How to Make Homework that is Not Crappy

In a recent post I shared about a presentation I gave at a recent teachers' convention held on our campus. The title of my session was "Homework is Broken...But We Can Fix It!" If you've been reading the blog for some time, it probably isn't news to you that I think we can do better when it comes to homework in K-12 schools today. (If you want to read more, check out my #nomorecrappyhomework posts...)

Today, I got an email from a friend who was in that session. He raises some really thoughtful points about how he (and his colleagues) are wrestling with homework. Here's what he wrote (slightly edited for anonymity):

Homework Is Broken...But We Can Fix It!

This past week I had the privilege of presenting at the Heartland Christian Teachers' Convention. It's a group of some 500+ teachers from Christian schools in Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota, and Nebraska, and they gather on the Dordt College campus each October for a few days for professional development and mutual encouragement. It was always something I looked forward to in my years teaching in K-12 in Iowa, and since joining the faculty at Dordt seven years ago, I still regularly attend. While I was in grad school, I took a few years off from presenting, but this year, the planning committee asked, and I agreed.

My topic? Homework, of course! Over the past few years, I've blogged a fair amount in response to my research on the topic of homework. (If you'd like to read, here's over a dozen posts for your consideration...) I've had many K-12 teachers mention to me over the years that they would like me to meet with their faculty and share this research. So I figured it's still a hot enough topic that I might have things to share.

I knew I would have about 60 people coming to my session, which I ambitiously titled "Homework is Broken...But We Can Fix It!" I decided I would begin by surveying them--just to get a handle on who was in the room, and their initial beliefs about homework.

You, like me, might find these results interesting...

So I Was On a Podcast...

My friend and colleague in education, Erik Ellefsen, recently started a podcast, and he asked if I would be a guest. It took a little time for us to get our schedules in sync so we could actually have a chat, but we finally did, and the episode was just released this week.

Erik and I first met up on Twitter several years ago, mostly as a result of my original #nomorecrappyhomework blog post, which I posted back in 2015, and has had over 3500 views as of this writing. We've kept in touch regularly via Twitter since then, and when he gets to NW Iowa we've been been able to hang out. I always appreciate his thoughtfulness about the role of innovation in education, and the way he challenges other educators to be the best that they can possibly be. If you're on Twitter, give Erik a follow. You won't be sorry!

In this episode, he shares a bit of the story of how we met up, and then we visited about the impetus for my research into homework--including my own dissatisfaction with the crappy homework I used to assign as a middle school teacher. If you're interested, you can listen in here...

Reasonable and Realistic Assignments

Hey there, teacher...

That assignment you gave your students today...how much time will it take your students to complete?

I suspect you have an estimate in mind for how long you expect it will take a "typical" student to complete it. But I want to slow you down there a minute... Who is this "typical" student? Does s/he really exist? How many of your real-life students are actually represented by this "typical" student?

An Apology to My Former Students and their Parents

Dear former middle school students (and their parents),

It's high time that I try to make things right with you all. There are quite a few things I did wrong, and I owe you an apology. Here goes...

I'm so sorry for the crappy busywork I assigned as homework--the word finds, crossword puzzles, "comprehension questions," fill-in-the-blank worksheets, and the like--that took up your time but had very little benefit for learning.

I'm sorry for the too-lengthy problem sets that I gave to everyone, regardless of need or ability.

I'm sorry for the head-scratching poorly-framed instructions on some assignments.

I'm sorry for the lack of context for things I expected students to read.

I'm sorry for the poor teaching I did--hopefully rarely, but I'm sure I did occasionally--and then gave the homework anyway, which meant you had to struggle alone (or together with parents?) on the work I assigned.

I'm sorry that I sometimes assigned things punitively, out of frustration for bad behavior of a few students in class as a way of trying to reassert control in the classroom.

I'm sorry that there were sometimes projects that required far too much parent intervention to actually do the work successfully.

I'm sorry for assigning work over breaks from school, which I didn't do often...but often enough that I need to mention it.

I'm sorry that I didn't always consider the gifts, talents, needs, strengths, and weaknesses of the students in the work I asked you to do.

I'm sorry for generally infringing on family time with low-quality, poorly-designed work that was one-size-fits-few.

