Yesterday morning we had our first grade-level administrative meeting, which has always been called "the Breakfast Meeting" because there is usually a platter of mini-muffins and/or bagels available. The principal used the time to review a couple new systems: the backpack restriction on students in classrooms (which I really like), and the Homework Policy that had been developed by School Council with PTO parents. That document is three full pages in 12-point font. He highlighted a few sections for emphasis:
Yup, sure, looks fine to me. I think I flipping got all three of those bullet points covered! However, I know that I wasn't always like this. I can still remember creating homework tasks just because "I haven't assigned something for the past 2 days." When some kids regularly did not complete or bring in the homework sheet, I would complain about their maturity, organization, parents, etc. ... but did not truly reconsider the assignments themselves until 2013. And it was not because of some administrative policy! I'm not sure how I would have received a document like this in 2010, and I expect that some colleagues are really not going to like this one. Maybe just maybe this will be the nudge that brings a couple more teachers to "the flip side"??
The section above is getting a lot of attention in my building. Non-flippers don't know how long their students are spending on assignments. I suspect that the "homework-for-the-sake-of-homework" club (I used to be a member) struggles the most with guesstimating the length of their assignments. And clusters with multiple members have an even bigger problem, because the policy lets parents stop their children from working when they reach the limit.
Here's one thing though: I have found zero evidence for the "10 minutes per grade level" homework guideline on which this policy is based. And yes I have really tried. All the articles you find just link back to each other! It's one of those Mythical Unicorns of Education like the gosh-darned Cone of Retention ("you remember 10% of what you hear, 30% of what you see", etc.). That pyramid is an absolute piece of garbage -- even worse than multiple-intelligence theory.
Okay, I have to go get myself ready for school now. Happy Friday! We're gonna play the Coin Game in class today. (more on that later)
12 down, 8 to go for #flipblogs
Here's one thing though: I have found zero evidence for the "10 minutes per grade level" homework guideline on which this policy is based. And yes I have really tried. All the articles you find just link back to each other! It's one of those Mythical Unicorns of Education like the gosh-darned Cone of Retention ("you remember 10% of what you hear, 30% of what you see", etc.). That pyramid is an absolute piece of garbage -- even worse than multiple-intelligence theory.
Okay, I have to go get myself ready for school now. Happy Friday! We're gonna play the Coin Game in class today. (more on that later)
12 down, 8 to go for #flipblogs
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