Well, life has intervened and my blog has fallen victim. The good news is that I have a literary agent! The other good news is that I have a lot of writing to do...There is actually not a lot of bad news in my life right now.
But the GREAT news is an update on our experience with Job Corps at Chadron, NE.
Normally, I would have a number of off-the-wall comments to make here. Humor. The thing is, I am so overwhelmed with our son Matt's weekend visit that no sarcasm or wit surface.
If you have not read my first blog on the Job Corps, here is the link. That page DOES have some humor in it.
http://beyonderqueen.tripod.com/id95.html
We took Matt to the Chadron center the first week in March. He was nervous and so were we. There was a rainbow of kids there, and Matt is used to thinking in terms of brown and white. There were kids from big cities, from farms and from small towns like ours.It was a new world and we weren't sure matt was ready for it.
Fast forward 2 1/2 months. A paltry 10 weeks. The young man who came home for graduation was not the young man who entered the program. Okay,maybe he was, but with major improvements. This young man stood tall and walked with confidence. His eyes had a spark in them. His voice rang with respect and resolution. I cried.
You see, I can envision a bright future for this young man now. And things may go south; they often do. But Matt has seen his potential; which is what the teachers at Job Corps tell us they see in him. POTENTIAL.
Charlie and I believe God ordained us to go to the training where we began to think about Job Corps for Matt. We believe God said ( in His gentle way) You two have screwed this up. Let me take over. And THERE WAS LIGHT!
YAY
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
What's the Good Word
Got an email from a home schooling site today about the ten words we should use with our preschoolers every day. I think they are good words to use with EVERYONE every day. The words are:
Thank you. Sounds like a no-brainer, doesn’t it? Well, it is. I mean it should become instinct to say thank you. The harder thing is to be really grateful. And I admit that sometimes when I am not feeling kindly to a child, I say thank you with a snarl in my voice. Being polite. Word but not intention. I mean, the kid has just hammered two horseshoe nails into your 100-year-old stair banister and told you that the teacher’s complaints about his school behavior were lies. He hands you a spoon so you can stir the eggs into the casserole and you’re supposed to say thank you and mean it? In a word: yeah.
Tell me more: Okay, this kid can go on for twenty minutes about the booger on the principal’s nose before he tells you that the science class did a special project. And you’re supposed to encourage him to elaborate? Again, yeah.
Please. Another no brainer. Except, this kid won’t respond to please. You have to follow it up with a raised voice and a threat or two. Okay. But I guess we’re supposed to start with the please thing.
How about a hug? Okay. Maybe not with everyone. But lots of grownups need them too and many never get them.
The others are: Let’s all pitch in, you can do it, how can I help, it’s time to…(this one is about setting boundaries) and I love you.
The thing is, saying these things isn’t enough. You have to mean them. And one other thing: God could use a few of these sentiments from us, too.
Thank you God. Please help me. I know YOU can do it, so I won’t worry. The pastor read some good words from You on Sunday. Tell me more. You expect your people to be your representatives on earth. How can I help? Let’s all pitch in.
And the #1 thing we could tell God every day? I love you. How about a hug?
Thank you. Sounds like a no-brainer, doesn’t it? Well, it is. I mean it should become instinct to say thank you. The harder thing is to be really grateful. And I admit that sometimes when I am not feeling kindly to a child, I say thank you with a snarl in my voice. Being polite. Word but not intention. I mean, the kid has just hammered two horseshoe nails into your 100-year-old stair banister and told you that the teacher’s complaints about his school behavior were lies. He hands you a spoon so you can stir the eggs into the casserole and you’re supposed to say thank you and mean it? In a word: yeah.
Tell me more: Okay, this kid can go on for twenty minutes about the booger on the principal’s nose before he tells you that the science class did a special project. And you’re supposed to encourage him to elaborate? Again, yeah.
Please. Another no brainer. Except, this kid won’t respond to please. You have to follow it up with a raised voice and a threat or two. Okay. But I guess we’re supposed to start with the please thing.
