Homework is a Part-time Job

My husband wants our 15-year-old daughter to get a part-time job to learn about the responsibilities that come with having a boss. She already babysits all summer and occasionally during the school year, as well as house sits/dog sits at various times throughout the year. She has learned to become financially responsible and purchased her new phone this summer with her money, has a savings account with more money than some adults, and already has a bonafide retirement plan with a few thousand dollars stashed away. As much as I love my husband, on this topic, I fully disagree.

You see, my daughter already has two part-time jobs for which she doesn't get paid. (Hang with me here and hold off on the argument of payment in other forms.) She plays sports year-round and has homework - lots of homework. And, you may as well consider her violin playing as part of that homework since she has to practice and takes private lessons once a week. If she didn't take private lessons, she would have to miss a school class, on a rotating basis, several times a marking period to fulfill her lesson commitment with the orchestra teacher. She can't afford to miss a class, and she enjoys playing the violin, so we have gone with the paid lesson route.

In the fall and the spring, she plays softball, and over the winter, basketball is her sport of choice. If I don't include the two-hour off-season, extra workouts on Sundays in the fall for basketball and over the winter for softball, sports take up a minimum of fifteen to twenty-five hours each week. In the fall, she's lucky that her softball team isn't affiliated with the school and is less intense in its commitment. However, as we head into the winter and the spring, the school sports require early dismissals for away games that have her returning sometimes at 10:00 PM. Practices last roughly two and a half hours on the non-game days including Saturdays, and if you throw in the "team-building" dinners and activities once a week for basketball, you can increase that day's commitment by another hour and a half.

Once she gets home from practice or a game, she might eat dinner standing up before she grabs a quick shower and starts homework. Every night, at a minimum, she has three hours of homework. The average is more like four hours, and on a particularly bad night, she has five. I have been keeping track and even though we have only started week four of the school year, there is no end in sight. Bedtime, unfortunately, comes between midnight on a good night and 2:00 AM on a bad one. She's up at 6:00 AM to start it all over again.

Okay, so maybe you are thinking she's a teenager; she doesn't manage her time well and is on her phone too much. Believe me, this isn't the case. I have strict limits on all of her apps, I put her phone into "downtime" mode via my controls, and keep a close eye on her tracked phone usage. Her phone isn't the problem; it's the homework.

Yes, my daughter takes advanced classes that increase her workload, and, yes, she could have chosen to take a lighter schedule. Honors English, APUSH, Spanish 3, quantitative chemistry (this is the advanced version), pre-calculus A (yes, there is an advanced version of pre-calculus), orchestra, and photography 2 round out her daily school routine. (Photography 2 is her daily saving grace as this is the class that truly looks forward to each afternoon.) Since she plays in the orchestra, she isn't afforded a study hall to use during the day to lessen her take-home load. However, she does choose to skip lunch on days that are particularly overwhelming (as if every day isn't already), and stays in the auditorium to work on an assignment or study for a test.

While most parents would agree that hours of homework a night is too much for any teen, my perspective is a bit more unique. You see, I am a former AP teacher, co-founder of Project ARC, an educational partnership focused on developing authentic, relevant, and complex learning experiences, and educational author. I just published two new books on authentic project-based learning, but this post isn't intended to focus on them but rather how all learners, my daughter included, are overwhelmed with the prospect of homework.

I sat through the back-to-school night presentations for each class and struggled not to speak up in horror as I listened to many class descriptions that I likened to torture. (However, I was impressed with chemistry's potential to move into an authentic space and pre-calc's focus on the "why" and not just the "how" and "what".) And, I can tell you that on a daily basis my daughter asks me what the point of school is and how it is preparing her for life.

I would break it down for you for each class fully, but I will stick to my main points of irritation and outrage.

