Hey Kurt! Thanks for writing. Genuinely curious about your thoughts on books. You seemed less declarative on the subject of novels both in the essay and here in the comments. I can't really imagine how much time we would lose for close reading, discussion and line-by-line analysis (nor how many opportunities would be lost for independent meaning-making) if we sat and read the entirety of every book in class, but I'm certainly open to a new perspective if you have one.
Hi Luke, Hope you are doing well. Great comment, something I've thought about quite a bit having been a high school English teacher. I believe books fit into the category of "authentic work" as long as we are talking about "real" books (not made-for-school books - textbooks and the like). When I was in high school I loved reading a chapter of a book at night for my English class (the books we read were fantastic - Faulkner, Ellison, Shakespeare). As long as the teacher assigning reading for homework is mindful of how much time it might take for a student to read a portion of a text, I'd say this fits into the "good" category of homework. In terms of in-class reading I always selected a portion of text - the juiciest part - and we'd spend the class analyzing, discussing, performing it. i.e. When we worked with Don Quixote we spent several hours on just the first paragraph! Since, as a classroom community, we all did a close reading of a portion of text, the entire class was able to participate, even if they didn't have time to complete the homework reading of the larger chapter. Probably not offering much of a new perspective here as much as agreeing with your comment!
Hey Kurt! I appreciate the thoughtful reply, and as you predicted, I'm very aligned with you on this. I had a similar experience in high school with assigned canonical literature and I know that I developed a lot of important skills and independence with challenging literature in those moments. I try to replicate the experience for my 6th graders with, of course, "right-sized" text and tasks so that we can focus our full attention on those "juicy" parts in class (which I also find "front-loads" the knowledge and skills needed for a successful homework experience.) I had to laugh about DQ because my last post was on that very topic. I even wrote about Ellison and his openings in the essay! 😝 looking forward to reading more of your work 👍🏻
Love this: “Education becomes a Möbius strip—an infinite, self-referential loop. Teachers assign homework simply because that’s what teachers do.”
Teaching is so complex— of course we do some things “just because”, without thinking deeply about them— at first. But once we start thinking intentionally about our practices, the ways that they might not really align to our values starts to really become apparent.
I’m writing about educator burnout over at my substack, and encouraging educators not to take home stacks of papers to grade. What follows from that logic is that students shouldn’t have to take home 3 hours of nightly homework either. We’re setting them up for burnout before age 20 when the volume is just so so high.
Thanks Ruth. I remember my first year of teaching it was practically all on default mode (hadn't gone through a formal education program when I first started teaching). And to your second point . . . exactly. I was an English teacher and remember taking stacks of paper home to grade. Then looked at the research about how students just check the grade and very rarely read any comments. Changed the way I looked at homework and grading (and assigning "papers.") Look forward to reading your posts.
I have so much to say about this! :) First, thanks so much for The Bell Ringer shout-out! As AI has taken over everything, I think a lot of teachers are betting that crucial stuff they want students to learn, like how to read books carefully and deeply, simply has to be done in class. But for stuff that kids need extra practice in, like math, I don't know if there's another way to get better than homework. Most kids just aren't going to be passionate enough about stuff like the quadratic equation to want to work on it independently, and it's not the kind of thing they'll encounter natural practice with.
Where I definitely agree with you is to stop *busywork,* or homework for its own sake—kids know it when it's useless! For all my boys, they all took a study hall every year of high school, because they played sports and were encouraged to. I've become a huge fan of the study hall, because teachers are around if you need help, plus gives you a head start at home.
I knew you would have a lot to say and I'd love to talk to you more about it. And it was of course hard to take into account all the differences in grade-levels and age-groups with this post (and socio-economic considerations of giving homework which are substantial). Some of my favorite homework in high school was taking the actual books we were assigned home to read (I remember reading Faulkner, Camus, Ellison, Flannery O'Conner in public school!) I also remember really enjoying working on a lab report for our biology class (we went to a lake, looked at the ecosystem through a microscope, and had to create an illustrated/text journal). Of course memorizing our lines for theater was always a given--these were all "real" experiences--the kind of stuff people actually practicing the disciplines do. I do understand that there are certain skills that need repetition and explicit teaching (thinking about phonics here, multiplication tables etc.) I certainly think most of the phonics work at lower grades needs to happen in the classroom in a systematic way (and I've shifted on this point from thinking we shouldn't do it much at all in my early career). But I'm not sure about the amount of homework that seems to be routine in a math curriculum. Problem sets every single night throughout all of high school at least--and for what? I didn't learn how to think like a mathematician. Perhaps we solved numerous quadratic equations, but did we learn what the applications are of quadratic equations beyond the textbook and test? As a humanities teacher I've always struggled with the how and why of teaching math (particularly because I often have math teachers in my workshops).