How about a hug? Okay. Maybe not with everyone. But lots of grownups need them too and many never get them.
The others are: Let’s all pitch in, you can do it, how can I help, it’s time to…(this one is about setting boundaries) and I love you.
The thing is, saying these things isn’t enough. You have to mean them. And one other thing: God could use a few of these sentiments from us, too.
Thank you God. Please help me. I know YOU can do it, so I won’t worry. The pastor read some good words from You on Sunday. Tell me more. You expect your people to be your representatives on earth. How can I help? Let’s all pitch in.
And the #1 thing we could tell God every day? I love you. How about a hug?
Wednesday, April 06, 2011
" In a Relationship"
I'm in a relationship. <3 If you are in to Facebook, you know that supposedly means "I have a significant other." Unfortunately, people seem to be getting into relationships earlier these days. How young is too young? The other day I heard a three year old talking about his "old woman." And she IS old. She's four. Robbing the cradle, that's what she's doing. Abercrombie-Fitch has its finger on the nation's pulse. It is marketing padded bra bikini swimwear to 8 year olds who otherwise would have no padding. God slipped up, it seems but man has intervened. And, come on, if not for the padding, how else is an 8 year old to get a "significant other?" The rule at my house is, and has always been, you are old enough for group dating at 14 and for single dating at 16. That doesn't mean the kids have not claimed to have girl or boy friends. They sit together in assemblies and talk on the phone. THEY DO NOT DATE. Date means go somewhere together. And someone usually pays. But things are different today. Anna and Brandon used to date last year when they were both 12. But at 13, Anna has clearly outgrown Brandon's boyish humor. She wants a real man. Someone who can belch the alphabet. Someone like 14 year old Jonathan. She's seen the condom he carries in his Velcro wallet. He tried to use it last semester as a water balloon but couldn't get it to break before his homeroom teacher Mrs. Robertson caught him and called his parents. As it turned out, it wasn't a big deal because his dad gave him the condom. (I believe he gave it to Jonathan the day Jonathan's mother announced she was going to wash the car. The little package had been in the glove box, and his dad was pretty sure Mom wouldn't believe the water balloon thing coming from someone 36 years old.) But enough of Jonathan's parents' problems.) Jonathan and Anna are dating now. He walks her to American History and she saves him a seat at the lunch table. Everyone knows they're a couple. And therein lies the trouble. because Brandon used to sit in the seat next to Anna, and he's ticked. So he posted to Facebook that he was single now, and below that, he added that Anna was the class "ho." Several people commented, including ten of Anna's friends. They hotly contested Brandon's claims. Four of his friends commented as well. Three of them had also "dated" Anna and they agreed with Brandon. She'd eat lunch with anyone who could belch his name. "Not true," said Anna's supporters. "She wouldn't sit with Brandon." It isn't easy to slow Brandon down. His parents could take away his computer time, but he has his own laptop and keeps it in his room. AND his $200 cell phone is Internet enabled so he can access Facebook whenever he wants. Truthfully, though, they don't know what to do. Yesterday, his mom saw one of his comments on the social network. he is "in a relationship" again. It's this Russian chick who wants to come to America to meet him. He responded to an email he got from her. When his parents confronted him about it he got testy. "I don't know what you people want from me," he said. "She's a poor girl stuck in Communism who got my name from a friend of hers who once sold me real estate." That was a little scary, but after all, the girl was far away...in Russia...and she was 29, which is certainly old enough to be "in a relationship."
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Welcome Zoey...some thoughts
My newest great granddaughter just made the scene. She is beautiful. But someone asked the question on Facebook, "How many grandchildren do you have?" The answer is 14 1/2 grandchildren and 3 great grandchildren. AND if you add to the grandchildren total the husbands of my older granddaughters, you get 16 1/2.
Why did I choose to have such a large family?
Okay, well, I probably didn't choose. I just didn't discover what was causing all those kids until I had four. Then,I adopted three more. And those kids can't get it figured out either. The reason our family is so large is that my kids are SLOW LEARNERS.
