Christi writes, “I’ve considered home schooling my eldest for middle school, since our local middle school is really bad, and we can’t afford private school. The trouble is, even with my degree in education, I have a hard time just helping her with her homework. She gets frustrated, rolls her eyes, throw tantrums, and then I get irritated with her and give up. Have you dealt with any of this and how did you get past it?”
That’s a reasonable concern and on that many parents contemplating homeschooling seem to have. You’re touching on the very thing I feared when the possibility of homeschooling Captain Science was first brought up for consideration. We battled over homework nearly every night. I’m not being hyperbolic here, either. Almost every single school night devolved into fussing, yelling, tears, arguing, nagging, and/or fits over the completion of homework. If I couldn’t get him to finish an hour of homework without that sort of drama, how on earth could I manage to get him through a full day of school work? Were my days going to be nothing but a constant struggle to accomplish even the smallest tasks? Was I setting us both up for a complete breakdown of our parent-child relationship?
Well, take a deep breath in, Christi. Now let it out. Relax and be assured that none of the above worries have come true.
Your daughter spends most of her day at school. She’s probably up and out the door pretty early, spends a full day at school, and then comes homes only to do more school work. Of course she’s not happy about it. Who among us enjoys putting in a full day at the office, then coming home to spend an additional hour or more of what should be your time with family on work-related conference calls, paperwork, or, for a more accurate comparison to the majority of homework, a busywork review of your day’s tasks? Sure, some people like bringing their work home with them, but most people want to leave work at the office.
Newsflash! So do your kids. They also seem to understand instinctively what Harris Cooper, a professor of education and psychology at Duke University who is an expert on homework, has discovered through research: that there is very little evidence that most homework (reading and short assignments to prepare for tests excluded) in elementary school helps kids learn. In other words, all that work really is a waste of your child’s time and yours.
During her school day, your daughter may be interested and engaged in the materials. Her interactions with her teacher might be very positive. This positivity could carry over to the home education environment, with you in the role of the educator sharing new knowledge with your child. Or, it might be that she’s very unhappy with the teaching style, classroom dynamics, speed at which materials are covered, etc. and you could help reengage her with her education by finding the right curriculum and by providing a safe and secure environment in which to learn. As the homeschooling parent, you aren’t being put in the position of having to be a prison guard jangling the keys while your kids serve an unpleasant sentence issued by a teacher, a sentence over which you’ve had no input.
This may sound a little melodramatic to those of you whose children have always been homeschooled or whose homeschooling experiences weren’t preceded by negative public schooling experiences, but those of us who started homeschooling in response to bullying teachers who seem to punitively assign busy work can tell you that is exactly what it felt like many nights. It actually reached a point with Captain Science and his third grade teacher where I did finally declare some of the work to be pointless busy work that I didn’t care if he finished or not, because I got so tired of having to enforce rules I didn’t set and harass him through worksheet after pointless worksheet.
In the homeschooling environment, my reluctant homeworker has become a (usually) willing homescholar. Our daily materials aren’t busy work. It’s not worksheets to send home in order to have something to grade or give the appearance of actually teaching when I’m not. I have the power to make it interesting the first time through…and the first time through is the only time through, if he demonstrates mastery of the concepts!
Just a warning: you may have to do some deprogramming to get these positive results. Take a relaxing summer off and start the school year with positivity. Find out what parts of her day she most enjoyed, what aspects of education worked best for her, and let her know you’ve taken that into account when planning the curricula. If she balks, take it slow, and reassure her that she doesn’t have to worry about grades and tests, just about learning the materials and enjoying them. Don’t let it turn into a power struggle. You can always quit and come back to it the next day, which is better at the beginning that leaping right into the head-butting.
Ultimately, I think you’ll find how little homework and homeschooling have in common.