Hey Kurt! Thanks for writing. Genuinely curious about your thoughts on books. You seemed less declarative on the subject of novels both in the essay and here in the comments. I can't really imagine how much time we would lose for close reading, discussion and line-by-line analysis (nor how many opportunities would be lost for independent meaning-making) if we sat and read the entirety of every book in class, but I'm certainly open to a new perspective if you have one.
Hi Luke, Hope you are doing well. Great comment, something I've thought about quite a bit having been a high school English teacher. I believe books fit into the category of "authentic work" as long as we are talking about "real" books (not made-for-school books - textbooks and the like). When I was in high school I loved reading a chapter of a book at night for my English class (the books we read were fantastic - Faulkner, Ellison, Shakespeare). As long as the teacher assigning reading for homework is mindful of how much time it might take for a student to read a portion of a text, I'd say this fits into the "good" category of homework. In terms of in-class reading I always selected a portion of text - the juiciest part - and we'd spend the class analyzing, discussing, performing it. i.e. When we worked with Don Quixote we spent several hours on just the first paragraph! Since, as a classroom community, we all did a close reading of a portion of text, the entire class was able to participate, even if they didn't have time to complete the homework reading of the larger chapter. Probably not offering much of a new perspective here as much as agreeing with your comment!
Hey Kurt! I appreciate the thoughtful reply, and as you predicted, I'm very aligned with you on this. I had a similar experience in high school with assigned canonical literature and I know that I developed a lot of important skills and independence with challenging literature in those moments. I try to replicate the experience for my 6th graders with, of course, "right-sized" text and tasks so that we can focus our full attention on those "juicy" parts in class (which I also find "front-loads" the knowledge and skills needed for a successful homework experience.) I had to laugh about DQ because my last post was on that very topic. I even wrote about Ellison and his openings in the essay! 😝 looking forward to reading more of your work 👍🏻
Love this: “Education becomes a Möbius strip—an infinite, self-referential loop. Teachers assign homework simply because that’s what teachers do.”
Teaching is so complex— of course we do some things “just because”, without thinking deeply about them— at first. But once we start thinking intentionally about our practices, the ways that they might not really align to our values starts to really become apparent.
I’m writing about educator burnout over at my substack, and encouraging educators not to take home stacks of papers to grade. What follows from that logic is that students shouldn’t have to take home 3 hours of nightly homework either. We’re setting them up for burnout before age 20 when the volume is just so so high.
Thanks Ruth. I remember my first year of teaching it was practically all on default mode (hadn't gone through a formal education program when I first started teaching). And to your second point . . . exactly. I was an English teacher and remember taking stacks of paper home to grade. Then looked at the research about how students just check the grade and very rarely read any comments. Changed the way I looked at homework and grading (and assigning "papers.") Look forward to reading your posts.
I have so much to say about this! :) First, thanks so much for The Bell Ringer shout-out! As AI has taken over everything, I think a lot of teachers are betting that crucial stuff they want students to learn, like how to read books carefully and deeply, simply has to be done in class. But for stuff that kids need extra practice in, like math, I don't know if there's another way to get better than homework. Most kids just aren't going to be passionate enough about stuff like the quadratic equation to want to work on it independently, and it's not the kind of thing they'll encounter natural practice with.
Where I definitely agree with you is to stop *busywork,* or homework for its own sake—kids know it when it's useless! For all my boys, they all took a study hall every year of high school, because they played sports and were encouraged to. I've become a huge fan of the study hall, because teachers are around if you need help, plus gives you a head start at home.
I knew you would have a lot to say and I'd love to talk to you more about it. And it was of course hard to take into account all the differences in grade-levels and age-groups with this post (and socio-economic considerations of giving homework which are substantial). Some of my favorite homework in high school was taking the actual books we were assigned home to read (I remember reading Faulkner, Camus, Ellison, Flannery O'Conner in public school!) I also remember really enjoying working on a lab report for our biology class (we went to a lake, looked at the ecosystem through a microscope, and had to create an illustrated/text journal). Of course memorizing our lines for theater was always a given--these were all "real" experiences--the kind of stuff people actually practicing the disciplines do. I do understand that there are certain skills that need repetition and explicit teaching (thinking about phonics here, multiplication tables etc.) I certainly think most of the phonics work at lower grades needs to happen in the classroom in a systematic way (and I've shifted on this point from thinking we shouldn't do it much at all in my early career). But I'm not sure about the amount of homework that seems to be routine in a math curriculum. Problem sets every single night throughout all of high school at least--and for what? I didn't learn how to think like a mathematician. Perhaps we solved numerous quadratic equations, but did we learn what the applications are of quadratic equations beyond the textbook and test? As a humanities teacher I've always struggled with the how and why of teaching math (particularly because I often have math teachers in my workshops).