I’m drowning in homework and if it doesn’t ease up soon, I’m never going to make it past the first grade.
Joseph’s teacher is a very nice lady who is in her first year of teaching. I don’t know if that’s why she feels the need to send him home with a pile of papers and reading assignments or if that’s just the way first grade is now.
Last year, we had a brief encounter with a Kinder teacher who assigned the equivalent of 15 minutes of homework a night in weekly packets that weighed more than my son. I failed nearly every assignment. And by “fail” I mean the homework was sent home with big red marks and notes telling me what parts I’d missed.
This year, in addition to the packets sent home every week, we’re required to do twenty minutes of reading. On top of that, Joseph has a reading tutor with additional assignments twice a week as well as reading classes a half hour before school every morning.
I’m burned out just thinking about it.
It’s not that I don’t want to read to him for twenty minutes every night. I just don’t want a set time limit. What if the chapter we’re reading only takes ten minutes? What if we decide to tell a story from “out mouths”? What if we are outside playing and don’t get home until it’s too late to do much more than brush our teeth and go to bed?
I want Joseph to love school and love reading. I’m not sure forcing him to sit and complete worksheet after worksheet is the way to do that. And by force, I do mean force. He’s done with school by the time I get home from work. He wants to play with his Legos, watch TV, swing on the swing, chase after Elizabeth. He does not want to sit at a table for even twenty minutes.
I can barely get him to do that for dinner.
Do your elementary students bring homework home?