Zoey, kids in our family miss out on a lot. You won't get the high-ticket gifts at holidays; there are simply too many of us for that. And you won't get a lot of one-on-one time with relatives because there isn't time enough for three on threes, let alone one-on-ones. And those "vote with your wallet" cute baby contests? While other grandparents can stuff a twenty in their grandbaby's jar, I have to ask the clerk at the register for change for a twenty. And divide it.
I guess I miss out on things too, like being THAT SPECIAL grandma. I mean, when I do something for one, I just about have to do it for all. I can't spoil the grandkids like other grandparents do; we have foster kids who deserve our attention too.
But the feeling I get when everyone is together at holidays? I can't describe it to you, Zoey, but you'll experience it yourself,and you'll find it is sometimes too sweet for words. The room rocks with the noise of babies and toddlers and the chatter of teens and adults, and we are all part of something much bigger. FAMILY.
I didn't actually choose a large family, Zoey; it just happened. But I would not trade one of my kids or grandkids or great grandkids or "sisters from another mother" for anything or anyone. I am proud of each of them. I am proud of YOU.
FAMILIES ARE FOREVER.
Why did I choose to have such a large family?
Okay, well, I probably didn't choose. I just didn't discover what was causing all those kids until I had four. Then,I adopted three more. And those kids can't get it figured out either. The reason our family is so large is that my kids are SLOW LEARNERS.
Zoey, kids in our family miss out on a lot. You won't get the high-ticket gifts at holidays; there are simply too many of us for that. And you won't get a lot of one-on-one time with relatives because there isn't time enough for three on threes, let alone one-on-ones. And those "vote with your wallet" cute baby contests? While other grandparents can stuff a twenty in their grandbaby's jar, I have to ask the clerk at the register for change for a twenty. And divide it.
I guess I miss out on things too, like being THAT SPECIAL grandma. I mean, when I do something for one, I just about have to do it for all. I can't spoil the grandkids like other grandparents do; we have foster kids who deserve our attention too.
But the feeling I get when everyone is together at holidays? I can't describe it to you, Zoey, but you'll experience it yourself,and you'll find it is sometimes too sweet for words. The room rocks with the noise of babies and toddlers and the chatter of teens and adults, and we are all part of something much bigger. FAMILY.
I didn't actually choose a large family, Zoey; it just happened. But I would not trade one of my kids or grandkids or great grandkids or "sisters from another mother" for anything or anyone. I am proud of each of them. I am proud of YOU.
FAMILIES ARE FOREVER.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Harold Hill Wouldn't Like It Either
Several nights in a row I have found myself in the middle of the parade scene of “The Music Man” marching down the Main Street of River City pumping a baton and singing “thundering, thundering all along the way.” When I awake, the only part of the dream that remains is the bass pounding in my ears. Pounding.
As a matter of fact, the bass is what wakes me. You know those cartoons where the character is trying to sleep and some noise starts a rumba beat? Everything in the room moves in sync to the rhythm. Well, it turns out that cartoon has roots in reality. The beat of that bass coming from a neighbor’s house at 11:00 PM seems to shake the bed.
(All right. I KNOW it’s only 11:00 and we’re in bed…have been since 10:30… we’re old.)
I could be wrong, but isn’t that much volume injurious to one’s hearing? I SAID isn’t that much volume injurious to…oh never mind. I see I’m talking to the wrong crowd. When I was a teenager. I figured the best place at a concert was next to the speakers. I was wrong. But fortunately I didn’t get to that many live concerts. And the main injury to my health from loud noises has been my recent loss of sleep.
I played my music loud. But then, I had good taste in music…stuff I knew the neighbors would want to hear. And I offered variety. Lots of nights I would play my organ until bed time and then close out the concert with “Taps” on harmonica. (This may sound like tongue in cheek, but it is sadly true.) And I either stopped or turned down my music by 10 or so. If I hadn’t, my parents would have cancelled all future performances. They figured that other people’s rights should be considered too.
