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Winning the Homework Wars
by Wenda Reed

My children were polar opposites when it came to homework.

Despite his intelligence, my son got lost in an assignment; his mind wandered; he took an hour to do one math problem or write one paragraph. It took years to get him to write down each day’s assignment, but by the end of high school he still couldn’t remember to bring the right materials home or figure out how to break up long-term projects or actually turn in the completed work. Any time I backed off, the results were disastrous. Against my general philosophy, I had to micromanage his homework all the way up to graduation.

My daughter came out of the womb organized, and academics came easily to her. She asked for help with ideas or editing when she needed it, but once I made the mistake of checking on whether she’d done an assignment. Her eyes flashed. “If I ever bring home anything less than a B, you can check on my homework,” she said. “Otherwise, stay out of it.” Point taken.

“A teacher can give an assignment, and it can take one student 10 minutes and another one an hour,” says George Hofbauer, principal and eighth grade teacher at St. Joseph School in Seattle for the past 33 years. “Understanding the abilities of students is important.” Ideally, he says, there should be two hours of homework, at the most, for students in grades 6-8.

“It’s a new concept for kids to be planning something over a long period of time,” he says of students going into middle school or junior high and facing long-term projects. “Some have been raised in an enabling environment in elementary school, where everything is planned for them. There are more due dates now in the lives of kids.”

Parents can be most helpful in the areas of organization and time management. “Parents are now scheduling their children so much more than they did even 15 years ago. It isn’t that there’s more homework; it’s that there’s less time.” It’s important, he says, to set aside time for homework on a consistent basis.

One technique some schools are using to teach time management is the planner, a glorified calendar with spaces to write in daily assignments and intermediate dates for long-term projects. Although they do not turn up as requirements on most school supply lists, many schools, like Whitman Middle School in Seattle, produce their own specialized planners which students are expected to purchase and maintain during the year. Teachers at schools with assigned planners often use class time to teach students how to use them. Planners also make it easier for parents to go over due dates with their students, rather than having to look at six or seven different assignment sheets.

Other aids for parents are online programs, offered by most independent schools and public school districts, to find out what is being covered in each class and when long-term assignments are due. (In Seattle Public Schools it’s called “The Source.”) If that is not available, it’s best to sit down with individual teachers to find out what is due and when, Hofbauer says.

“It’s appropriate to help students manage time and assignments through the first couple of years of high school, but by the last two years, they should walk on their own two feet in preparation for college,” he adds.

Hofbauer has advice for parents who get locked in “deadly mortal combat” with their kids over homework. “Sometimes it’s best to get some other adult to mentor your child. Perhaps partner up with a good friend to help each other’s kids. Or hire a tutor if you can afford it.” (Tutors are also available at no cost at public libraries — see resource list.)

MAKING HOMEWORK A PRIORITY

Regina Melonson, learning resource center program director at Seattle Prep High School in Seattle, regularly leads workshops for parents on how to help their high school students succeed with homework.

“The level to which a parent should be involved has everything to do with the pattern the parent has established earlier (before high school),” she says. “Ninth grade is a big transition year. At the beginning of the year, establish homework ground rules. Sit down together and fix a location and a schedule and agree to the level of support a parent should give.”

Here are some of her considerations:

Location: A closed room with a TV and computer in it won’t work. The homework area “should also not be full of hubbub and activity, like the kitchen table, but should be somewhere where the parent can drop by and offer encouragement.” Also, discourage your child from doing reading assignments in bed; they’ll fall asleep.

Distractions: Cell phones are off. TVs and iPods are off. Students say, ‘Oh, I have so much homework,’ but every five minutes they’re responding to a text message or an IM, she adds. Music can be very effective in keeping some students on track, but first try having them do homework without it, and then experiment with adding music back in.

Scheduling: The average high school student in a college prep environment can expect 2 to 2-1/2 hours of homework a night. Using a template, make up a schedule early in the year. Put in the important extracurricular things like drum lessons, swim lessons, football or soccer. Then set aside a time for homework.

Early in the year, there’s an opportunity to give kids interesting feedback on how much time you’ve noticed they’re taking with each subject. Be a timekeeper, but not a judge. Based on your observations, help your child set up a reasonable amount of time to spend on each subject. Be sure to add in time to work on long-term assignments. For shorter assignments, suggest using an egg timer so your child can gauge his progress and speed up if he sees that he’s running out of time.

