It’s hard to believe we’re already more than 100 days into the school year. Spring Break is only a few weeks away, and then it’ll be a hop, skip and a jump to summer. I say a hop/skip, but really it will be a slow crawl over thorns to get to the end of the year, and for one major reason: homework.
Y’all, fourth grade math will be the death of me. This is where things got hard for me when I was a kid, and holy shit, it isn’t any easier a second time. Math and I are not friends and never have been — and now there are new ways to do math?! And it’s so confusing?! My son will try to explain stuff to me, and I tell him to stop because it’s not going to make sense no matter how slowly he tries to go over it. If I was a different kind of person, I might be embarrassed my 10-year-old has to try and explain math to me, but I am not. I knew this day was coming, but I was not as prepared as I thought I would be. But he’s definitely not at the age where he doesn’t need help.
My kid is pretty good about doing his homework — his teacher always praises him at conferences for being one of the few kids in the class who consistently turns in his assignments daily. Homework was one of my few real chores as a kid, and I created a routine for my kid that worked, but it still feels like a chore…for him and for me.
I also have a confession: As a parent who is making a concentrated effort to teach my child boundaries when it comes to helping manage burnout, homework doesn’t really fit in with that. Elementary school kids are in school for eight hours. Then they come home and are expected to do anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour (or more!) of homework four days a week. The National Education Association and the National Parent Teacher Association endorse the “10-minute rule,” which says that kids should get 10 minutes of homework per grade level, which means my fourth grader would get 40 minutes of homework. He definitely gets more than that, although how much varies based on his understanding of the subject matter.
It’s not just my kid’s school either. A 2015 study in The American Journal of Family Therapy found that most elementary school kids were getting up to three times the recommended amount. In second grade, which was his first real year in school after a year and a half of virtual school, he was doing 40/45 minutes of homework.
I understand why kids need to do homework. It helps their little brains remember all of the things they’ve learned during the day and reinforces concepts. But in the last six or seven years, there have been studies conducted that show that homework for kids in elementary school, and even in lower middle school, isn’t really the most effective way to learn.
“We really need more work on subject matter, on homework quality, on the level of inquisitiveness that it engenders and the way it motivates,” Harris Cooper, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University and author of The Battle Over Homework: Common Ground for Administrators, Teachers, and Parents, told NEA Today in 2017.
My kid is only in fourth grade, and I’m already seeing the burnout. Yes, school gets progressively harder as you get older, and he’s not being asked to do anything developmentally inappropriate. But I see his face when it’s seven o’clock and he has to sit down and do his homework. Sometimes even a snack can’t ease the fatigue. I’ve drawn boundaries about my working hours for this very reason, and it sucks that our kids don’t get the option to do the same.
Cooper is right that we need to rethink homework. My son has never been a reader, and school only seems to be making him dislike it even more. Every week, he brings home a reading log and is expected to read 30 minutes a day and summarize the book. It’s supposed to help with reading comprehension, but it just doesn’t feel like the most effective way to do it. I’ve always been an avid reader, so it was weird enough to have a kid who wasn’t a reader, but now we fight over him getting new books or me trying to attempt to get him to read for pleasure. His teacher suggested I read to him or with him, but if I do that, he will for sure tune me out. And he gets too flustered to read aloud to me.
“Homework plays a critical role in developing and maintaining a connection between home and school,” Janine Bempechat, clinical professor at Boston University’s Wheelock College of Education & Human Development, told me via email. “Homework assignments serve as regular communications from teachers to parents and family members about the learning that is occurring in the classroom.”
While this makes a lot of sense, we have to keep in mind that not all grownups are around to help their kids with homework. And so many of us are burned out that even if we are around, helping with homework or checking it feels like a chore.
A lot of parents work a job that requires their kids to go to some sort of after school care. Many kids get their homework done there, and I’ve seen the ratios of instructors to kids. Most kids aren’t getting the kind of one-on-one attention that homework can require. And because parents know their children are getting their homework done, they may not think about checking it once they get home because they have too many other things on their mind. They’re worried about feeding their kids and themselves, making sure kids take baths or showers, and getting them to bed at a decent hour. Because you know, elementary school aged kids should get at least 8 to 10 hours of sleep.
And then there are the ways afterschool activities impact time available for homework. Yes, I know those are optional, but kids having interests outside of school, even if it’s just going to the playground for a few hours, is important. My son has his afterschool music program four days a week, which means on those days he’s not getting home before five in the evening. He needs time to decompress and eat dinner before he gets his homework started. Some days, he also has to do additional cello practice at home to prepare for his private lessons or weekend institute program. If he doesn’t get home until 6:30, he’s got a lot to cram into two hours.
I don’t have a solution yet, but I am definitely all for rethinking homework. If you have a school aged kid, how do you feel about homework?
Queer Mom Chronicles is a biweekly column where I examine all of the many facets of queer parenthood through my tired mom eyes.