My parents had a crazy idea that my rights stopped where my neighbor’s nose started. The notion that my rights should not infringe on the rights of others made sense to me then, and it does now. We have the right to kill ourselves with tobacco smoke, to drink ourselves to death, to let our “butt cleavage” hang out and to deafen ourselves with our music. But here’s the thing: that right is not greater than the next person’s right NOT to be subjected to us. Many of us choose not to inhale poisonous smoke, not to drink until we vomit and not to watch someone’s bare behind jiggle when they walk or spread on a bleacher when they sit down. And we enjoy nature sounds and silence, especially late at night.
Which brings me back to my dream. I can’t get restful sleep when I spend the entire night marching behind Professor Harold Hill. I wake up tired. Cranky, too. And I’m apt to voice my ire in grouchy tirades such as this.
As a matter of fact, the bass is what wakes me. You know those cartoons where the character is trying to sleep and some noise starts a rumba beat? Everything in the room moves in sync to the rhythm. Well, it turns out that cartoon has roots in reality. The beat of that bass coming from a neighbor’s house at 11:00 PM seems to shake the bed.
(All right. I KNOW it’s only 11:00 and we’re in bed…have been since 10:30… we’re old.)
I could be wrong, but isn’t that much volume injurious to one’s hearing? I SAID isn’t that much volume injurious to…oh never mind. I see I’m talking to the wrong crowd. When I was a teenager. I figured the best place at a concert was next to the speakers. I was wrong. But fortunately I didn’t get to that many live concerts. And the main injury to my health from loud noises has been my recent loss of sleep.
I played my music loud. But then, I had good taste in music…stuff I knew the neighbors would want to hear. And I offered variety. Lots of nights I would play my organ until bed time and then close out the concert with “Taps” on harmonica. (This may sound like tongue in cheek, but it is sadly true.) And I either stopped or turned down my music by 10 or so. If I hadn’t, my parents would have cancelled all future performances. They figured that other people’s rights should be considered too.
My parents had a crazy idea that my rights stopped where my neighbor’s nose started. The notion that my rights should not infringe on the rights of others made sense to me then, and it does now. We have the right to kill ourselves with tobacco smoke, to drink ourselves to death, to let our “butt cleavage” hang out and to deafen ourselves with our music. But here’s the thing: that right is not greater than the next person’s right NOT to be subjected to us. Many of us choose not to inhale poisonous smoke, not to drink until we vomit and not to watch someone’s bare behind jiggle when they walk or spread on a bleacher when they sit down. And we enjoy nature sounds and silence, especially late at night.
Which brings me back to my dream. I can’t get restful sleep when I spend the entire night marching behind Professor Harold Hill. I wake up tired. Cranky, too. And I’m apt to voice my ire in grouchy tirades such as this.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
MEET MOLLY
At the bottom of Molly's prosthesis is a happy face. She leaveds happy prints wherever she goes
Meet Molly.She's a grey speckled pony who
was abandoned by her owners when Hurricane
Katrina hit southern Louisiana .. She spent weeks
on her own before finally being rescued and taken
To a farm where abandoned animals were stockpiled. While there, she was attacked by apit bull terrier
and almost died. Her gnawed right front leg became
infected, and her vet went to LSU for help, but
LSU was overwhelmed, and this pony was a welfare
case. You know how that goes.
But after surgeon Rustin Moore met Molly, he
changed his mind.He saw how the pony was
careful to lie down on different sides so she didn't
seem to get sores, and how she allowed people to
handle her.She protected her injured leg.She
constantly shifted her weight and didn't overload
her good leg. She was a smart pony with a serious
survival ethic.
Moore agreed to remove her leg below the knee,
and a temporary artificial limb was built. Molly
walked out of the clinic and her story really
begins there.
'This was the right horse and the right owner,'
Moore insists Molly happened to be a one-in-a-million patient. She's tough as nails, but sweet,and she was willing to cope with pain.
She made it obvious she understood that! she was
in trouble.The other important factor, according
to Moore , is having a truly committed and compliant
owner who is dedicated to providing the daily care
required over the lifetime of the horse.
