This week, Donald Trump shocked the world when he won the election to become America’s 45th president. As I began writing this post, thousands of Americans flooded the streets in cities across the country in protest against a Donald Trump presidency. I share this, not as an endorsement of such events, but rather to acknowledge the symbolism of a nation divided. Our greatest challenge as a country will be to find a way to unite, even in the face of a very uncertain future.

How apropos to be writing a blog post in response to Sal Khan’s chapter entitled, “Embracing Uncertainty.”

Sal writes, “Since we can’t predict exactly what today’s young people will need to know in ten or twenty years, what we teach them is less important than how they learn to teach themselves.” This could not be more true or more important as we consider the way we educate today’s learners.

As we prepare for an uncertain tomorrow, educators find themselves in unchartered territory. We are asking teachers to prepare students for a future world that is difficult to imagine. There will be new inventions, industries and problems on the horizon that will impact our lives in dramatic ways. How can we embrace this uncertainty?

The opening to Sal’s fourth and final section of his book introduces the concept of the One World Schoolhouse, which reminds us that the power of education may come from uniting learners, just as we are hoping to unite the citizens of our great nation.

Using Khan’s idea of the One World Schoolhouse, we can empower students to become curious, confident, self-directed learners who are prepared to take an active role in their own learning and ultimately in the world around them.

Below are some suggestions of ways to put this idea into practice immediately.

• Leverage technology appropriately to tailor learning to meet individual student needs
• Emphasize and assess skills rather than content knowledge
• Provide students with regular opportunities to grapple with and solve actual problems
• Get out of the way and let students (possibly of different ages) come together to learn with each other rather than independently
• Accept that learning beyond the classroom is valuable and may not come in the form of practice problems or worksheets
• Celebrate outside-the-box thinking and connections made between ideas

Let’s all embrace uncertainty by shifting our focus. Let’s ensure that all students know how to teach themselves to learn with the help of one another. By leveraging the power of technology and incorporating old methodologies where students learn from and with one another, we will do our part in preparing all students for an exciting future filled with opportunity, possibility, and discovery. 

 

We all learn in different ways (and multiple at that). Visual, spatial, via dog pictures….

Welcome to my synopsis of the most complicated chapter in an otherwise easy and interesting read. Brought to you by Marnie the Bear.

Salman Kahn begins this chapter discussing how he felt during one of the biggest crises of the current times…the 2008 credit crisis. He was thinking to himself:

So, being the creator of the Kahn Academy and overall creative thinker, he decided to make some youtube videos to help explain some of the jargon that was floating around. To him this was simply a therapeutic and, more than likely, fun process for interpreting the time that we were in. However, more and more people from all walks of life starting watching and learning from these videos. It was at this point that it really occurred to Salman:

This is turn led him to wondering, “Why does “education” stop at some point? Why isn’t it lifelong?” (Kahn 173). There are studies that suggest most people stop learning new ideas and concepts in their mid-thirties. He goes back and forth on the validity of this statistic (it being both hard to calculate as well as arbitrary to define what is “learning). However, the fact remains…at some point in your life learning becomes less of a priority. Of course, that being said, we don’t flatline our learning all at once. There are still “blips” (as he calls them) or travel or reading that involve a certain amount of learning new things. But, for the most part, we rely heavily on those things we learned in the past.

However, the ability to be a lifelong learner is something that we all, biologically, possess. It moves in the fashion of, “use it or lose it.” As your brain gets older it is more difficult for it to learn entirely new things (ie. a foreign language). On the other hand, it has been proven that adult brains learn easier by association (due to all the previous knowledge you have to pull from).

All this just goes to show that it doesn’t matter what age you are…you are capable of learning new things. You just need to find the right mode and motivation.  Kahn Academy is a great device for both the school-age, adult, and dogger brain (the latter is not proven)

.

 

 

Man gets shock of his life when he buys two toy poodles for $150 only to be told by a vet that they are actually GIANT RODENTS pumped up with steroids to look like dogs

Ok, I will admit that this is my first time blogging. So as I tend to do when I want to learn more about something I turned to my friend Google. One site suggested that it is good to start with an attention-catching headline. This Daily Mail headline from April 7, 2013 certainly caught my attention so I thought why not! But seriously, I started to think about the task in front of me, and I started to think what a great resource Khan Academy is for students of all ages to turn to when they are looking for assistance in math.  

