Homework: A Necessary Evil

Homework is an emotive issue and a word that can strike fear and terror into the hearts of all stake holders; students, parents and teachers.

I would like to state my philosophy on homework early in this post. I believe homework is a necessary evil. Students need it to establish positive work habits and to develop key study skills that will assist as their education lives grow.

I have had a reputation (mistakenly mind you) of a teacher who tends to deal out a great amount of homework. I stubbornly defend myself against these charges. I would love to not have to assign homework each week. This would mean less marking for me to have to do. I would however, be doing students a disservice if I did not give them homework. They would not be developing skills that are going to be essential for them in the future if they do not do homework.

The school I currently work at has a sound policy in place regarding homework that I believe is effective and works very well. For each year level a student is in multiply by 10 the amount of minutes that a student needs to spend on homework each night between Monday and Thursday. Therefore a student in Year 6 should do 60 minutes homework a night.

Our weekly homework schedule is distributed on a Monday and is generally due Friday. The work is a combination of spelling, maths, grammar and either a literature or Inquiry Studies activity. Students are also given weekly Chinese homework. The flexibility of this type of system allows for students to complete their work whenever they want during the week. If they have an extra-curricular activity on a particular afternoon and can’t get homework done, not a problem. As long as the work is handed in completed on a Friday that is all that matters. Of course we encourage effective time management and spacing the work out throughout the week but this is not always possible.

On top of this work is the expectation that students will read nightly. This is a massive non-negotiable in my mind. Every 2 week students have to report orally to the class on the book they have just completed.

I am a tyrant in ensuring homework gets completed. Students need to understand that there are commitments they must meet and homework is one of them. In my class students know that there will be ramifications if homework is not completed. I follow these consequences through and therefore have a very, very low rate of homework incompletion.

Over the past 18 months the homework issue has turned almost full circle for me. My 9 year old daughter once she reached Year 2 started receiving weekly homework. A touch of the tyrannical classroom teacher obsessed with homework completion attempted to raise its head. My wife quickly quelled this beast reminding me that I am Alexandra’s father, not teacher, and my role was to support and assist her with homework tasks.

Alexandra tends to have a somewhat casual attitude with her homework. She is of the belief that it will get done eventually. I am learning not to push her but to let her take responsibility for her own work. This approach seems to be going satisfactorily at this stage but am I still hoping to intervene at some stage in her academic life.  

Confessions of an Olympic Junkie

My name is Paul and I am an Olympic addict.

This addiction first began when I was 9 years old during the Moscow 1980 games. At our school in my Year 4 class we had to do a project on the Olympics. Basically this just involved cutting out Olympic pictures from a paper and sticking them into a project book. However this was enough to pique my interest in this quadrennial event. I can still clearly recall that Australia’s two medals were won both in swimming by Michelle Ford and the men’s 4 x 100m medley relay.

Los Angeles 1984 and my addiction was just about full blown. I watched every moment I could and became almost ‘Rain man’ like in my ability to recall obscure facts and statistics regarding the events and competitors such as Romanian gymnasts. Anyone else remember Ecaterina Szabo and Simona Pauca? I do.

Seoul 1988 and I was in Year 12 preparing for my HSC. I recall during the school holidays my mother making me lock myself in my room to study just as the Australian women were playing in the gold medal hockey final. Well my mother went out for a few hours and I left my room went out and watched the game cheering the Aussies onto their gold medal. When my mother returned she excitedly said to me “Wasn’t it great Australia winning the hockey gold medal?” My reply was simply “Did they? I didn’t know that. I was busy studying”.

 Barcelona 1992 and the addiction had reached an alarming rate. I was teaching now and had my own Year 6 class who I attempted to brainwash over the virtues of the Olympics. I bombarded  them with facts and figures on the games and as I was living away from home I spent nearly every minute glued to television coming to school blurry eyed each morning.

Atlanta 1996 was much the same. I taught a large unit of work in class on the games with a new group of students to indoctrinate. I brought a TV into the classroom to watch the women’s hockey final but kept the volume down and didn’t let the kids cheer when Australia scored. I had a new girlfriend and I didn’t want her to think I was too much of a freak with my love of the games (she is now my wife and well aware of my addiction). I was captain of my rugby team at the time and before kickoff I told the team to play with the same spirit that Kieran Perkins had done when he had won the 1500m freestyle earlier that morning. Many of my team mates groaned when I mentioned this point.

