A Tale of Two Students in the Land of No-Homework: Student 1

One of the classes I teach is called English 4.  This class is comprised of students with all ability levels from those with reading and writing IEPs to "gifted" students who thought English 4 would be easier than College Composition.  Regardless of ability, the end goal of English 4 is the same: build all students' reading, writing, and speaking skills as much as possible before graduation.  During Trimester 1, our main focus is on writing so students are given anywhere from 20-30 minutes of their 62 minute class to develop, revise, and edit their writing.  I thought 100-150 minutes of in-class writing per week should eliminate the need for outside of class writing work.

Student 1 has traditionally been painfully shy in class.  Reading and writing are equally challenging for him; although Student 1 has no IEP, his consistent struggles have lead to an insecurity and lack of confidence in himself and his abilities that is almost more crippling than the skill struggles themselves.  This student works nearly every day after school making homework a non-priority for him.  In the past two years when any writing not completed during class was expected to be completed as homework, Student 1 chronically turned in assignments late and barely completed. In addition, they usually resulted from intense teacher interventions and often several Saturday school sessions.

This year, in the Land of No-Homework, Student 1 has already written several pages of in-class quick-write entries.  After a 4-week unit, his final narrative writing was turned in on time, was 2 pages long, and showed proficiency in 3 of 4 categories (he is allowed to revise the "developing" category).  All of this happened with no prompting from me aside from occasional check-ins to see how his writing was progressing.  Although he struggled with his informative paper because of the amount of reading and analyzing necessary to adequately research his selected topic, it, too, was two pages long and turned in on time.  Does length of writing really matter?  Not necessarily, but this is a student who struggled in the past to write one paragraph on his own.  In his case, I see quantity as a mark of independence.

Student 1 is considering college for the first time in his high school career.  He is visibly more confident and smiles more in class.  He is no longer scared of writing.  Is his writing "career and college ready" yet? No, but he is writing more confidently every day, and this is one step closer to being ready.

Ethereal

Although I had an entirely different initial blog post already created on paper, when I was considering blog "theme" options, the style "ethereal" gave me pause.  Ethereal: "seeming to belong to another world...lacking material substance."

Huh.  This is how many of my students over the past 16 years have viewed homework.  Belonging to another world, not theirs.  Lacking the material substance which might incite them to complete it. Ethereal.

I guess I'm not that different from my students because the longer I teach, the more "ethereal" homework has become for me as well.

I learned early on in my career that high school students either did their homework or didn't.  While I understand that home environment, work schedule, socioeconomic status, and a whole host of other factors contribute to whether or not students complete homework, I have also come to the conclusion that no matter how meaningful I make the work, I cannot change the circumstances contributing to why students do not complete school work outside of class.  For one reason or another, to many students, homework simply doesn't fit in their world outside of school.

Here is where I'd like to say that those students who completed the "meaningful" homework I assigned performed better in my classes, but alas, I would be lying.  At least I would be lying to say that completing homework was THE reason they performed well in my class.  I guess one could assume my "meaningful" homework was "lacking material substance."  And the more students continued not completing outside practice, the more "ethereal" homework became for me.  SOME students who regularly completed homework were pulling ahead while SOME students who did not complete it fell behind.  But I have a problem with "some" because a whole lot of students, both my doers and not-doers, seemed completely unaffected by the completion of homework.  Indeed, I began to wonder if the practice of assigning homework belonged to another world of classes, not my classes, where it possessed the material substance it lacked for me and for my students.

So this school year, aside from requiring students to independently read a book of their choice for 120 minutes (thanks Penny Kittle) outside of school per week, I am not assigning any other homework.  Instead, I am focusing on the only time I can control, which is the 62 minutes daily that my students sit in my classroom.  My goal is to push my students to write, read, speak, and think as much as I can when they are in "school world."  For me, this means trying to hold "me time" to 10 minutes or less of every class period.  The students need to be directing their learning, not me.  If they are not actively "doing", then they are not learning.

While homework may seem to belong to another world or to lack material substance for many students, I hope that by removing it from the equation of success in my classes, ALL students will feel like they belong in the world of my classroom where we work hard every day to build the skills necessary for them to create lives of substance and meaning in our world.

This blog is meant to serve as a record of my students' and my successes and stumblings throughout our "Year Without Homework."