 21st century and educational equity for all students. We want to give our teachers a voice and hold our administrators accountable for leading their teams with purpose and intent. We want transparency into the sports programs’ operating procedures. We want to discuss options for decreasing the sheer number of kids in our schools, so the schools can become more manageable. We want to see research on the value of summer homework.

I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I do have lots of questions. Isn’t that all we really want? A member on the Board who is not afraid to raise the tough questions, hear from our communities, weigh the options, and make decisions in the best interest of us all?

I live in Rossmoor because when my husband and I began having kids we wanted to be part of a great school district. Los Alamitos was that district for us. We moved to this small community district before our kids even started school, and one of them is now at Oak and the other one is at the high school. Crazy how time flies.

This district has served us well, and I want to continue the good work, but I see room for improvement. And rather than rest on our laurels, I’d like to revisit what has made us great and return to a focus on that foundation. We haven’t been great in only the last 15 years; we’ve always been great -- and we’ve been great because we have always been a neighborhood, boutique district. We need, therefore, to continue to move forward, but not forget who we are.

Here’s to Curriculum. Equity. Safety. And a teacher on the board who is focused on why we’re in this business of education -- the kids.

Feel free to contact me via my website at cathylarson.com or via email at mrscathylarson@gmail.com. We are in this together, and it’s time we stand together.

Who’s with me?

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Race to the Finish

5/30/2016

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As a kid growing up in Indiana, my family looked to Memorial Day weekend as the start of summer. Our family, immediate and extended, traveled 45 minutes from Fort Wayne to Crooked Lake in Columbia City, IN, where two sets of grandparents owned small lakefront cottages. We went up several times a year “to the lake,” but Memorial Day weekend was special. This was the weekend we spent three days with cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. This was where I learned the joy of Euchre, water skiing and pontoon boats. But I also learned that Memorial Day isn’t complete without car racing -- the Indy 500 to be exact. It was Indiana after all.

Therefore, this past weekend with my own immediate family, we sat down and watched a little car racing in the name of nostalgia. We landed on the Monaco Grand Prix. The race was actually pretty exciting, full of inclement weather and plenty of crashes. However, what stood out most to me was the phrase the commentators repeated multiple times as the drivers were crossing the finish line: “Race to the finish.” In context, the commentators were discussing an exciting moment in the last few minutes of the race when one driver passed a car on the last lap and only seconds before the finish line.

Their discussions about this last-minute surge and advice to “race to the finish” reminded me of my own daughter’s participation in the Los Alamitos All-District Track Meet this last week. My daughter represented Oak in the sixth grade 200m sprint. She does what many kids and even professional athletes do at a finish line -- she eased up. We’ve all seen those highlights programs where athletes start celebrating a little too early and end up losing the win. My daughter maintained her third place finish through the finish line, but had she “raced to the finish,” pushing at the end with just a momentary burst of everything she had left, she could have potentially overtaken the first and second place finishers.

In both cases, the Monaco Grand Prix and the Los Al Track Meet, I was left thinking about that “race to the finish” and what it means for education as we round that final turn before the end of the school year. For some, the end of this school year means just promotion to another grade level. For others, it means a promotion to another school. For others still, it means actual graduation from K-12 education.

Regardless the next step for each student, they all need to remember to “race to the finish.”

These end-of-the-school-year races aren’t for first place. They, rather, are races to finish strong. For your elementary kids, this might mean mastering their Special Person’s Day song and dance. For your middle school kids, this might mean finishing end-of-year culminating projects. For your high school kids, this probably means finals. We need to be sure to remind our kids that this is no time to ease up on the gas. They need to continue to work hard, fight to achieve, and remain diligent.

Because the end is where character is built.

When we’re tired, worn out, discouraged, or unmotivated, it’s those who persevere that shine. And those who shine feel accomplished. And through that accomplishment, character, self worth and confidence grows.

The finish isn’t an end, then. Rather, it’s a building block, and the stronger the block the more solid the foundation on which a life can be built.