Sydney 2000 was incredible. The games seemed home made for Australia a nation whose sporting passion knows no bounds. I missed the first 5 days of the games as I was travelling in China. On return I went to the tennis finals seeing Venus Williams win gold in the women’s singles. All I wanted to do was see Australia win a gold medal live. Unfortunately I saw the Woodies lose to their Canadian opponents in the men’s doubles. Despite this I loved seeing the passion that all medal winners displayed. They were so proud to have achieved a level of greatness on the ultimate world sporting stage. 

Athens 2004 was a lot of fun and I exulted in Australia’s best ever performance. Just last  week I made my children at home relive 2 hours of highlights of these games on DVD. I am thrilled that my daughter is starting to become passionate about the games.

I had a soft spot for Beijing 2008 having been to this amazing city numerous times. The Chinese did not disappoint. I was fortunate enough to attend the equestrian events that were being held in Hong Kong. I had my chance to see Australia finally win a gold medal live as they battled with Germany in the last round of show jumping. I held my breath as the Aussie riders attempted to clear all fences and wanted to scream out loud and put the German riders off as they went through their paces. Alas the Aussies hit a few more fences than the Germans so I saw for the second time Australia win a silver medal.

What is it that I love about the games? Where do I start? I love the passion, the superstars, the sportsmanship, the sense of comradeship between all competitors. I love seeing nations come together in what is generally such a peaceful event. I love seeing smaller nations taking on bigger teams (Tunisia v USA men’s basketball played this morning is just one example of this). I love seeing Australia do well and seeing our athletes return home as heroes. I love seeing people taking an interest and becoming experts in sports that they have no idea about outside the Olympics such as hockey and water polo.

I have tried to think about some of my top  Olympic moments over the years so here they go in no particular order:

1.       Sydney 2000. Having a chance to attend these games and see them in my home nation was incredible.

2.       Dream Team 1992. I was and still am a massive NBA fan. I thought it was incredible when the greatest basketball players were allowed to enter the games. The story of Magic Johnson, recently diagnosed with HIV, illuminated further the greatness of this team.

3.       Jon Sieben Los Angeles 1984. This was the first time I had seen an Australian win a gold medal. I sat in front of the TV madly cheering on Jon Sieben a 17 year old outsider in the 200m butterfly as he powered home in world record time to beat of a star studded field.

4.       Derek Redmond Barcelona 1992. The heartbreaking sight of one of the favourites for the 400m tearing his hamstring as he turned for home. This was then followed by the inspiring move of his father who leapt from the crowd to carry his son across the finish line.

5.       Grant Davies Seoul 1988. Grant Davies was an Australian competing in kayaking. He was in a fierce battle with an American opponent and they crossed the line nearly dead even. Davies was initially told he had won the gold medal. Ten minutes later he was told that he actually lost by a few thousandths of a second. I was distraught watching it. Davies was a mirror of sportsmanship and humility as he accepted this news in good grace still elated to be leaving the games with a medal.

6.       Eric Liddell Paris 1924. Whilst obviously not seeing this one live it is still one of my favourite Olympic stories. The man who refused to run on a Sunday due to religious beliefs therefore missing the 100m where was expected to win. He went on to win the 400m. It is fantastic that this story was retold in the movie Chariots of Fire.

7.       Australia 4 x 100m Women’s Freestyle Relay Athens 2004. These girls were quite amazing. Won the gold medal in world record time but what stands out for me with them was their reactions on the victory podium. 3 of the team stood beaming with happiness and pride whilst the youngest member Alice Mills, had tears streaming down her face as the emotion overcame her.

Anyhow these are just some of my favourite memories from the games. I hope London 2012 suppplies many more narratives that I can add to the list.

The Power of the Hashtag

It is about time that I sat down to write another entry in my blog. I plead guilty and have been slack over the past few weeks but I will put it down to priorities and being report writing time of the semester and all.

Anyhow let's get on with it................

I am constantly amazed at twitter. I know I wrote a blog about it last year but since then my use  and knowledge of twitter has grown. More importantly my knowledge of how I can use it professionally has grown immensely.

I have built and developed my PLN over the past few years. PLN stands for Personal Learning Network. Basically this is a collection of educators who follow each other on twitter sharing links, ideas and thoughts. When I mention my PLN to my wife her reply is "But do you know these people?" No, but this is beside the point. Twitter (for me anyhow) is not personal the way a friend on FaceBook is.

