By Tom
I went to O’Dea high school, which is a small, all-boys
school in downtown Seattle. Our Spanish teacher, Brother Patatucci, had a unique
way of getting us to do our homework. At the start of class he would tell us to
open our workbooks to the assigned page while he walked up and down the aisles
with a large, thick, leather strap. If your workbook page was finished, he
would move along. If it wasn’t, you had to hold out a hand and have it
strapped. It hurt like crazy, and the only relief was to grab the cool, metal
bars of our desks until the pain subsided.
It was a different era, obviously, and I doubt they still
use corporal punishment, even at Catholic high schools. Of course, you can’t
argue with the results; not only can I order a beer and a plate of tacos in any
Azteca, but I could stand on the corner in any town in Mexico and ask passersby
for the location of the local library. Learning!
I was thinking of Brother Patatucci this summer while
leading a training on classroom management. Most of the participants were
elementary teachers and I felt reasonably comfortable addressing most of their
questions. But one lady was a high school English teacher. And she came there
looking for a solution to a very specific problem: how could she get her
students to do their homework. Her class, she explained, was pretty much
predicated on students either reading or writing something at home so they
could discuss it in class. When students didn’t do their homework – and most of
them didn’t – there wasn’t much for them to do in class. Hence the problem.
Frankly, I was at a loss. I teach fourth grade, and our
solution to homework refusal is pretty straightforward: no homework; no recess.
For reasons I’ve never understood, high schools don’t have recess, so kids who
don’t do their homework simply don’t do their homework. And apparently it’s a
huge problem.
The rest of the participants and I tried to offer solutions.
We suggested making the reading material and writing assignments more compelling.
She’d already tried that and was continuing to try it; she’d gone so far as to
asign comic books, and her students still wouldn’t read them. We
suggested making homework a bigger part of their grade. She tried that, but her
students didn’t care. Even when they failed her course, they didn’t care. We
suggested contacting the parents. She’d already been down that path; apparently
the parents weren’t much help. I suggested she just have them do the reading
and writing in-class and forego homework altogether. She’d already thought of
that; in fact that was pretty much the strategy she’d settled upon. The problem
was that by basically doing all the work in class with no homework, she wasn’t
able to move through the required course content and was on-notice by her
district.
Like I said, I was at a loss. I have two high school kids of
my own. Frankly, keeping them on top of their homework is practically my
part-time job. Like most districts, we have an on-line tool that tells parents
about missing assignments. Of course these things only work when people look at
them and care about them. And apparently not everyone does.
Which is why I’m posting this question: how do high school
teachers get their students to do homework?
Please tell me we’ve moved beyond Brother Patatucci.
I don’t think it is a pipe dream to have kids read outside of class. What I am not a fan of is letting kids coast through by listening to their peers who did read and getting the “info” without practicing the reading skills, so I am with Kristin that discussion can be good so long as the kids who didn’t read still have to go back and read. If all we care about is that the kid knows the plot, send them to sparknotes. Since we care about helping them have the skills to comprehend what they read, then it matters whether they are tackling the target text themselves.
Like I said, my relationship with homework is periodic…ebbs and flows even over the course of a year… and during those times when I assign more, I try to make sure that kids see that we build on their homework: when they arrive with it completed, they are prepared for what we are doing immediately that day–incomplete means unprepared. I use what I call “lockout,” where kids pull a desk to the wall and finish the homework (with superstrict penalties…they talk to anyone, they owe me a week’s detention, plus if anyone not in lockout talks to a kid in lockout, the “free” kid owes me a week…this helps protect the kid who is in lockout). While in lockout, the student finishes the reading, writing, or whatever and then rejoins the class immediately, but this time now prepared to move on with us. Frequent stints in lockout result in other consequences.
Lockout is my attempt to reinforce the value of the homework.
Right now, though, I’ve gone to minimal homework, for a few reasons… the main one being that the group of kids I have right now are at a phase in their journey as readers and writers that they need significantly more support and scaffolding. Simply put, what they can do independently isn’t what I want them to be doing, so I’m keeping most of our work and practice in class…if that makes sense.
“So is it simply a pipe dream to have kids come into a high school English class having read a chapter of whatever so that the class can discuss it for fifty minutes?” —- No. If even one child has read it, you can have a fishbowl or model a booktalk conversation with that student for the 15 minutes other kids can maintain attention, then use classtime for the other kids to read, read to them, and the kid who did the HW has some reward.
“Should they spend the first forty minutes of class reading it and then have a ten-minute discussion?” —No. Nothing should go on for forty minutes – that’s torture for even me. Spend the first part of class on an exciting summary, or have kids get up and read different characters outloud in an intense scene. Then extension work for kids who read at home and reading for kids who are behind.