In the chapter entitled The Los Altos Experiment, Sal Khan embraced the opportunity to work with an affluent California school district. Up until this point Khan Academy had been primarily reaching students outside of the more formal school setting. But Khan decided this was the right situation to “learn from real teachers and real students how our technology could be made better” (page 163). The pilot program in two 5th grade and two 7th grade classes proved successful.

One of the measures of success that was observed came from standardized testing. Initially Khan was concerned about the “congruence, or lack thereof, between what our kids were learning and what the tests were testing” (page 166). He was also worried that some of the very advanced students were working on skills well above grade level that would go unrecognized in the testing process. His apprehension about students doing well on the standardized grade level test proved to be unfounded. Students who had mastered the skills taught through Khan Academy were able to do well on the test without specifically being taught for the test.

Khan built upon this success by expanding the number of classrooms that were served. As the amount of districts using the program grew, Kahn was excited about what he saw, especially with minorities and remedial classes. Though it is hard to argue with the positives, I feel we need to realize the limitations of the program and the videos. I have always felt that it is up to me as the math teacher to guide students in discovering a conceptual understanding of the math that they are learning. I want students to derive the rules and equations they use whenever possible, and discover why they work. As a teacher I have been fortunate to work in a district that has provided learning opportunities with experts and excellent resources that stress the conceptual.   

I tend to find the Khan Academy’s videos to be more procedural than conceptual. For example, in his initial division with fractions video Kahn shows two number line examples with fractions that have like denominators. He uses this as an example of how he ended up multiplying by the denominator and then dividing by the numerator- otherwise know as find the reciprocal and multiply, or keep-change-flip. What his video and lessons provide here is instructional, but few students would be able to say why this is the algorithm. I favor having my students derive this algorithm through real life scenarios and modeling. Recently I had a discussion with a 4th grade student who is proud of her completion of multiple grade levels in Khan Academy. I have seen her improve in some areas, and I believe that her self confidence has grown through her experiences with Khan Academy. But recently she asked me to help her with a 6th grade geometry exercise on Kahn that built upon a 4th or 5th grade skill. She had managed to pass an earlier triangle lesson on Khan Academy by memorizing the area equation for a triangle. In this current set of problems she needed to be able to find the base of two connected triangles that had been rotated. This student was not conceptually able to see that any side of a triangle could be used as the base for that triangle. In other words, she had a gap in her conceptual understanding of triangles.

Do I think of Khan Academy as a stand-alone math course? No. But I see the worth of having something like this available. The videos are an excellent resource for students, and are beneficial as a supplement and for exploring topics of interest. The practice exercises on the site are also useful in helping students grasp the concepts.To have a free resource that anyone can turn to is the beauty of Khan. It transcends race and wealth. And there is a Khan lesson for nearly every learning objective in the math continuum. I believe it has a place in our classrooms.

Oh- and about the poodles….

When taking the plunge it’s best to start them at a young age. Landon has been enjoying Sal Kahn’s work.

The chapter began with Sal spending every free minute he had working on Khan academy and struggling to decide if he could just run Khan academy or needed the salary from his hedge fund job. He had people trying to convince him to make it a for profit program. As he continued struggling with the decision two different things happened that helped in ultimately making the decision to take the plunge.

Kahn Academy was chosen to be a finalist for a major award.
Kahn received an email from a Kahn Academy user.

The user was a minority college student who was denied a full education based on race. He persevered through the struggles and was able to graduate and go to college. He still never had a full grasp on basic math concepts. He took the learning into his own hands through access to Kahn Academy.

On pg. 155 Sal shared parts of the letter he received.
“He wanted me to know that he’d “spent the entire summer on my YouTube page…and I just wanted to thank you for everything you are doing….Last week I tested for a math placement exam and I am now in Honors Math 200….I can say without any doubt that you have changed my life and the lives of everyone in my family.”

This quote captures why I wanted to be a teacher. I do not need the recognition, but like to know that I have made a difference in a person’s life and helped them achieve things they may never have thought possible.

