On Homework: Mine and Emery's

Emery's Creation after the Conclusion of his unit on the Maya

Yes, I have homework. There is no possible way I can get all of my work done (including grading homework) during my work hours of 7:30 to 3:30 (and beyond at least 2 times a week). And, since I’m incapable (and frankly unwilling) to do school work at home, I found myself at a local restaurant this morning reading through a student’s dissertation proposal because my university rents out my parking lot (for which I pay a crazy amount of money for a parking spot in each month) to football fans. After an hour and a half, I found myself getting a little anxious, so I moved to the local library for the second session. I usually go to my office on Sunday mornings for a couple of hours to plan for the next week (and I must say, I’m appalled by the mess the football fans leave on my campus—but that’s for another post), and I’ll be there tomorrow. If homework is defined as work done outside of school hours, then I, too, suffer from it.

It seems as if homework has been on my mind lately. I have a student who is planning to conduct her dissertation study on homework (she sent me a link to this commentary titled "Thirty Minutes Top" on how parents should be able to decide what homework they can send to school for their children to do—I found it amusing and wishing I could send Emery to school to practice violin), and I encounter my son’s homework on a daily basis. This year, his homework is comprised of mainly the following:

1.    Reading logs (he’s supposed to read each day for 20 minutes and log it in)

2.    Kahn Academy (No idea what or how much of KA he’s supposed to do. It’s possible those expectations were communicated to us, and I missed it.)

3.    Math problems and review sheet

4.    Various research projects, for example, write a bibliography and print a copy to bring to school.

5.    Various worksheets and workbook pages

6.    Study for weekly tests/ quizzes: Tuesday, Social studies; Wednesday, ELA; Thursday, Math; Friday, Science.

It’s #4 that nearly killed us this past week. Imagine this scenario, which is probably very common in many households:

Monday morning 6:15 a.m. (we must leave the house at 7:15 to get to school on time so I can get to my 8:00 a.m. class)

E: We need to print out my bibliography!

M: Okay. (sets up computer) I don’t see a file on this jump drive.

E: (speechless) I saved it at school.

M: It’s not there—did you pull out your jump drive from the computer without ejecting it?

E: What? 

For the next several moments Victor and I are search Amazon and Emery’s school’s library catalog for the three sources he used for his project. We try our absolute best with “It’s called The Maya and it’s written by someone named Judith.” We thrust computer screens in his face with various covers of books to see if he recognizes them.

And, then, I learn he’s used the citation generator option in Word—something I haven’t used yet, preferring just to do it as best as I can from memory and then editing it later. It takes another 5 minutes to find that option—luckily Emery used it to create his original bibliography so he had little trouble remaking it—

He got a check mark on the assignment, so I guess our hard work paid off. Later, after I interrogate/ yell at him in the car, I learned that he didn’t give his file a name when he saved it at school.

Do you find yourself having to teach the process of doing something rather than the actual content? 

Emery's comment: the best part is it was due Tuesday instead of Monday. I hate technology  (except Nintendo.)