Is the entire race important? Absolutely.

But it’s the “race to the finish” that builds futures.

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Use maxims to drive instruction

5/23/2016

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Nike lives by 11 guiding principles, their maxims: “It is our nature to innovate,” “The consumer decides,” “Evolve immediately,” and “Do the right thing” are just four of them. You can Google the rest; that’s how I found them all. Not only are they interesting, but they inspired me to take action.

I led a professional development meeting with my English department this week at school. The meeting was to refine our curriculum and embed more 21st century learning. We realized we couldn’t start this discussion until we’d decided on our English department’s maxims first.

So we set out to do just that. And we got to them by asking two guiding questions: “What are the fundamental principles that drive our instruction?” and “What type of English student do we want graduating from our department?” Honestly, how can a department of any discipline make decisions about end goals, assessments, mastery, homework, summer assignments, or even daily lessons without knowing what they stand for.

Philosophically who they are as teachers. And, most importantly, who they want the kids to become as learners and citizens of the world when the graduate.

As our brainstorming and planning day came to an end, I began to reflect on the experiences of my own children. I wonder if their teachers are clear on their purpose. If their teachers know the type of student they are trying to create. If their teachers talk about the driving principles of their discipline. Sometimes I wonder. When my kids come home with worksheets, packets, rote memorization tasks, and mindless regurgitation, I wonder if they feel as disengaged from the content as the work feels from real life.

I challenge you to ask, “What type of adult do your kids’s teachers’ activities intend to create?”

As a district, Los Alamitos is very clear about its brand. We ignite unlimited possibilities for students. We embrace the whole child. We build well-rounded students with a focus on activities, arts, athletics and academics. But how does this trickle down to each school and then, most importantly, into the classroom -- where the real work happens. It’s not enough to stand for the “what” without also building the “how.”

As a parent, I want us all to start asking the questions that get our district teachers to start asking questions of their practice. Why this assignment? Why this task? What’s the purpose? What type of adult is this activity building?
I also realized during my meeting this week that I want to more clearly identify the maxims for my family. What do we stand for? How do we make the tough decisions? How do we stay focused on what matters? As I type, I think about phrases I say over-and-over to my kids: “Anything worth doing is worth doing well,” “Effort unlocks your potential,” “Your level of success is completely up to you,” and “Find your own purpose.” I’m sure all of you have phrases that bounce off your walls on a regular basis, because as parents these are the principles we use to build our little adults. The same needs to apply in the classroom.

If every teacher worked to build little scientists or thinkers or innovators or independent learners -- whatever the courses’ maxims -- our kids would be engaged. They would be excited about their learning. They would be inspired to find their path.

It’s time for teaching and learning to be purposeful and meaningful every day with every assignment -- because the world can be changed one maxim at a time.

Just do it.

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Summer Homework Blues

5/9/2016

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A group of families, including my own, spent this past weekend in Santa Ynez camping, barbequing, golfing, enjoying each other’s company, wine tasting and running a half marathon. The weekend couldn’t have been better. The parents found time to relax, and the kids spent time being kids: catching snakes, walking to the alpaca farm, playing bocce ball, and roasting s’mores.

The weekend reminded me that summer is coming. The lazy days of summer wherein our engines are recharged doing those things that inspire us and give us purpose. This may include traveling, hanging by the pool, hiking with the family, or even engaging in new hobbies. What it shouldn’t include is pressure from our schools to complete summer homework.

Summer homework is like requiring an adult taking a two week vacation to spend some time every day of that vacation reading and writing reports for a client who expects a full proposal or accounting the first morning they arrive back at work. Has this ever happened to an adult? Absolutely. Once in a blue moon. But it doesn’t happen at every vacation, and I can’t imagine an entire career rests on this first morning back. So why do we expect this of our kids?

Summer needs to be a time for our children to follow a passion, get an internship, create a business, play a sport, develop new skills, volunteer or pick up a book for pleasure and enjoyment. I know that’s what I do, and I know that’s what most teachers do.

