Random Musings

Teaching

Last week was progress report week. It's that time of the semester where interim reports are sent to alert parents to any problems there might be that need to be corrected before permanent report card grades are issued.

Along with the progress reports, the school system for which I work also gives parents access to the teacher's gradebook for each student via the internet. A parent with internet access at home or at work can log-in and pull up the grades for their child(ren) as the teacher posts them.

Most of the teachers in my building utilize the Homework Hotline system where homework assignments are recorded daily so that parents and students can dial a phone number and hear the homework assignments for the day in the event that students are absent or may have forgotten to write down the assignment in the PTSA free-of-charge-issued agenda provided to each student.

To back those informational tools up, most teachers also maintain an independent website where parents and students can come to check out what is going on in the classroom and look for posted assignments as well.

And still we have large numbers of students who don't do homework, who come to class without what they need for the day, and parents who claim they didn't know their child was failing until it was too late.

I teach Reading, and a couple of years ago, I stopped assigning regular homework outside of independent outside reading or the occasional project. I resorted to that because it became so frustating to assign something that was designed facilitate the progress of the lesson, only to have seven of twenty-five students complete it and thereby have to hold up the lesson I'd planned so that those who hadn't done the work could be caught up.

I now have my students complete most of their work in class where I can see it and where the extaneous reasons for for not having the work turned in are reduced.

One would think.

Still there are kids who have missing grades, lots of missing grades. To give them extra time to turn it in isn't fair to those who did the work when they were supposed to. And even then, in many cases,given more time, those kids with missing work still don't do it.

I'm beyond complaining about it. Complaining and whining only brings me down. I can't give that power to someone else. I control my universe. So, I simply work with those who come to do their work, and when the others deign to join us, they do. I provide the clean, fresh, nuturing water; I can't make the ponies drink it.

Last week, my administrator emailed me that a parent had called her to tell her that my Homework Hotline number wasn't working, and that her son had been out for a week with the flu and thus, he needed his assignment. Since I don't give regular homework, I didn't make a big deal out of the fact that the extension I was given hasn't worked all year, nor did the same extension work last year. It wasn't fixed when I reported it as broken three times last year or the two time this.

But that wasn't what bothered me. What I questioned was why this parent didn't just call me and ask me what her son needed to do instead of calling the administator to try to rat me out? Was that supposed to establish a positive relationship between home and school?

Wouldn't it have been better if she had just come in, seen me, and picked her son's work up, which was what she was going to have to do even if I did have Homework Hotline set up. As it happened, her child is very self-motivated and was ahead of the game before he got sick. Once he returned to class, he got right with me, collected what he needed, and went at it on his own. He's always like that in my class, so I don't know what the agitation on his mother's part was about.

I wonder sometimes if we've made things so easy that they're difficult, especially when it comes to communicating with each other and/or doing things in the way that we know we should be doing them. What in the world did parents do before Homework Hotline, school websites, free agendas, etc., etc. when kids were expected to take responsibility and do the right things on their own?