I have learnt a tremendous amount from my PLN. New web 2.0 tools, handy tips that can be used in the classroom and upcoming conferences are just some takeaways I have gathered from twitter.

Of course I still use twitter socially. I keep up with news and sports details and my passions of rugby and basketball.

So what is a hashtag. This is it #   If you add this to a tweet it is like sending your message to a group. I use a service called tweetdeck to read and send my tweets. Tweet deck can be divided into columns as seen below:

In these columns I receive tweets from the people I follow, direct messages from others but what
feature I like the most about the cloumns is to be able to search a hashtag.

Above you will see columns where I have searched for a hastag #iste2012 and #iste12. ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) is currently having its annual conference in San Diego California. It would be amazing to attend (if the school PD budget allowed). By searching the conference hashtags I have been able to view some of the presentations online, view the notes taken by a conference attendee and also find other people to add to my PLN.

If I can't be at the conference then twitter is doing a good job of keeping me in touch, hence the power of the hash tag.

Time

I designate a set time for my students and I to blog, Wednesday at 10:30am through until 11:10am. During this time we all sit in front of our computers and madly blog. I have fallen into this trap. My aim is to always complete my blog within this 40 minute space.
Last week I reflected on this blogging process. I believe that this time constraint limits and affects the quality of what I write. I am in such a rush to get this blog written and published that I do not give myself enough time to re-read, edit and check on the quality and depth of what I have written. Many of the blogs that I read are thought provoking and full of depth and this is what I want to achieve with my written blog.
How do I achieve this? Time.
We all wish we could have more time. Time that can be spent with our families, time that can be spent pursuing the things we love in life, perhaps even more time spent in our jobs to ensure we can produce and work at a higher standard.
Creating this extra time is difficult. Who has extra time in our busy lives? I look at my usual week day schedule: Rise at 6:00am, leave for work at 6:55am returning home anytime between 4:45pm and 6:30pm. Dinner with family follows and before getting children ready for bed and the accompanying bedtime story which we conclude around 7:45pm. After this is either catch up on some work or relax on the couch and talk with my wife. I am generally in bed around 10:00pm. Somewhere in this busy schedule I try to ensure some form of exercise.
Where can I get the extra time that will allow me to spend on certain pursuits such as being able to edit my blog more carefully, check my Google Reader feeds or my twitter account. This remains the challenge. I don't want to sacrifice my family or exercise time and I have to do my job to the best of my ability.

I know it is very anti-social but I tend to spend recess and lunch times at my desk. Just having this extra time does allow me to catch up on some extra work. Just doing something like this practise does allow me the extra time that I need to just.....live.

Homework

Homework is an emotive topic. I would like to go on record early in this blog by stating that I believe it would make things a lot easier both at school and at home if homework was abolished.
Having stated this though I am truly of the belief that as educators we would be doing students a disservice if we abolished homework.
Homework serves an important purpose. It is required to reinforce concepts and ideas done in class. It is required as preparation for exams and to complete assignments. If we did not have homework in the primary years students would not learn the importance of using their own time for school purposes. How would they survive in secondary school and university if they have not established healthy routines at a young age?
Over the years I have earned somewhat of a reputation for being tough on homework and a teacher who gives too much homework (a reputation I do not deserve). My current school has a policy that states a Year 6 student should be doing 60 minutes of homework between Monday and Thursday nights. All I am doing is following this policy. Currently our homework is distributed on a Monday and is due Friday. This allows a student who has an extra curricular activity on any particular evening or afternoon plenty of extra time to complete the set tasks. These tasks usually include Maths mentals, some spelling and grammar work and generally either a literature based or Inquiry Studies based activity. Combined with this our students also get Chinese homework each week.
Through this approach to homework students also get to learn the important skill of time management. It is absolutely fine if they complete all of their set work on one night as long as it is all handed in completed on the Friday.
Homework being an emotive issue really struck home to me when I first started teaching in Hong Kong. Finding a balance between the desires of parents was difficult. There were many parents of a Chinese background who wanted more homework whilst the Australian parents wanted less homework as they wanted their children outside playing sport and being with their friends of an afternoon.
In this situation it was incredibly beneficial to me to have a school policy on homework. My answer to both groups of parents was that I was simply following the school policy of the set amount each day. For those wanted more homework I directed them to websites and books which could give them what they wanted but I was not going to offer a reduced amount of homework as some desired.
It is important that there are consequences in place for students who do not complete their homework tasks. For me this generally involves missing out on our set Friday free time.
The difficulties that homework can create really struck home to me when my daughter last year started to be given work in Year 2 that needed to be done at home. She is a beautiful yet stubborn girl who would only do her work at the same time each week. I did not hesitate to tell her to redo her work if it was of an unacceptable quality.I know some of the parents of the students I teacher laughed when I told them of the issues I had with my daughter's homework. They simply replied "Now you know what you have put us through over the years".
To sum it up I believe that homework is a 'necessary evil'.