When I started in District 109 I was fortunate to be given a student on my caseload who was on the autism spectrum. When the child and I first met he had difficulty trusting me. Over the next year and a half I was able to gain his trust and help him develop stronger academic and social skills. He went from not wanting to work with me to telling his mom that he wished I could continue to be his teacher through college. Just like Kahn chose to leave his hedge fund job upon receiving the email on how impacted one person life with Kahn academy. My experience with this child a few years into my career reaffirmed for me that I chose the correct path in becoming a special education teacher.

After taking the plunge Kahn spent the next few months trying to raise money for the academy. This was initially a bit of a struggle. People he spoke with liked the concept, but were hesitant to jump on board as others hadn’t yet. Sal began to experience some self doubt and remorse after a few months with no major financial support. He then received a larger check from someone named Ann Doerr, who became an advocate for him and helped him to see all the word of mouth publicity Kahn Academy was getting. It eventually began to snowball and take on a life of its own.

We have all had to face adversity in our lives in one way or another. For some it was dealing with a sick family member, an illness of our own, some kind of a disability, financial distress, etc. but through whatever life throws us we all find the strength to persevere. When I look at Landon it reminds me of the all the basic skills we need to master in order to thrive. Sal Kahn found that strength even when he felt as though the idea of Kahn Academy was going to fail.

“I have a conviction that a few weeks spent in a well organized summer camp may be of more value educationally than a whole year of formal school work.”

-Charles Eliot, the 21st president of Harvard University

 

Imagine my surprise when I found out that the first time I would be blogging would be about summer camps! Needless to say I was pretty excited. Summer camps have made me the person who I am today. I owe my family, my career and the majority of my friends to summer camp. Every value that you want a young child to develop I have gotten from camp. I know that you are probably thinking that the camps I have been a part of since I was two years old (never missing a summer in the past 33 years), and the camps that Mr. Khan has been a part of, are very different. And if you define camps by looking at the brochure, I will agree with you. However, camps are more than a brochure. What Charles Eliot is speaking about in the quote above is not the games you play or the robots that you build. What he is talking about is the lesson that you learn and what you take away from your summer experiences. I do not keep going back to camp summer after summer because I run a cool sports program. I keep going back to camp because of the impact that it has on the campers, something that I saw first hand with Joie this summer. The power of camp is real; she still talks about her counselors, group mates and other directors. However, I feel that Khan missed the real connection between his program and camp. The fact that students/campers are given more than what meets the eye. Banner Day Camp (where I work) meets the eye test. You walk around and see the beautiful grounds and you see the cool actives, and the campers and counselors engaged with each other having a fun time. However, just by walking around you do see the true impact camp has on everybody who is a part of it. I can tell you a million stories of camp success, as simple as a girl who when down the water slide from the first time, or as complex as the girl who’s Dad fought for custody over his ex-wife because he realized that his daughter was being mentally abused and neglected. She came to camp on day 1 very shy and timid, not wanting to make friends or trust the female staff. That same girl was in tears clinging to her counselor on the last day of camp not wanting to leave her or her new friends. She left camp that summer an outgoing, fun loving girl, who was able to enjoy life and trusted the people around her. That was 7 years ago, I still see her Dad and he still thanks me for “giving him his little girl back”. Camp makes an impact on people to try new things, leave their comfort zones. Speaking for myself, just writing this blog is facing a fear. Growing up with dyslexia and other learning disabilities I am not a confident writer. I have no problem lip singing, “Let it go” or rewriting the words to “Sorry” for an overnighter commercial to perform in front of 1,000 people. But writing an email to 40 adults scares me, but I am able to put my head down, write a post (proof read a little) because of the lessons I have learned at camp, that you won’t get better at something unless you try. And that is a lesson I try to teach our students every day. We might not be doing something in class that is your strong suit, but that is not a reason to give in, or not try something you might enjoy.

 

Khan used his camps as an experiment for his ideas, I feel that he missed out on the real experiment of camp and the connections to academics. He tends to talk about the effect that it had on his academy. At the end of the chapter, he says “I was keenly aware that if Khan academy was to be seen as a legitimate option for classroom education, it would have to prove its value as part of a formal curriculum during the academic school year.” (p152) That is not a reason to have fun at camp. I think the true connections are what he says earlier in the chapter “learning by doing. Learning by having productive, mind-expanding fun.” (pg.149-150). That is a true camp experience. And that is what students are looking for and want from their education. They want to do and create. They want to guide their own learning. They want to find new and exciting ways to educate themselves. The world around them is moving at an alarmingly fast rate, information is literally in the palm of their hands. Students today are sounded by new and exciting. As educators we need to keep up. We need to set the bar, not struggle to live up to it. As educators we get stuck in our ways. At camp we are never satisfied about where we are. We are always trying to figure out what can we improve on, and not for next summer, for after lunch. If something isn’t right at camp, we fix it, right there on the spot. That is the camp mentality and it would work great on school setting. Which is to give our campers the best experience we can give them at that moment.