Molly's story turns into a parable for life inPost-Katrina Louisiana ....The little pony gained weight, and her mane finally felt a comb. A human prosthesis designer built her a leg...
The prosthetic has given Molly a whole new life,
Allison Barca DVM, Molly's regular vet, reports.
And she asks for it. She will put her little limb out,
and come to you and let you know that she wants
you to put it on. Sometimes she wants you to take
lt off too. And sometimes, Molly gets away from
Barca. 'It can be pretty bad when you can't catch
a three-legged horse,' she laughs.
Most important of all, Molly has a job now. Kay,
the rescue farm owner, started taking Molly to
shelters, hospitals, nursing homes, and rehabilitation
centers... Anywhere she thought that people needed
hope. Wherever Molly went, she showed people
her pluck. She inspired people, and she had a
good time doing it.
'It's obvious to me that Molly had a bigger role to
play in life, Moore said. She survived the hurricane,
she survived a horrible injury, and now she is giving hope to others.'
Barca concluded, 'She's not back to normal, but
she's going to be better.To me, she could be a
symbol! for New Orleans itself.'
This is Molly's most recent prosthesis. The bottom
photo shows the ground surface that she stands on,
which has a smiley face embossed in it.. Wherever
Molly goes, she leaves a smiley hoof print behind.
Send this and share it with all of the
animal lovers that you know.
God's creatures often reflect the character to which we aspire.
Friday, February 25, 2011
HOMEWORK: NECESSARY EVIL?
NOTE TO READER: You may find it necessary to take notes on this article. There is a short self-test at the end.
Well, that was a turn-off, wasn’t it?
I just finished reading a book entitled “The Homework Myth” by Alfie Kohn. ( Lifelong Books, 2006.) It was interesting, though heavy reading. The book targets academia, not parents, and so I had to slog through it to understand its principals.
Why would I do that? Well, at first, I thought it might give me some insight on the problems I have with getting my kids to do homework. After reading the book, however, I suppose its greatest value is in CE (continuing education) hours.
It isn’t that the book is off-base, it is only that it is an idealistic view of a complex issue.
Do we learn anything from homework?
That depends. Are we discussing the kids or the parents? How often have you told your kids, “I just don’t know how to communicate this concept to you”? The translation of that phrase is “ I haven’t got a clue what this means. Ask your teacher.”
I had a foster child who came home with a math assignment to compute the area of a circle sector in congruent planes. Or was it to figure out the area of a plane flying over congruent crop circles? I didn’t have a clue. I asked him where his textbook was and he had not brought it home. Evidently, he believed that without the guidebook we wouldn’t venture into the forest.
According to Mr. Kohn, Most studies show only an associative relationship between homework and learning, not a causal one. Or, in terms I’m more comfortable using, studies show that kids who do a lot of homework sometimes perform better when their learning is assessed than kids who do no homework, but it cannot be shown that they do better BECAUSE they do the homework.
A lot of other factors enter into the results. Did some teachers do a better job of teaching the skill in the classroom? Are the grades used to measure progress skewed? Are the teachers too subjective? (Okay. If I show up to teach a class of 7th graders and I have a migraine headache, I might not be as effective as I would if I felt fine. AND teaching a class of 7th graders could result in a migraine, a factor that should NOT be overlooked.)
And Kohn points out that many studies that support the idea homework fosters learning rely on faulty data. That is, they ask the kids how much homework they do and they get one answer, another answer comes from the parents and still another from the teacher of how much he or she assigns.
In fact, in the National Assessment of Educational Programs, kids who did little or no homework fared as well as those who did.
And Kohn cites a teacher named Phil Lyons who taught social studies. According to Lyons, in the beginning of his teaching career he gave out homework, but as he himself mastered the subjects less homework was necessary for the class to learn. Finally, he stopped giving homework at all. The results? His students scored higher on advanced placement tests and had more enthusiasm for learning.
In other words, Kohn raises the question of whether the amount of homework a teacher assigns might be inversely related to that teacher’s effectiveness in the classroom.