Parenting

I am certainly not the world's greatest parent. I try hard, love my children dearly but I always question can I or should I be doing things differently as I have been tested of late.
We have two beautiful children; an 8 year old daughter and a 3 year old son. They are lively, energetic and loving but very different personalities. My daughter is quiet, considerate and thoughtful. My son is almost the complete opposite besides the fact he is very shy.
After teaching at all boys schools for 7 years I decided that if I ever had a son I wanted him to be energetic and dynamic. I certainly got that.
At the moment we are currently having issues with our son. He cries often, throws tantrums regularly and at times is downright obstinate. He is a Mummy's boy and there are days when he will not say anything civil at all to me in the morning. Afternoons on my return from work are usually better.
The weekend and past few days have been rough. Monday was a shocker. He woke up screaming and later that day when we arrived home would not enter our place sitting outside howling. Once we finally dragged him in he went straight to his room and didn't leave finally going to bed in the clothes he had on all day.
I was sure there was something wrong with him on Monday and wanted to take him to hospital to get him checked out.
I know all of this behaviour is supposed to be a normal part of being a toddler but I was worried. I think we were spoilt with our daughter when she did not exhibit these type of antics.
Yesterday was a far better day (besides the fact he refused to get out of his pyjamas all day). He was happy engaged and loving having people play with him. He does find it difficult when his parents and sister leave him early in the morning to not return until late in the afternoon at the earliest. He loves having his family with him.
I want to know if there is more I should be doing. Is what he is currently going through normal or s there something wrong with him? When will he exit this phase?
I know this is a test for my parenting skills. I want to be able to rise to the occasion and be able to support my son through what he is currently going through. Part of me is worried that the current issues will have some kind of influence on my son later in life. I know this is probably me being paranoid.
Despite all of these issues (and I know all parents go through them) I love my children dearly and am incredibly lucky to have been given the gift of them in my life.

Government

This term sees Year 6 focus on the topic of Government in Inquiry Studies. The initial thoughts of most students about this topic is one of boredom and total disinterest.
Initial questioning of the students revealed a distinct lack of knowledge and awareness in this area. Students could tell me who the Prime Minister of Australia was, they knew Barack Obama and a few (1 or 2) other world leaders. Despite this they were unable to tell me in any great depth what it was that a government does.
The opening lesson in the unit saw us view a clip from Lord of the Flies. Following this there was discussion as to why the events that we were viewing were occurring. The discussion lead to the common response was because there were no rules or laws. My follow up question was simply "What does a government do?" The reply was "Creates rules and laws".
After dissecting what a government does we then move onto types of governments where in small groups students do mini projects on democracies, communism, monarchies and dictatorships.
Investigating how the Australian system of government works can become a little tedious. There is nothing overly stimulating on a how a bill becomes a law. I try to make this participatory by conducting an election in the same manner of how this occurs in Australia and then having a class parliament where all students are assigned roles.
The final part of the unit is the key, the most stimulating part for the students. It is a sub-unit entitled "Making My Voice Heard: Taking a Stand". In this section the students choose an issue that interests them, research the cause and then get the message they are trying to make out to others. This section of the unit is to show that we can all play a part in the political process. Last year my students chose some fascinating topics such as children in detention centres, killing of dolphins, coal seam gas mining to name a few.
Why do we do the government unit? I believe it is important that young people are not ignorant of how our political system works. They see it in the world around them; on TV, on the web. They hear their parents discussing political issues and often complaining about their leaders. I want my students to generate opinions for themselves even at this young age. They need to know that they can make a difference and when the age comes they need to think carefully about for whom to cast their vote.
When the time comes for my students to step forward and write on a ballot paper I would be thrilled if they casted their minds back to what they learnt in Year 6 and this assisted them in their voting decision.