 

In conclusion, camp is a place where you learn about yourself. Leaving your comfort zone, exploring new ideas and realizing who you are. He was able to help create a special place where those campers got more than just what was written on the brochure. Khan said it earlier in the book, “Formal education must change. It needs to be brought into closer alignment with the world as it actually is; in closer harmony with the way human beings actually learn and thrive.” (p 11). Camps have been making a positive influence on children forever, teaching them lessons that they will be able to use for the rest of their lives. It doesn’t matter if that camper is three years old at camp for the first time or a 35 year old director finishing his 20 year as a staff member, camp is a full of positive life changing/ life challenges that will help define who you are.

 

 

 

If Sal Khan stopped after his website was shut down on the exact day he was marketing it to the Peninsula Bridge School,

there would be no 

 
Ok, maybe not quite that extreme.  But how many of us can relate to working so hard on something and not having it go as planned.  I know I most definitely can.  I remember pushing into a classroom on one of my first days at Kipling, so excited to teach Spanish, with a fancy flipchart that I spent hours on. In my humble opinion, it was perfectly put together- both interactive and engaging (ActiVotes and all!). It did not take long after entering the room to find out that the bulb had just burnt out on the Promethean Board prior to my arrival. Awkward! No matter how carefully we plan for a lesson there are still so many external variables that play a role in the success of our efforts. Things that can oftentimes go unforeseen, as Sal Khan faced when the Peninsula Bridge School asked if his software worked on a MAC computer- leading him to spend an all-nighter hacking his program to make it compatible. He did not see that coming, but the outcome ended up strengthening his program, as it strengthens us as educators.

 

Angela Lee Duckworth, Grit Ted Talk

As I was reading, Angela Lee Duckworth’s TED Talk on Grit was in the back of my mind.  I kept thinking of how Sal must have felt, nervous and excited to bring his concept of flipped lessons and digital learning to the classroom.  I also thought of how teachers might have felt, nervous and excited to take on another new program, especially since it is all digital.  For some, just the simple fact that something is done on a computer can be intimidating. Even those who consider themselves to be “good” with technology are always learning new things- oftentimes from students! The key to our own independent success is endurance.  If we begin to see things as a marathon, rather than a sprint, we can steadily introduce and master new concepts one item at a time.  

I know there are teachers who initially may have felt overwhelmed by 1:1 and online educational resources.  On my first day of new teacher orientation I was asked to create a twitter account.  I had numerous questions about this: What is twitter? What is a hashtag? How will this relate to professional development? And most importantly, how can I ever get what I need to say out in 140 characters or less? Now, tweeting comes as second nature.  It’s suddenly so simple! And I know that there are teachers who have grown so much in regards to this.  It started with 1 post per week of something exciting in the classroom and now it has developed to the point where twitter is being used as a way to connect in real time with classrooms from all over the world.  If the expectation was to start off with advanced Twitter skills there may have been overwhelming feelings of confusion.  But instead we all started at square one together with a marathon mentality, mastering basic skills until we found that “Aha” moment. From there, we are able to take it to the next level.  

The same goes for the kids.  When Sal Khan launched Khan Academy at the Peninsula Bridge Program, he was unsure what to expect.  He was also unsure where to begin with the control group he had been given. He decided to split them into 2 groups; 1 group begins at Square 1 while the other begins at the 5th grade level.  Much like the students that Carol Dweck talks about, those that started at the beginning and filled in gaps as they grew eventually passed those that started on advanced concepts and hit a wall that they were unprepared to deal with.