But this doesn’t mean our minds are inactive.

Active minds are important in the summer to prevent the “summer slide,” but that activity doesn’t need to be studying environmental science, world history or even the “The Odyssey.” Activity comes in the form of creativity, engagement, creation and innovation. Activity comes from team building, group play and problem solving. Activity comes from participating in the local library’s summer reading program, setting goals and discovering new authors.

What activities hamper real growth and stall passion? Rote memorization and pages of outlines. The exact kinds of activities the summer homework requires. Rather than read chapters in a science book, our kids need to go out and plant a straw bale garden. Rather than complete history outlines, what if they instead traveled to an historic city or museum. Rather than read literature written in 700 B.C., how about they try to write their own short stories or rediscover a love of reading -- actually find a genre that gets them excited about reading again.

Summer should be a time to refuel for the upcoming race. Adults who work year-round jobs would kill for the concept of the old-fashioned summer. So why are we stripping our kids of those carefree days that build the foundation for nostalgia? Let’s allow our children the benefit of stepping out of the rat race for just a few months, in order for them to be able to tackle it head on with a full tank of gas come September. They’ll all be better for it.

And isn’t that the point?

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The Future of Education

5/2/2016

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If I were to ask you to list the conditions for powerful learning, I’ll bet you would come away with a list very similar to mine, including: safe environment, personal investment, real world application, fun, relevance to students’ lives, social, interesting questions, positive environment, real audience, passion, autonomy, challenging, not time constrained.

I’ll also bet that in a room of 100 adults, not one of them would say that powerful learning comes with sitting in rows, one-sized curriculum, teacher controlled, standardized tests, emphasis on grades, no choice, lack of relevance, no real world application.

So why do we continue to run our schools the same way they’ve been run for over 100 years? Why do we continue to test, emphasize grades, restrict learning to the textbook, expect all kids to learn at the same rate and ability, and isolate content in 50-minute blocks?

I read an article this week published in the summer of 2014 by the Hawken Review written by the Head of Hawken School, D. Scott Looney. He spoke of the future of education -- the scary, daunting, exciting time in education where “we are now at a point where we must educate our children in what no one knew yesterday, and prepare our schools for what no one knows yet.”

We live in an extraordinary time in human history. We are witness to unprecedented economic, environmental, and political instability. At the same time, we are witness to incredible advances in technology, medicine, and communication. This paradox of fear and excitement poses a challenge to us all, young and old. And yet we continue to teach our children in an antiquated system of sameness, as if we need all our children learning ubiquitous content, at the same time, at the same rate, in isolation. Where is the power in this model?

I was thinking this week about the interviews we see on TV every year wherein some host stops random people on the street to ask them questions about some factoid we all “learned” in elementary, middle or high school. We laugh collectively as we watch the interviewee hem and haw before answering incorrectly. Do we laugh because we know, or do we laugh because we, ourselves, would answer incorrectly, as well?

These interviews simply reflect the truth that we forget most of what we “learn” in school. So why do we continue to teach and test content knowledge like this?

Powerful learning, the knowledge we remember, comes from moments in which we were completely immersed and engaged. True learning requires a personal interest in what’s being learned. The process of learning for the sake of a test just isn’t effective or purposeful. In fact, I argue that kids with access to the internet and technology are “learning” more outside of school than they are inside of school.

So what should schools be doing?

We need to be teaching kids how to USE content. Teaching kids how to think, collaborate, wonder. Teaching kids how to navigate ambiguity, complexity and interconnectedness.

Our kids need to find a passion that pushes them to “learn” what matters to them, so their learning can solve problems and impact the world -- or at least their own small corner of the world.

It’s time to rethink what we do on a school’s campus and why we do it.

The future of education? It’s going to require we ignite students’ curiosity and interests -- or we aren’t going to have much of a future at all.

