No Homework

I’m almost feeling like Madeline is still on vacation since she hasn’t had any homework for two weeks.  Although you may think she’s pulling my leg, first off, she’s not old enough to be able to convince me of a lie that “big” and secondly, she actually has no homework.

Upon the closing of our neighborhood public school, due to budget cuts and it being a small campus that, I guess, ate up resources, we decided to search around to see what our options were.  If we were going to have to move her, and most likely drive farther than we did already, we might as well do a thorough assessment of the schools in the area.

We were open to schools that might be less traditional, such as a charter, or a non-fundamental public school.  Some thought was given to the multitude of private schools.  One private school is actually just 2 blocks away, but besides cost, I didn’t feel that a school in which the philosophy is to let the kids learn and discover on their own pace was the right fit.  It was way too far away from the fundamental model which we are most accustomed to.   Yes, this was the same fundamental model that had our daughter in tears while doing the second page of the same basic arithmetic problem for homework because she had already mastered it and found the homework utterly boring, but initially it would challenge and push her.  The “best”(by test score) public schools in town are the ones with “fundamental” in their name, but since the search coincided with the tears, we chose to keep looking.

We looked into a charter that had been in the area for about 5 years.  They use a model incorporating individualized learning plans, projects, and benchmarks.  They don’t have “grades” (hence the benchmark system of tracking the performance of each child), but they still comply with the state’s standards and standardized testing (although I am not a fan of standardized testing as a sole assessment of any child or school…but that can be another post).  They felt just “granola” enough without being too “out there”.  Our daughter won a space via the entry lottery and we decided to enroll her there.  She’s been there for two weeks.

They don’t assign regular homework, it’s more of a “finish it at home if you didn’t get your work done at school” policy.  It opens up so much time in the evening, yet, it’s a little strange.  She wonders why I keep asking about her day and what she did.  With homework, I had a basic idea of what she was working on, but without it, I don’t know how her writing it looking, or if she remembers how to do addition (ok, that is an exaggeration, she writes and draws all the time at home, and I am always making her do math problems of some sort).  I have never been a fan of a lot of  homework.  If you get the concept, you get it, if you don’t you don’t.  Home time shouldn’t be a teaching time.  Kids should be getting enough at school.  If parents don’t understand what the kids are working on, it can be doubly frustrating.  Even in college, in the  quintessential homework class – math – the best teachers would only assign a handful of problems.  If you knew the concept, it was easy, if you needed more practice, it was just enough, and if you didn’t get it…well, it was too late.  As you progress in school you begin to know when you need to practice and not practice.

In this new school, there is much more expected from the parents, such as volunteering in the class room, on committees, and we are fully invited to drop in to observe or better yet, help, at any time.  The teacher wants us to talk to her and is more than willing to let us know how our child is doing before the usual “conference” time.  After two weeks of no homework, I’m realizing that there is “homework,” but really it’s more like “schoolwork” where I get in there and get involved.   Which really is the way it should be.