I bring this up because I see this same scenario playing out in my classroom with a program called Duolingo.  On this program, students learn language at their own pace through online lessons. Many students enjoy using this program at home to build on what we learn at school.  When students sign up, they have the option to take a placement test, or start from Basics 1.  Students can choose which path they would like to follow.  Just like Sal mentions in the chapter, I receive a detailed summary of student learning in a spreadsheet and I can see students accuracy as well as how long students are spending on a concept (it’s a beautiful thing). This translates to finding who is stuck and where. I am noticing that students who took the placement test and started at higher levels of Spanish are hitting a wall now that we are a couple of months into the school year, and those who started at Basics 1 are still steadily progressing, and I do not doubt that they may soon surpass those who started at higher levels since they strengthened their foundation. Now it has me thinking, should all students begin at Square 1? Sal explains, “Nearly all the students needed some degree of remediation, and the time spent on finding and fixing the gaps turned out both to save time and deepen learning in the longer term” (Khan, 144).  

Relating back to Khan Academy, since I have the privilege of seeing every student in the school, I was able to hear a lot of input from students about Learn Storm.  I remember students beaming with pride, telling me that they finished their grade level and moved on to the next grade level.  Most feedback from the general population of students, reported that they were making significant progress at a rapid pace.  Sal was out to determine “if ‘slow’ students have the opportunity to work at their own pace and build a strong foundation, they could become ‘advanced’ or ‘fast’” (Khan, 146). He found that 10% of students in the program who started significantly below average, and would have tested into a low track, who then turned out to be among the top performers, significantly above average.  I am starting to see how this is playing out with language learning, but since I do not teach curriculum that applies to Khan Academy or Learn Storm in particular, I have some questions for those who do.

• In your experience with these programs, do you find your lower students making significant progress once they strengthen their foundational skills?
• Do you find your higher students making the same progress or do they eventually hit a wall?
• Do all students start at Square 1?
• How do you predict the progress will compare in year 2 vs. year 1?
• How do you feel Khan Academy/Learn Storm has either posed an advantage or disadvantage for your learning community?

 

 

 

“Theory versus Practice”, the title of the chapter that I chose to blog about.  Does that imply that one is better than the other?  Is there a “battle” in education between theory and practice?   Are we as educators, quick to jump on the latest bandwagon?

I certainly do not have the answers to those questions, but what I think is that in education, we tend to overgeneralize.  

 

Sal’s Thoughts on Theory

 

What Sal argues for are “a particular set of practices that are already showing results with many students and can be tested and refined with many others.”  He is indeed, not arguing for a generalized theory (his example being, self-paced videos and exercises) about the best way to educate children.  He goes on to admit that particular types of practices with videos and software seem to be resonating with particular students and teachers.  This is one way to meet the needs of our students.  The one that sounded best to Sal and makes sense in that particular moment.

 

Sal’s Thoughts on Practice

 

What resonated most with me was Sal’s belief in individualized learning and understanding each student as a unique learner and then creating learning and assessment opportunities that fit with that unique learner.  He says, “We can now craft more particular and individual solutions than ever before..”.  With the use of technology and the many resources that we have available to us here in District 109 we should be able to challenge and support each child at his or her own level.  It’s about how a teacher uses tools (videos, websites, books, etc.) to create personalized lessons and a productive environment where each child is engaged.

 

Lastly, a few tidbits/tips on personalized learning:

 

1. Deliver instruction through multiple forms of media (words and still pictures, instructional     

       videos, audio clips, interactive games, and hands- on activities)

 

2. Gather and use immediate feedback on student understanding.

 

3. Give students options to show their learning.

 

4. Be flexible when plans go awry.

 

5.  Let students drive.  

I open with a quote that really stood out to me when reading. It is nice and vague without context and is something that can be reflected on in many different situations. What does it mean to you?

“We obsess about more because we cannot envision or agree on better” – Sal Khan

When I first signed up to blog on this chapter I have to say I was excited about it. I know it seems weird, but School Finance was actually my favorite class during my graduate program in administration. I found it very interesting to learn and understand how school finance is done and what drives the decisions that as a teacher I, along with many, was guilty of complaining about. It goes without saying that this chapter did mention teacher salaries and I am happy to say the Khan falls on the side of teachers here. However, this is not what I believe the focus of this discussion is or should be about.