The National education Association uses a term called Time On Task. They say that the more TOT there is, the greater the learning that occurs. But, Kohn says, all time is not quality time. Spending much time on a subject is useful only if we want the student to repeat a specific behavior, not understand a concept.
He compares the TOT concept to practicing skills. Practice is important to train our minds and bodies to respond without thinking. Consider playing the piano or learning wrestling moves. But time is NOT a factor in understanding concepts.
Kohn says students given a lot of math problems to practice, for instance, are less likely to consider what makes sense in solving a problem and more likely to concentrate on what they should do.
Okay. Back to my foster son. I sent him back to school to retrieve his text book ( we live half a block from the school) and read the section myself. I could conceive of no way to relate the information to him in a way he would understand. Finally, I resorted to doing the problems the way I had learned to do them eons ago when the only writing tools we had were charred sticks we plucked from the fire (once we had mastered making fires.) In steps.
He refused to even consider that I might be right. I did not use the same procedure his teacher did. I did not understand the concept. In short, although I could prove to him that my answers were right, he would not accept them because I hadn’t arrived at them the way his teacher did. Now, understandably, his perceptions would differ from a child who was not delayed, but the idea is the same. He was not taught why the problem was solved the way it was, how it might apply to him in later life (arguably it will NOT be of use to him) or even shown how to think the process through. He was simply told to repeat a formula over and over. And that’s okay if the student understands when the formula applies in life. But without that understanding, it is no more than a bit of useless trivia he’ll forget as soon as the class is beyond that chapter.
So to this child, the homework was nothing more than an irritant between him and me; a source of conflict over him “getting it done.”
To be honest, I have been concerned over studies which show the US is ranked with 3rd world nations in science and math. Many educators seem to feel more time in school
( longer days, more homework, fewer and shorter holiday breaks) would even the playing field. But an international study found that the top-ranked country was Japan, and students there spend less time studying than American kids.
So, if homework is not effective in teaching concepts ( which Kohn says should be done in the classroom) what is its value?
There are some homework advocates who say that homework teaches study skills. But if, as Kohn says, learning is not related to the amount of homework a child does, are those study skills useful only for learning how to do more homework? Or how to perform well on tests ( by rote.)
HERE is the first conflict I find with Mr. Kohn. I believe his idea is sound. BUT in an ideal world.
To get into college, a student must have a good high school transcript. That translates into grades. Grades that the child must accumulate throughout junior and senior high. Financial aid is based on tests, as well. Cramming may not net us lifelong learning, but it gets us high enough scores to get in to a university. Grades are a reality.
And Kohn feels that if adults trusted kids to manage their own learning, they would be more interested and learn more. Maybe your kids. Not mine. Kohn says they would tire of video games and TV and spend more time out shooting hoops or reading books about things which interest them, and which would pique their interest in furthering that learning.
Some kids, maybe most, would. Ideally. But our system doesn’t give them that kind of time. It demands performance today. Now. On demand.
And kids who have been in the foster system for a while would probably be slow to make that move, if they ever did. We also have to factor in the concepts of entitlement and low self-esteem and lagging skills. Many long-term foster children have been disrupted from their educations many times. They read and reason at a level several years behind their peers.
For those children, homework does serve a purpose. It is an underscoring of the boundaries we must put around them. It brings an interaction (though admittedly not always a good one) between foster parent and child.
But it can become a power struggle, too.
My foster son hates homework. He would rather go without privileges for a week instead of doing ten minutes of reading. And he will say you cannot make him do the work. He’s right. I can take away his privileges, but he is a fatalist who will then just think, “My life is terrible, now I don’t have TV” or “Now I’m grounded.” It will not occur to him to change his behavior to alter his circumstances.
What do you do?
Well there are some homework helps on my website http://beyonderqueen.tripod.com/id41.htmlAnd, reassured by Mr. Kohn’s insight, I resolve not to stress over homework. I ask my foster son to put out some effort. If he really doesn’t understand it (or if I don’t) I tell him to put it away and then I have him read for a while. This way he hasn’t “gotten out of” anything. He can ask his teacher for help and she will understand the difficulty in teaching this child one-on-one ( as opposed to lecturing a classroom of kids) besides using her expertise to teach him the skills. And he still has to spend his “homework time” doing something profitable.