I regret the times I wasted your time. I regret the times I caused strife between you. I truly regret the fact that I wasn't always aware of the impact of the things I asked--demanded!--of you outside of school hours.

This apology is probably too little, and too late, but it is honest, and heart-felt, and I hope you can forgive me.

Sincerely,

Your teacher, who truly cared about you but was sometimes blind to the effects of his actions

Image by Dave Mulder [CC BY-SA 2.0]

---

If you are a former student (or a parent of a former student), please know that this is an honest piece of writing from my heart to you.

If you are a fellow-teacher reading this, I hope it might prompt reflection for you on your own homework practices.

Ensuring Valuable Homework

This one popped up on Instagram for me this morning. Got me thinking, of course...

[Screenshot of my phone this morning...]
You really should follow Bored Teachers on Instagram.

I guess what got me is the fact that I actually really agree with this statement.

Sending Work to School?

Oh. Man. My twitterfriends Matt Miller and Alice Keeler recently published a book called Ditch That Homework: Practical Strategies to Make Homework Obsolete. (I still have to get my hands on a copy...hoping to read and review it this fall...)

Here's the zinger of a tweet Matt posted earlier today...

Dear teacher,

Can't get things done @ home. Sending extra for my kids to do at school, incl. laundry.

Sincerely, parents :) #tlap #DitchHW

— Matt Miller (@jmattmiller) August 1, 2017

I have plenty that I could say about this, but I think I'll just raise a few questions to my colleagues in the teaching profession...and anyone else who wants to chime in on the comments section...

What do you say in response?

Is this fair?

Is this any different than teachers sending work home with kids?

And if so, what's the difference?

Thoughtful Homework

My friend, Erik Ellefsen, always has good stuff for me to think about. (If you are an educator, you should really follow him on Twitter.) Today he shared this with me...

@d_mulder But if teachers are going to assign homework, researchers should investigate its efficacy. https://t.co/p28iK42n0t

— Erik Ellefsen (@epellefsen) July 5, 2016

Here's the tweet from Daniel Willingham that Erik was retweeting to me...

New blog post from @DTWillingham: An important new study of homework. https://t.co/RQiPiwVdMN

— Daniel Willingham (@DTWillingham) July 5, 2016

I appreciated the post by Willingham that is shared here. If you've been following my rant against homework over the past few months, this is a really interesting piece to consider. Willingham starts off with this gem:

There's plenty of research on homework and the very brief version of the findings is probably well known to readers of this blog: homework has a modest effect on the academic achievement of older students, and no effect on younger students...

That's what I've been writing about--homework doesn't do what teachers often think it does. (Check out this post calling for an end to "crappy homework," or this one encouraging teachers to rethink worksheets. And there's lots more, if you want to read them...check out this list of posts tagged with "homework.")

But this piece from Willingham was really interesting to me.

An Analogy to Help Teachers Understand Homework

I have been thinking and thinking about homework over the past few months--why teachers give it (many reasons), whether it truly advances learning (debatable), what the scholarly research says about it (it's complicated), and what parents can do to partner with schools on this issue (reply hazy, try again). (If you are interested in reading my past posts on this topic, feel free to read through this list of posts tagged "homework.")

I was recently struck with what I think might be a helpful analogy for teachers who are themselves perhaps wrestling with what to do about assigning homework. Here it is...

Imagine, teacher, that your administrator hands down an expectation that you are going to write detailed lesson plans for every single thing you teach. You are expected to do this every single day, and must submit them by 7:30 a.m. every day. If you are late, or if your work is incomplete, you will have to give up your lunch hour as a consequence. Every once in awhile, you get a stack of your lesson plans back from your administrator with "10/10" or "B+" or "78%" written on the top of them, but with no other comments, written or verbally submitted.

How would you feel about this situation?

Homework: Comparing to Finland

Today I had two different friends share this same video on Facebook. It is a video comparing homework assigned in Finland and homework in the U.S. I hope you'll take a minute (literally) to watch it...

If you've been following my blogging over the past year, you'll know that I have a lot of concerns about the way teachers (often) assign homework in the U.S. The short version: I think that an awful lot of the work that is assigned is "crappy homework" that doesn't actually do what teachers think it does. We can do better, and I've been reading and thinking about this as I have time. Here are a few ideas for how we could improve homework.