School finance goes way beyond just teacher salaries and in most cases a teacher’s salary makes up a small part of a classroom’s expenditure. Khan went as far as giving us the numbers on an average school district that spends around $10,000 per student or 250,000 for a class of 25. While reading this I immediately thought of our district and what our expense per student would be. With a little research on the district webpage I was able to find that District 109’s expense per student for the 2016-2017 school year is budgeted to be a bit over $15,000 per student or conservatively in a 20 student classroom $300,000. So, on Monday morning when you look at your group of students in class think about the fact that in your classroom alone our district will spend $300,000. Now think about an average teacher salary around $75,000 and I think it easily makes the case for why school finance goes way beyond just teacher salaries. Even if you look at a six figure salary for a teacher in the classroom you are looking at $200,000 dollars that go to maintenance, administrators, student programs, etc.

My questions then become:

1. What would you do with that $200,000 dollars in your classroom?
2. What would your priorities be for student learning spending? (Is it Technology?)

Khan believes that “money devoted to learning is money well spent” (Khan, 119), but what does that mean? We can all point to spending that was meant for student learning and did not work out. We have all lived through the changes in education and the money spent to implement them. So, the big question for us as educators is how do we know our money is being spent on actual learning as opposed to programs and technology that do not make a difference. There is a bold section in this chapter that discusses this theme, one that we have talked about often throughout technology discussions in Deerfield. Technology is becoming one of the largest expenditures for student learning as we move beyond boxed curriculum.  Do we truly know it is making a difference in learning? As a teacher, I want to say yes, but I cannot point to any data that truly proves it is the technology making that difference as we have gone through many changes recently in Deerfield with student programming.

George Couros talked about innovation and technology integration at our in-service and got a standing ovation. Obviously, technology is something that we as a district believe is making a difference and we see it as a positive impact on students, but how do we make sure it is not, as Khan says, “just one more very expensive gimmick” (Khan, 122)? It is this question that again can help make sure the investments we make in technology are well spent. We as educators have a responsibility to make sure that we use the technology so that it improves student learning and never becomes a gimmick.

One last point; one that I felt like is most important and doesn’t really have to do with school finance. I was drawn to Khan’s thoughts about improving schools and what he believes is important and that is, “Improving the student/teacher time ratio” (Khan, 121). Khan says that this process does not have anything to do with money and/or school budgets. Changing the amount of time students spend directly interacting with the teacher is more about changing our classroom process and structure. This is something that I believe validates what we are doing at Kipling with guided math groups and less lecture type instruction. This brings me back to my quote from the beginning of the blog, with one added word, “We obsess about more [money] because we cannot envision or agree on better” (Khan, 120). Instead of looking for more, I think we have to continually look at where we spend and how we can do that better.

• Better instruction
• Better use of technology
• Better use of data
• Better use of per student spending

How do you make student learning BETTER?

When I began looking through Salman Khan’s titles in The One World Schoolhouse, I was instantly hooked on “Flipping the Classroom.” As I read, I felt validated with how my teaching style has changed over the past year as I began incorporating more flipped lessons in the first grade classroom. I agree with Salman Khan that the students need to learn from my direct instruction during the school day, but they also need active opportunities to learn by synergizing with other learners who are at different ability levels and having a support system in place to help with challenges along the way. Working with other learners and having a support system is something that not all students will not have access to when they are tackling school work at home. Students and families are often left frustrated because they do not have a support system to help understand the problem. Although the homework in first grade is not like homework in the upper grades, flipped classrooms or flipped lessons create a “Win-Win” for everyone involved.

As I reflect on my high school experience, I feel like flipped lessons would have helped me tremendously as a learner. I was the student in math struggling to keep up. I was often stopping the teachers to ask questions along the way. When it came time to do the homework, I was still trying to process the lesson that was just presented to me. I would often go to the teacher for help before the start of the school day. I felt like I was doing whatever I could just to keep my head above water. By the time I understood the skill, we were on to the next topic. If I had the opportunities to practice with teacher and collaborative student support, I feel like I would have more success grasping the concepts.

Incorporating YouTube lessons or other videos is quite simple with the Seesaw app. All you need to do is create your video and upload the link. You can share your video by clicking on specific students or the entire class. The nice thing about Seesaw is that the students can click on the three dots on your post, click copy and edit, and respond to the video by recording their voice or typing in a response. What a great way to capture the learning! If you need help designing a flipped lesson for your students on Seesaw, let me know!