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The Best 7 Hours

4/18/2016

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I attended a College and Career Readiness workshop this past week facilitated by EPIC School Partnerships, an organization representing a new approach for improving student outcomes, grounded in over a decade of research by David Conley, author of “Getting Ready for College, Careers, and the Common Core.”

As hard as it is for me, or any classroom teacher for that matter, to spend time away from the classroom and leave our charges in the hands of an albeit qualified and well-intentioned substitute, I took advantage of the opportunity to participate in this professional development day. And like most PD days, I walked away with something that will change my teaching for the better. I love to learn. I love to be exposed to new ideas. I love to sit in a room with other educators and discuss our practice. It’s transformative. This day was no different.

“The best 7 hours” -- this is the phrase from the conference that resonated with me.

In fact, I picked my son up from school after the workshop and asked him, “How was school?” This question sound familiar? We all ask it when our kids come home from school. From my daugher, the answer is always filled with highs, lows, laughter and stories. For my son, the answer is always, “What do you think? It was school.” His answer comes with snark, sarcasm, bitterness. Granted, he is a teenage boy, so he isn’t nearly as verbose as my daughter, but, nevertheless, it makes me sad he doesn’t enjoy his time there.

This day, I pushed for a little more information. I asked, “Is school ever the best 7 hours of your day?” He looked at me and rolled his eyes. I continued. I shared with him that this question came from my day’s experience at a workshop, and the presenter reminding us -- the teachers -- that we should strive for this for our students. He responded, “Why would they do that?” More snark. He’s a tough audience.

Our kids today are part of a new generation. I know, we hear this all the time. But this workshop forced me to think about what this means? And it dawned on me that this “new generation” is one that can’t even compare to my own. Whereas we have lived through the birth of technology innovation and have learned, and potentially even embraced, it as an add-on to our lives, our kids are tech-innate. Technology IS their lives. They know nothing else. They don’t have any idea what it’s like to have to go to the library to get an answer to something. When my kids don’t know something, they “Google it.” Their world is information rich; it always has been. Since day 1. The learning of knowledge for them isn’t the end product, because knowledge is everywhere.

Our world is no longer about what we know -- it’s about what we DO with what we know.

Our kids today want to DO. They want to use this abundance of knowledge. The want to create, to invent, to act. We all know they still need to “learn” in order to “do,” but the learning no longer has to be straight facts; rather, it can be patterns, creativity, collaboration, higher-level thinking processes, strategies, skills -- imagine, even, the power of their learning how to be curious.

If these were the traits of our local schools for EVERY PERIOD, EVERY DAY, then I can guarantee my son would love school. He would be doing. He would be active in his learning. He would see the connection of the content to his life; he would see relevancy and purpose. He would begin to think about his future and actually start designing it.

This isn’t a teacher issue -- it’s a system issue. And a system is hard to change, but it’s going to have to if we are going to inspire our kids for life beyond high school -- college, career, community -- and to inspire them to dream for a better world.

My hope is that our schools begin thinking about the seven hours they have and begin dreaming big. Remember the old KFWB mantra -- “Give us 24 minutes, and we’ll give you the world”?

Imagine the power of having seven hours -- the world would only be the beginning.

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It's time to talk calendar

3/28/2016

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My daughter’s soccer team had a scrimmage this past Saturday, and I spent some time chatting with another parent on the team who is a teacher in Los Al. He was giddy -- my word, not his -- about his upcoming Spring Break. He asked what I was going to do with our week off, knowing my kids were also starting their break on Monday. “Nothing,” was my response, “my Spring Break was two weeks ago, long since enjoyed and over.” That prompted a discussion about my district’s school calendar.

I work in the Anaheim Union High School District, right next door to Los Al, and a few years ago our teachers, district and unions decided to discuss a re-vamped school calendar. We investigated starting the school year in early August and ending at the end of May. After several surveys, multiple discussions in a variety of forums, outreach to the community, and due diligence in reading supporting research, we all quickly determined that a change was a great idea. So with this school year, 2015/2016, we began our new calendar adventure.