I really appreciate that people are becoming more broadly aware of what Finland is doing in terms of education, and I truly appreciate the calls for looking to Finland for suggestions of education reforms in the U.S. as well. Finland does many things almost opposite of what we are doing in terms of education here in the U.S.--reducing homework, increasing recess time,  revising curriculum to include more topics that connect to students interests, increasing teacher pay and requiring all teachers to earn a Masters degree.

However...

Your Worksheet Isn't Doing What You Think It's Doing

A certain middle schooler I know, somewhat disgruntled about doing his homework some time ago, snapped this picture and texted it to me:

This was part of a lesson in his English book about effective and ineffective summarizing strategies. While not a reading assignment, exactly, it prompted a conversation.

His argument went something like this:

More Homework ≠ More Learning

It's been a while since I've blogged, and it's because I've been working on my comprehensive exams for the past few weeks. I ended up doing a sort of Twitter-fast in the process, because I just did not have the time to devote to those connections and conversations, though I love them so much and find them so valuable for stirring my thinking.

Today, I decided to take a break from other homework and just scroll through my TweetDeck for a few minutes. It felt good to be back, like having a cup of coffee with a dear friend and catching up. (There is probably some commentary about my love of technology there...)

And...wouldn't you know it...? One of the very first tweets I saw was a retweet from my Twitterfriend, Erin Olson (whom you should be following, if you are a teacher)...

#PLAEA #iaedchat https://t.co/HZnfo4TJYj

— Erin Olson (@eolsonteacher) February 6, 2016

The piece that was linked in her retweet here was intriguing to me, since I have an ongoing axe to grind about crappy homework. Here was the tweet:

"Homework in primary school has an effect of zero" (J. Hattie) https://t.co/PgWVPfaiL7 <- good read/interview #MTedchat

— Jon Fines (@JonFines) February 6, 2016

Friends, if you are convinced that homework is a good thing for kids, you really have to read this.

Here, I'll make it easy...just click this link: "Homework in primary school has an effect of zero."

Okay, I'll make it even easier...here are a few quotes from the piece. Just read these:

"Homework in primary school has an effect of around zero. In high school it’s larger. (…) Which is why we need to get it right." 

"It’s one of those lower hanging fruit that we should be looking in our primary schools to say, 'Is it really making a difference?'" 

"Certainly I think we get over obsessed with homework." 

"Five to ten minutes has the same effect of one hour to two hours." 

"The worst thing you can do with homework is give kids projects. The best thing you can do is to reinforce something you’ve already learnt."

These quotes come from an interview with John Hattie, an education researcher who has investigated over 130 influences on education and ranked them in order of the effect they have on student achievement (i.e., measurements of actual learning.) I've mentioned Hattie's list in an earlier blog post, where I noted that homework does make the list; it comes in at 88th place in terms of the effect it has on learning. There are so many other things we could (should?) be doing to improve student learning...why are we still assigning so much homework?

Let's get this right, my fellow educators: more homework does not mean more learning!

Image by David Mulder [CC BY-SA 2.0]

Creating Better Homework

I've been on a tear lately against "crappy homework." I've written before about how I think homework assigned to "teach responsibility" is misguided; I still stand by this argument. More recently, I've been thinking about how bad most of the homework I assigned as a middle school teacher was, and how we can make homework better. I've also been encouraging teachers to think about homework from a parent's perspective, something I did not do enough of as a middle school teacher.

All of this has stirred up some good conversations with friends and fellow educators--I'm always grateful for feedback and pushback on my thinking!--but a common theme in response has been, "So what do you think we should do about this, Dave?"

Public Domain Image
via Wikimedia

That's fair. As Teddy Roosevelt once said,

"Complaining about a problem without proposing a solution is whining."

And...I think he's right. So, lest I be accused of simply whining about the sorry state of affairs when it comes to homework, let's start thinking about how we might go about creating better homework.

Homework from a Parent's Perspective

I assigned a lot of bad homework over the years.

Looking back to the beginning of my teaching career, I'm embarrassed about the kind of work I assigned. As I shared in my last post, I never really learned how to write "good" homework, and I just sort of emulated my own teachers, and gave my own students the kinds of work I remembered being assigned.