This fall a homework policy letter from a 2nd grade teacher in Texas went viral and it was brilliant in its simplicity:

Homework Policy 🙂

     I have to be honest  as to why I picked this chapter, the title. Homework is a popular debate issue right now in 109 and nationally. And surprisingly, I have an opinion on it. (I know, you are all shocked…)

     History lesson (since my life is encompassed by Hamilton at this point, awesome, wow!)…I began teaching at Kipling in 1990. We gave A LOT of homework in 4th grade then and for whatever reason, it was a badge of honor. If you could handle 4th grade at Kipling you were set for Shepard and then high school. I don’t know why we thought that, but it was how it was. I inherited that crown and wore it back then, before some of my current colleagues were born ;). Homework in those days included nightly math (problems copied out of the hard cover book onto lined paper, or a worksheet I wrote by hand), the weekly spelling book unit of 4 pages and studying the words for the Friday test, nightly reading, and Current Events which was due each Friday-find an article in the paper (no internet!), read it, summarize it and “react to it”. Current Events was worth 100 points and we had a checklist (apparently rubrics had not been invented yet) used to assess everyone’s paragraphs. As the years went by we got rid of the spelling workbook so we made packets instead for content words. Some parents complained and some parents thought it was all wonderful and it taught their children responsibility, organization and work ethic. More on this later…

     About 10 years ago weekly, rote spelling had been killed off thankfully, and we went to Current Events every other week, (or less in my classroom). I knew even then that it was an assignment that students and parents dreaded for its tedious routine and rigid expectations. Here is the thing–I toed the party line back in the day that homework helped kids become more responsible and it was a life skill or rite of passage. But after my first few years of teaching I did not believe it. I even lived proof it was untrue as time went on…one of my sons is organized and gets to things right away, homework was never an issue for him and he went through Kipling in the days of MEGA homework. It didn’t make him MORE responsible, it didn’t change him at all. It just gave him less time to be a kid. My other son is um, a bit more scattered and lacks a certain sense of urgency. He applied both of these character traits to elementary school homework and continues to excel at using them at high school (insert laughter). Homework did not change him, but it did/does lead to strife in our household. I have not seen homework change my students, or miraculously make them executive functioning superstars. However, I have seen homework lead to frustration, family time disruption and upset about school from kids of all abilities. These are not lessons that lead children down the path to success.

     Khan asks the correct question on page 111, “How much homework is the right amount?…We should be asking something far more basic. Not how much homework, but why homework in the first place?” If we are questioning how schools are set up and run then it makes perfect sense to question the amount and place of homework in this day and age. Today homework in my class is read your free reading book for 15-20 minutes and practice any of your individual math skills online (or use your flashcards!) for up to 15-20 minutes. Thirty to forty minutes and no consequences in room 42. Although to be transparent, last year I did check online time and impose consequences for kids who skipped more than a day a week. I am not doing that this year. If students need extra work in an area it needs to be addressed in school and communication with parents on this is part of my job. My parents know what the “homework” is. I will assume that if their child does not do the homework there is a family reason, and mine is not to question why.

     One of my students asked me recently when I was going to start giving more homework like they are “supposed to have in 4th grade”. I told them I was not going to do that and asked if they thought everyone getting the same “packet” or worksheet every night was a good idea. The answer was a resounding “no!”. When I questioned the kids one boy told me, (without benefit of a grant supported study or any control groups whatsoever), “That’s a bad idea because if we know how to do the worksheet we shouldn’t have to do it and if someone doesn’t understand it their mom is just going to do it for them.” Outta the mouths, huh? This is the same explanation I use with the few parents who question the “lack” of homework these days.

     Here is one more thing: I also have the luxury of age, or “wisdom”, in this case. I am older than the parents in my class. My own children went through 109 and the high school. I know what is coming academically for our kids and worksheets handed out each Monday are not going to help anyone. Assuring parents that weekly worksheets and packets aren’t the answer is something I can do with full confidence due to my life experience. If we are teaching to mastery and students have individual and independent goals and skills to pursue then one size fits all homework has no place in the classroom. Period. Read a book, work on a skill in math, or invent something! Oh, and be a child. These things will lead kids down the path to success, creativity…and happiness. But that’s just my opinion.

 

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