Parents know by high school if a kid will need help with big projects or long-range research. If they do, help them break down projects into manageable pieces. Use a wipe-off calendar and have the kid — not you — record all the intermediate deadlines. Use it on a regular basis to keep them accountable.

Timing: Studies have shown that the optimum time for the adolescent brain to work is from 7 – 8 p.m. Students should study their toughest subjects at that time. Another piece of research shows that when the adolescent brain transfers knowledge, “last in is first in” — meaning that the last thing the student places in short-term memory will be the first thing the brain transfers to long-term memory. The best time to go over facts for a test the next day is at the end of the homework session.

There are extra considerations for students who struggle with homework and parents who struggle to help, Melonson says.

“The first question to ask is does the kid know what the assignment is?” she says. “He may write down ‘Do math,’ but when he gets home, he doesn’t know if it’s the odd or even problems. Make sure he writes down the specifics.” If the problem continues, she advises parents to allow students to first intervene with teachers on their own. “Don’t let them flounder if they can’t intervene on their own; go to the teacher yourself,” she adds.

“The next question is whether the student can actually do the assignment. By high school, a parent doesn’t always know how to help with specific topics, but can help with monitoring or encouragement,” Melonson says. She advises parents to go to the teachers or school counselors as soon as they see there’s a problem.

“Then we have to ask, do they have all the materials? The student may write it down in their planner, but forget their books.” She advises buying or borrowing a second pair of books if this is a recurring problem, or having checklists for students to go through before they leave the school building.

“The most heartbreaking one is are they turning it in?” Melonson says. “They do all of the work to complete the assignment, and then they can’t find it.” She recommends a brightly colored, durable plastic folder to hold all the worksheets and assignments due the next day for all six or seven subjects. Seattle Prep has a 15-minute “homework check-in period” at the end of the day for students who have problems in this area. This is probably possible to set up for any student in any school who has an IEP (Individual Education Program) or an identified problem with memory.

WORKING WITH YOUR CHILD

Addressing the needs of a specific child — taking into account the way he learns, his strengths and his weaknesses — is the hallmark of Dr. Mel Levine’s nonprofit All Kinds of Minds Institute, based in North Carolina. Lisa Fox coordinates bringing the institute’s Schools Attuned program to schools around the country so that teachers can understand neurodevelopmental differences in their students and use that knowledge to help them. More than 5,000 schools and districts have taken part in the training, including St. Joseph’s. Parent workshops, on homework and other subjects, are included.

Fox agrees that rather than directing, parents’ main support job is to help their student be consistent in managing time and materials, and suggests several ways to be supportive:

Encourage your student. Express an interest in the work your child is doing in school and help her brainstorm, perhaps talking about the topic at the dinner table. It’s not all about the end product, but about the process of learning. Ask what the homework is about, but don’t give advice.

Become a good observer. Be very specific in what you are noticing that is working well and what is not. What are your child’s strengths? Celebrate those strengths, and help your child find a way to leverage them for success. For example, you may have a student who can manage time well, but does not have such a good memory — perhaps she has to go back and look things up all the time. Praise her for the time management strength that lets her compensate for the longer time it takes to complete an assignment.

Empower students to be part of the solution if you find that things are not working. The way a parent’s mind works is not always the way their child’s mind works. A parent may say, ‘You need a quiet place,’ but the child may need a buzz around to work best. Let the child choose his idea and see how it works.

Model the work habits you expect your student to develop. Talk about how you break down tasks at work or show them by taking them to work with you. Ask them how they will break down their homework. Model not having the TV on when you are working.

Provide support and then let your student take over. For example, on a multi-level project, say, ‘Let’s do this part together this time.’ Then, when they can do it on their own — even if it’s a tiny bit of the whole — make sure you praise and acknowledge their work.

Help your student learn how to prioritize. If a big project is on the horizon, ask your child how long she thinks it will take to complete it and help her map it out on her calendar. Make sure all intermediate due dates have been recorded. Look across the whole week and decide on the number one task to be completed each day in order for the project to be turned in on time.

Power struggles come about when a student has a sense of “unempowerment” and loss of control, Fox says. Besides giving the child primary control, you can incorporate ideas from teachers or have another adult help your child with homework or encourage his involvement in a study group with other students.

Fox asked her 11th grade daughter about how much she thought parents should be involved with homework. “It’s really important for the parent to be there,” her daughter said succinctly. “But they shouldn’t be digging in my book bag.”

Wenda Reed is parenting columnist for Seattle Woman and a veteran of the “homework wars.”

©2007 Caliope Publishing Company