And so it was that I assigned ridiculously lengthy math assignments. I gave my middle school math students problem sets like, "Do p. 188 1-51 odds" (because the answers to the even numbered problems were in the back of the book. Can't have them peeking, and just copying down the answers!) And usually they would have some time to get started in class, and usually what they didn't get done would become "homework."

Sound familiar?

But let's look at this a moment...

Let's Fix Homework

In a recent post, I shared some of the research that has been done about homework and it's effectiveness (or lack thereof) for helping elementary, middle school, and high school students learn. This has led to a lot of conversations with fellow educators, both face-to-face, and via online connections. It's clear to me that this is something teachers feel pretty strongly about...and to be fair, I have some strong opinions on this topic as well.

I think we can do better than what we've "always done" with homework. I don't think that much of the homework assigned in schools today is doing what we think it is doing. And, if I'm going to say it baldly, I think some teachers are being downright lazy in the work they assign to their students.

If we're serious about helping students learn, let's make sure that the work we assign is really going to help students learn. And that goes for in-class work, certainly, but for out-of-class work too.

Teacher, how confident are you that the assignment you are giving your students is really going to help them learn? I mean, really help them learn, and not just be "something for them to do" or "something that I can grade and put in the grade book."

My friend, Alice Keeler, recently tweeted about something that got me thinking. She is a fantastic teacher, and is thoughtful about her teaching practice. In a series of tweets, she pointed out that throughout her professional training as an educator--both in undergraduate teacher education courses as well as her Masters degree--she was never instructed in how to create "good" homework. And as I reflected on this, I realized that the same is true for me. We mentioned homework in passing in several courses, but we never really talked about how to really create homework that was well-designed to help students learn. And now that I'm a teacher educator...I'm thinking that I'm probably doing a disservice to my students--future teachers--and even to the students and families they will eventually serve; we better talk about homework now!

This makes me wonder about how many of the hundreds of thousands of professional educators in the world today have ever really thought deeply about the quality of the homework they assign. Are we really assigning homework because we are sure it will help students learn? Or are we assigning it because we feel like we "ought to" or out of some vague sense of, "Well, I'm sure homework helped me learn...so I probably should assign some to my students too...?"

We can do better than that, teachers. Let's fix homework.

Image by Corey Seeman [CC BY-NS-SA 2.0]

No More Crappy Homework

Please forgive me for using "crappy" in the title of this post if that language offends you. But I decided to start things off this way, because it describes the quality of work so many teachers assign. I am pointing the finger at myself here first of all. I have assigned my share of shoddy, low-quality, busywork over the years.

I just read this brief piece from Edutopia, entitled "Homework vs. No Homework Is the Wrong Question." It's good stuff; thoughtfully written, and thought provoking. Here's one great quote to illustrate:

A realistic homework strategy should be a key topic of back-to-school night and the first parent-teacher conferences of the school year. But it should also reflect a considered school policy and not simply be up to each individual teacher to carry out according to his or own theory of student learning.

This makes sense to me. In every school I've taught in, homework is largely left to the discretion of the classroom teacher, other than some vague assumption that "teachers should assign homework, because homework helps kids learn." I'm not so sure that last statement is true--read on to find out more about this--but there are some strengths to this approach, I think. Teachers can be empowered this way to make the best decisions for their individual classes, and even individual students this way. Teachers are--in theory, anyway--the closest to the kids in terms of their learning, and should be the ones to determine the kind of homework that will help students learn most, and learn best. (Again, I'm not sure that is what is actually happening in schools, but in theory, this ought to be the way it works.) But all that said, I also understand the importance of a school homework policy. Having a school-wide policy makes it much more likely that the kind of homework assigned is in fact aligned with the mission and vision of the school.

I wonder if individual teachers who might clamor for the power to make their own decisions about the homework they assign would buck at a school-wide policy? I confess, I probably would, depending on the way the policy is written. For instance, if a school homework policy would prescribe a certain amount of homework that must be given each night...well, I would probably be pretty strongly opposed to that. My fear is that to meet a particular homework quota, even more shoddy, low-quality busywork (ah, crappy homework...) would be assigned.

It's not that homework has no benefit whatsoever. Some homework has been shown, in some situations, to have some positive effect on students learning.