“And again about college: what’s supposed to happen to 17 year olds between June and September to prepare them for an environment where everything that isn’t a discussion or a lecture happens on their own time?” — 17 is too late. Kids need to be acclimatized (is that a word?) to college habits before senior year. Middle school teachers need to be the toe in the cold water, ninth and tenth grade need to be the vulnerable and agonizingly sensitive belly. By eleventh grade, peer pressure needs to be strong and only a few stragglers are getting help at school for what they can’t or won’t do at home.
I’m pretending to have all the answers. I really don’t know anything. But teaching a non-homework population in grades 6-10, I am convinced it’s possible if it’s taught.
Kristin, that’s probably the best advice I’ve ever heard about getting older kids to do homework.
Your experience notwithstanding, I also agree with Mark in that doing homework usually comes easier with kids students who live in a pro-homework family setting.
So is it simply a pipe dream to have kids come into a high school English class having read a chapter of whatever so that the class can discuss it for fifty minutes? Should they spend the first forty minutes of class reading it and then have a ten-minute discussion?
And again about college: what’s supposed to happen to 17 year olds between June and September to prepare them for an environment where everything that isn’t a discussion or a lecture happens on their own time?
My parents never once supervised my homework. My family had its own problems, and while report cards got a lot of attention I was on my own when it came time to do the work. So I think I can say with some credibility that the ability to get the work done comes from two places – a personal desire to get it done and peer pressure.
I had both, I guess. I was a kid who didn’t want to disappoint her teachers, and I was a kid surrounded by kids who did homework.
Today we are charged with the task of helping every child to succeed when it comes time to sit the big test – regardless of whether or not they have the personal desire or the peer pressure. So which one can we control? The peer pressure.
We can assign homework, then gradually increase the number of kids who complete it. Rafe Esquith calls this working with the kids who are “for” you. As kids who complete homework reap some rewards, the “undecided” kids get on board. Eventually, you’re working to train a small number of those who are “against” the idea. And those kids might need time during school to do it, or after school.
The fact is that if we don’t teach kids how to do homework, and how to work independently, we’re not actually preparing them for college. No one at the college level is opening his door at lunchtime to tutor a kid through homework.
Valid point, Tom. There is a difference, though, between teaching a student how to be an independent learner and just assigning them to do work not in your presence. Just because a student does homework doesn’t necessarily mean that they are an independent learner; we all have those students who achieve very real learning, independent learning, even when we are in the room with them. Chances are, many (definitely not all) of the kids who meet high homework demands already have the disposition toward independence or home guidance to support that independence the same way we do in the classroom. I guess the question is who benefits from, and who is punished by homework. I have had more kids have to repeat ninth grade English because of missing homework than because of skills deficiencies. In those situations, what role did homework actually play … That is the tough question.
I agree with you Mark; I think teachers should have students do the bulk of the learning in-class.
But at some point, don’t we want them to also become “independent learners?” If for no other reason than the fact that in college they’ll be expected to do pretty much everything outside of class?
If you figure out the answer, write a book and make millions.
I hear about “make the work more relevant and compelling” and “choose tasks they connect with,” but most of it boils down to whether or not there are family systems in place that support learning beyond the school walls.
I think we underestimate, or have forgotten, how mentally/cognitively taxing it really is to be in a modern high school. Not that it is “too hard” by any stretch, but it is exhausting. If you were to follow a typical student through a typical day in a typical school, I’d put money on the idea that the vast majority of the day is spent sitting and listening (or being expected to at least look like you are listening). It takes tremendous discipline–either self discipline, or discipline from a parent or guardian who is willing to make getting their kid to do homework a part time job–in order to muster the energy and will to do yet more work after the six-hour-sit is through.
We need recess in the high schools, not so we can have something to take away when homework isn’t completed, but so we can encourage more opportunities for kids to exercise their bodies as well as their minds–which much credible research indicates is a connection where the fitness of the former has dramatic impacts on the fitness of the latter. As secondary teachers, too, we need to focus on getting the kids moving–even moving around our classrooms to take notes at stations instead of notes-while-seated during a lecture. Of course, many teachers are great at this… but the norm is pretty sedentary-sit-and-get.
I digressed, of course. My reliance on homework has oscillated over the years, and right now it has ebbed to nearly no work outside of my class time. The main reason: even if homework was completed, it would be higher quality practice, therefore more meaningful, and therefore a more valid assessment, if I’d just give it a few minutes in class. On one hand, perhaps I’m taking the easy way out. But in reality, the result is that I’m spending less time bashing my head against the wall to get kids to do the work… and I’m not spending my time reading and assessing work that might represent oh-crap-I-have-a-paragraph-to-do-by-fifth-hour quality rather than what the kid is really capable of when they have the time to take it seriously.