Oh, that’s another of Mr. Kohn’s theories. Children will manage their own learning in time. They will not always choose video games over a good book about a subject that interests them. They will not opt to watch TV instead of being physically active.
Hey. Mine do. Do always opt to watch TV or play videos. That’s why we have a rule that, in summer, the TV goes off at 9 A.M. and stays off until it gets dark.
Because I believe what Mr. Kohn says. I believe that in a perfect world kids would choose the right from the wrong and the profitable from the worthless. But the world hasn’t been perfect since God threw Adam and Eve out of Eden. And I KNOW KIDS. I was one once.
Well, that was a turn-off, wasn’t it?
I just finished reading a book entitled “The Homework Myth” by Alfie Kohn. ( Lifelong Books, 2006.) It was interesting, though heavy reading. The book targets academia, not parents, and so I had to slog through it to understand its principals.
Why would I do that? Well, at first, I thought it might give me some insight on the problems I have with getting my kids to do homework. After reading the book, however, I suppose its greatest value is in CE (continuing education) hours.
It isn’t that the book is off-base, it is only that it is an idealistic view of a complex issue.
Do we learn anything from homework?
That depends. Are we discussing the kids or the parents? How often have you told your kids, “I just don’t know how to communicate this concept to you”? The translation of that phrase is “ I haven’t got a clue what this means. Ask your teacher.”
I had a foster child who came home with a math assignment to compute the area of a circle sector in congruent planes. Or was it to figure out the area of a plane flying over congruent crop circles? I didn’t have a clue. I asked him where his textbook was and he had not brought it home. Evidently, he believed that without the guidebook we wouldn’t venture into the forest.
According to Mr. Kohn, Most studies show only an associative relationship between homework and learning, not a causal one. Or, in terms I’m more comfortable using, studies show that kids who do a lot of homework sometimes perform better when their learning is assessed than kids who do no homework, but it cannot be shown that they do better BECAUSE they do the homework.
A lot of other factors enter into the results. Did some teachers do a better job of teaching the skill in the classroom? Are the grades used to measure progress skewed? Are the teachers too subjective? (Okay. If I show up to teach a class of 7th graders and I have a migraine headache, I might not be as effective as I would if I felt fine. AND teaching a class of 7th graders could result in a migraine, a factor that should NOT be overlooked.)
And Kohn points out that many studies that support the idea homework fosters learning rely on faulty data. That is, they ask the kids how much homework they do and they get one answer, another answer comes from the parents and still another from the teacher of how much he or she assigns.
In fact, in the National Assessment of Educational Programs, kids who did little or no homework fared as well as those who did.
And Kohn cites a teacher named Phil Lyons who taught social studies. According to Lyons, in the beginning of his teaching career he gave out homework, but as he himself mastered the subjects less homework was necessary for the class to learn. Finally, he stopped giving homework at all. The results? His students scored higher on advanced placement tests and had more enthusiasm for learning.
In other words, Kohn raises the question of whether the amount of homework a teacher assigns might be inversely related to that teacher’s effectiveness in the classroom.
The National education Association uses a term called Time On Task. They say that the more TOT there is, the greater the learning that occurs. But, Kohn says, all time is not quality time. Spending much time on a subject is useful only if we want the student to repeat a specific behavior, not understand a concept.
He compares the TOT concept to practicing skills. Practice is important to train our minds and bodies to respond without thinking. Consider playing the piano or learning wrestling moves. But time is NOT a factor in understanding concepts.
Kohn says students given a lot of math problems to practice, for instance, are less likely to consider what makes sense in solving a problem and more likely to concentrate on what they should do.
Okay. Back to my foster son. I sent him back to school to retrieve his text book ( we live half a block from the school) and read the section myself. I could conceive of no way to relate the information to him in a way he would understand. Finally, I resorted to doing the problems the way I had learned to do them eons ago when the only writing tools we had were charred sticks we plucked from the fire (once we had mastered making fires.) In steps.