This year I started school on August 12, 2015, and we will end before Memorial Day on May 26, 2016. Here are a few of the factors that lead to my district’s change.

Our first semester now ends before Winter Break. This is a beautifully natural break for instructional purposes, as opposed to dragging semester finals into January after a long vacation.

Our school year will end with a holiday weekend, providing vacation opportunities for families and staff that don't cost the district dollars in lost ADA for absent students or substitute costs for absent teachers when a three-day weekend is extended into four.

Our new calendar provides three extra weeks to prepare students for AP exams that occur during the first two weeks of May.

Our calendar also eliminates downtime after AP exams. With Los Al’s current calendar, there may be a full five weeks “to kill” between AP exams and the end of the school year. This is not the case for me. My students take their AP exams, follow that up with a week of class finals, and then school ends. In our model, all instructional minutes are intentional and purposeful; we don’t have any wasted time.

Finally, my discussion with the teacher from Los Al illuminated for me one final salient point: CIF is changing its calendar. With so many districts moving to this more “college-like” schedule, CIF is taking note and adjusting sports’ schedules. If Los Al doesn’t make any changes, it is likely that high school sports will need to start before school actually begins.

Therefore, we all voted to ratify the change. And once we made the decision, we just “tore off the bandaid,” making the change in one summer. Last summer was awfully short, I grant you, with school ending in mid-June and starting up again in early August, but the pain was assuaged with the promise of an extra paycheck. Also, it meant we only had one short summer, rather than the three we could’ve had if we’d transitioned one week at a time instead.

Now with my own kids on Spring Break this week and me back at school, I am reminded again about how sad I am. Not only do we not have the same week off, but also they aren’t reaping the same academic benefits.

I challenge our community to challenge our district to revisit the Los Al school calendar. If the discussions progressed the way ours did, they all revolved around what’s best for kids. Shouldn’t that be what drives our decisions as educators? As districts? As parents?

It's definitely worth a discussion -- one that shouldn’t happen just on a soccer field -- but one that potentially drives real change.

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Writing can be fun.

3/15/2016

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If you're the parent of children who love to write, then consider yourself, and your children, lucky. This love of writing will serve them well throughout K-12, into college and beyond.

I was this kid, and I still am. I love to write. I write all the time for a variety of audiences and purposes. I love the process, the discovery that comes from it, the quiet introspection, and the feeling of accomplishment that comes from reading my finished pieces. This doesn’t mean I think writing is easy; I grapple with ideas, phrasing, organization, focus and revision with everything I write, including this weekly column.

And I love working with kids who enjoy writing. These kids embrace the process, get excited to try new strategies, and even write at home on their own for fun: short stories, fan fiction, blogs, poetry.

But if you're the parent of children who avoid writing, complain about any writing task, and struggle to get words on a page, then join the ranks of those of us who feel your pain.

As much as I like the prolific young writers, I also love working with kids who struggle. I believe these kids who struggle do so because they've lost their way. They’re stuck and disgruntled. They've had no freedom in the only environment where writing is expected while growing up -- the classroom. In this environment, they are expected to write what they're told, when they're told, and how they're told. Then when they turn in the piece into which they've poured time and energy and heart, a teacher tells them all the things they've done wrong, bleeding red ink all over their papers. I don’t blame these kids for hating the process. Who would want to continue to write after that?

As parents, we need to be proponents for asking teachers to give choice back to our young writers. We need to fight to have them give back to our kids the freedom to explore ideas and find topics that interest them, in order to help them discover that writing can be fun again. We need to demand that more time be spent developing this lifelong skill.

I know it’s a crazy idea, but what if a classroom teacher actually pulled kids out from behind their sterile desks -- and let them write on the playground, sitting on a bench, or lying on the shady cool grass. Would it end in chaos? Pandemonium? Nope. What we’d ultimately end up with is a generation full of kids who've learned to love to write again.