• Chemistry: "If your son or daughter is staying up until 1:00 AM to do homework for my class, let me know. This should never happen." --- Okay, I appreciate that sentiment. However, even a half-hour of chemistry homework, coupled with every other class and sports, means a 1:00 AM bedtime is the norm and not the exception.
• Pre-calculus: You provide the answers to the homework and only go over problems if there is an issue brought to your attention. I appreciate that. However, 20-40 problems a night is a bit much. And, when you have a daughter like mine who does what she is assigned, she's going to do every single one of them. Besides, she said you do check to see if the homework is completed. On average, she spends a full hour each night completing these problems. And, my daughter desperately wants to know why she needs to do countless problems when she already understands the concepts being taught and the math is far below the pre-calculus level she is studying.
• Honors English: You've stolen the love of reading from my child. Yes, I understand annotating a book; I do it all of the time. However, I annotate to learn from what I am reading, and I love what I choose to read. Assigning a whole class novel for every unit is counterproductive on so many levels based on the way you've chosen to implement it. Instead of using To Kill a Mockingbird as a case study for how to improve race relations today and have your students dive into that authentic challenge, you merely had them read the book, annotate, write a few journal entries, and then watch the movie - in class. (And, don't get me started on my issues with watching an entire movie during class time!) My child sees absolutely no relevance for what she is reading, and it has become a chore subsequently. A half-hour to an hour is spent each night reading and annotating. On occasion, depending on the difficulty of the text, two hours is a possibility.
• Spanish 3: We are taking a family trip to Spain this fall, and I was looking forward to the opportunity for my daughter to practice her increased proficiency in the language. I took five years of Spanish and distinctly recall by the start of year three that I was able to hold simple conversations. However, memorizing vocabulary lists does not put language acquisition into any context, and I am confident a week in Spain will improve her language skills more than the last month has done. This very well may be her lightest load each evening, but the mundane approach to practice hasn't gotten her anywhere.
• APUSH: I have a degree in history with a concentration on American history, and I so wanted my daughter to love this class. Now I know why you only teach one section a year that has far fewer students than any full class should have for an AP teacher. As I sat through what you thought was an engaging technological presentation, I wanted to cry for my child. Using Nearpod to project your presentations to each student's computer is still a lecture/PPT. It doesn't matter if the kids don't have to look at your screen; you haven't changed a thing. So, she reads and takes copious notes every evening only to have you repeat the information during class. She dissects primary source documents at home as I help her understand the texts through a variety of scaffolds that I am fortunate enough to know. The average night of homework for your class is 90 minutes but there have been a few two-hour evening stints, as well. There is no learning about history to apply it to current day situations. The information is stuck in the lowest three levels of Bloom's, and it is mind-numbing.
• Orchestra: Last night, my fifteen-year-old cried as she told me the one thing she loves the most about school has taken a backseat, as her practice is limited to 20 minutes before she leaves for a lesson. She just doesn't have the time.

On Friday evenings, I ask that she does one hour of homework before she takes off for a football game. On Saturdays, after trying to catch up on sleep, I allow her to spend the day with friends or at the barn to be a kid and enjoy some semblance of a break from school. If it wasn't for this, I fear she might lose it completely. Sundays are reserved for the four to five hours of work she must put in to get ready for Monday morning.

Okay, Dayna, I get it. Your kid has a lot of homework, but isn't it preparing her for college and life? Nope. Not one bit of it. How does having to drain two eggs (not an easy task) to bring into Spanish class to paint preparing her for college or life? How does doing the same math problem type over and over again prepare her? How does taking pages of notes prepare her? Where is the value in all of this? And, when will we realize that courses at the university level are shifting and changing to incorporate more authentic learning experiences and far less drill and kill?

My heart aches for my own child as I see her trudge through her life that is school. And, I know she isn't the only one. Our athletes, musicians, thespians, student council kids, and those learners who take care of siblings or contribute to the family income are all at risk of losing it mentally, physically, and emotionally. And, what have we accomplished by assigning so much homework?

If you didn't see it earlier this year, take a look at The Atlantic's post on The Cult of Homework. There are plenty of links to research that I won't regurgitate here. (I will tell you the findings indicate only weak correlations - not causations - between homework and academic achievement.) Check them out in detail to form your own opinions. However, if we go by the 10-minute rule suggested by Harris Cooper's famous 2006 homework study, my 10th-grader should only have 100 minutes of homework per night. Instead, she has no less than 180 minutes and often has as much as 300 minutes to juggle. The Atlantic's discussion regarding the quality of homework is one you won't want to miss either. My daughter can fully attest to this as her favorite phrase is, "this is a waste of my time".

To my husband, our daughter won't be getting a part-time job anytime soon; she already has one. To my daughter's teachers, I implore you to rethink your homework assignments. Are they authentic, relevant, and complex learning experiences, or are they a "waste of my [daughter's] time"?