He refused to even consider that I might be right. I did not use the same procedure his teacher did. I did not understand the concept. In short, although I could prove to him that my answers were right, he would not accept them because I hadn’t arrived at them the way his teacher did. Now, understandably, his perceptions would differ from a child who was not delayed, but the idea is the same. He was not taught why the problem was solved the way it was, how it might apply to him in later life (arguably it will NOT be of use to him) or even shown how to think the process through. He was simply told to repeat a formula over and over. And that’s okay if the student understands when the formula applies in life. But without that understanding, it is no more than a bit of useless trivia he’ll forget as soon as the class is beyond that chapter.
So to this child, the homework was nothing more than an irritant between him and me; a source of conflict over him “getting it done.”
To be honest, I have been concerned over studies which show the US is ranked with 3rd world nations in science and math. Many educators seem to feel more time in school
( longer days, more homework, fewer and shorter holiday breaks) would even the playing field. But an international study found that the top-ranked country was Japan, and students there spend less time studying than American kids.
So, if homework is not effective in teaching concepts ( which Kohn says should be done in the classroom) what is its value?
There are some homework advocates who say that homework teaches study skills. But if, as Kohn says, learning is not related to the amount of homework a child does, are those study skills useful only for learning how to do more homework? Or how to perform well on tests ( by rote.)
HERE is the first conflict I find with Mr. Kohn. I believe his idea is sound. BUT in an ideal world.
To get into college, a student must have a good high school transcript. That translates into grades. Grades that the child must accumulate throughout junior and senior high. Financial aid is based on tests, as well. Cramming may not net us lifelong learning, but it gets us high enough scores to get in to a university. Grades are a reality.
And Kohn feels that if adults trusted kids to manage their own learning, they would be more interested and learn more. Maybe your kids. Not mine. Kohn says they would tire of video games and TV and spend more time out shooting hoops or reading books about things which interest them, and which would pique their interest in furthering that learning.
Some kids, maybe most, would. Ideally. But our system doesn’t give them that kind of time. It demands performance today. Now. On demand.
And kids who have been in the foster system for a while would probably be slow to make that move, if they ever did. We also have to factor in the concepts of entitlement and low self-esteem and lagging skills. Many long-term foster children have been disrupted from their educations many times. They read and reason at a level several years behind their peers.
For those children, homework does serve a purpose. It is an underscoring of the boundaries we must put around them. It brings an interaction (though admittedly not always a good one) between foster parent and child.
But it can become a power struggle, too.
My foster son hates homework. He would rather go without privileges for a week instead of doing ten minutes of reading. And he will say you cannot make him do the work. He’s right. I can take away his privileges, but he is a fatalist who will then just think, “My life is terrible, now I don’t have TV” or “Now I’m grounded.” It will not occur to him to change his behavior to alter his circumstances.
What do you do?
Well there are some homework helps on my website http://beyonderqueen.tripod.com/id41.htmlAnd, reassured by Mr. Kohn’s insight, I resolve not to stress over homework. I ask my foster son to put out some effort. If he really doesn’t understand it (or if I don’t) I tell him to put it away and then I have him read for a while. This way he hasn’t “gotten out of” anything. He can ask his teacher for help and she will understand the difficulty in teaching this child one-on-one ( as opposed to lecturing a classroom of kids) besides using her expertise to teach him the skills. And he still has to spend his “homework time” doing something profitable.
Oh, that’s another of Mr. Kohn’s theories. Children will manage their own learning in time. They will not always choose video games over a good book about a subject that interests them. They will not opt to watch TV instead of being physically active.
Hey. Mine do. Do always opt to watch TV or play videos. That’s why we have a rule that, in summer, the TV goes off at 9 A.M. and stays off until it gets dark.
Because I believe what Mr. Kohn says. I believe that in a perfect world kids would choose the right from the wrong and the profitable from the worthless. But the world hasn’t been perfect since God threw Adam and Eve out of Eden. And I KNOW KIDS. I was one once.
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