This transition, from hating to loving to write, can’t happen overnight. And it also can’t happen if the only writing that’s ever done is limited to one, 1-hour block every couple weeks. Writing is just like any sport or activity or hobby or dog training -- it takes practice to master.

The problem with writing, however, is that the practice happens alone. Writing isn’t like basketball where you can see the players sweat, get hurt, get back up, and finally collapse from exhaustion at the end of a game. With writing, the agony and struggle is just as real, but it’s much less overt. So when we see thousands of novels at Barnes & Noble or at the library, kids simply believe the authors were all just born with talent -- that they were all each able to just sit down and write their masterpieces in one sitting. No sweat. No struggle. Oh, how I wish our kids could watch me craft this column every week -- to see just how wrong they are.

We need to continually remind our struggling young authors that writers have to practice, too.

The next immediate swing in education and our local school district needs to be to make writing ubiquitous. It needs to be happening in every classroom, every day, across every subject. The writing tasks can be long, short, high-stakes, low-stakes, individual or with a partner. It just needs to be done.

And the more engaging and purposeful the writing, the less resistance we’ll get from kids -- and the more they’ll all learn to love it, too.

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What is the purpose of homework?

3/7/2016

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All our kids all have it. They all complain about it. And it drives most family discussions in all households across America. “Do you have homework?” “Is your homework done?” “Why didn’t you turn your homework in?” Over and over and over again on any given night in households with school-aged children, these questions get asked, answered and repeated ad nauseum.

I don’t remember an excessive amount of homework when I was in school. I do, though, explicitly remember doing specific homework assignments, but that’s because I don’t think I did that many. The few I did, therefore, stand out. Weekly, I did a workbook page or two of my foreign language, a short study guide for history, the few math problems I didn’t get done in class, and added finishing touches on English essays. A couple hours a week, maybe? And my husband tells me he did even less than that.

Then education changed, as it always does, and homework became mandatory. Rote. Ubiquitous. Lots of it. Every night. As if the homework itself created rigor and had the power to transform learning. If I had to pinpoint a cause, I would look to No Child Left Behind -- high stakes tests and expectations for kids to know excessive amounts of content knowledge.

With recent changes in standardized testing, current educational reform, and clear parent voices, districts are beginning to rethink the purpose of homework. They are even beginning to place restrictions on the amount of homework kids can be assigned, limiting the amount of time or number of pages sent home each night. The days of “piling on the work” in the name of rigor are being revisited. In professional development meetings, educational research is being disseminated on local campuses, and school faculty are discussing the research findings -- that too much homework can be a detriment to learning.

I say, “It’s about time.”

The research tells us that too much homework causes undue stress. Research tells us that there is oftentimes clear disparity between homework and achievement. Research also tells us that excessive homework results in diminishing returns.

So thank you, local school districts, for having these tough conversations and challenging teachers to reevaluate their status quo.

If your child’s teacher hasn’t yet embraced this new direction in assigning homework, however, I have one question you can ask on your next Back to School Night, Parent/Teacher Conference or Open House to hopefully get your child’s teacher to think more carefully about her practice.

“What is the purpose of your homework?”

Is it given in the name of practice? Is it given to attain mastery of a skill? Is it to introduce new concepts or content? Can less be done with the same result? Is it necessary? Regardless the answer, just make sure the teacher has one. Homework for the sake of homework just isn’t a good enough answer any more.

Imagine your home without homework every night. What might you talk with your kids about instead? What could you do more of as a family? What extracurricular activities would you now get to enjoy? How might your child’s life be more fulfilling? Could all your lives be less stressed? Would there be fewer tears?

Ultimately, more purposeful homework planning on a teacher’s part will create more purposeful living for a child.

Imagine all the free time. What will you do with it?

Anything you want --- and that’s the purpose!

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<<Previous

Knowledge versus experience

Seeking election to Los Alamitos Board of Education

Race to the Finish

Use maxims to drive instruction

Summer Homework Blues

The Future of Education

The Best 7 Hours

It's time to talk calendar

Writing can be fun.

What is the purpose of homework?

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