"We don't have time for a family walk tonight, you have to do your homework!" "No, I can't read you a book tonight, you have to do your homework." "No, I have no time to tuck you in, I have to help your brother with his homework." These are VERY COMMON phrases uttered in my home on any given night. The saddest of them all? "No, you cannot go play outside, you have to do your homework."
WHAT HAS THE WORLD COME TO?! I suppose it has come to this because the schools feel a need to keep up with the educational systems of other countries but we are not Chinese or American or whatever country is supposedly ahead of us. Someone has to take a stance for real life education: playing tag, going on a bike ride and, heaven forbid,having family time together. There is no balance anymore.

I have 2 children in LBPSB. One in an IB program in High School and the other in the last year of elementry school. When my oldest was in grade 3 she should get home around 3pm have a snack at by 4 pm start her homework, take another break for dinner and then go back till almost 8pm! Almost every night plus projects that were handed out on a monthly basis.
When I was in school, my parents were immigrants and did not help me. I manged by myself to complete anything alone. Homework was usually a continuation of what was done in class that day.
I really believe that there is too much pressure on our children to be a lot more responsible and mature before their time. They are not ready and become resentful of school.......what are the drop out rates these days?

I have an early grade school child and I do feel that the volume of homework is excessive. It must be excessive because parents in my school community pick up their children at 2:30 and refuse all play-dates requests Mondays through Thursdays. The reason cited is always: homework. How sad for children. And Friday playdates are no longer happening after a demoanding week in school because kids are whisked off to karate classes, swimming lessons or private tutoring.

Which brings me to my next point.

After spending more than a week fretting over the latest math project (chapter 2 problem bank), I realized something critical: we don't seem to get many notes in primary school math. Maybe our own notes have gone AWOL but to my knowledge, we have received one single page of math notes over the past 5 weeks. That makes homework alot more time-consuming and aggravating. Naturally, the burden falls on me the parent, to patinetly (and competently) figure it all out.

Math is the one subject where students can use a multitude of approaches and different methods to arrive at the exact same answer.

So when I assume my role as a parent-tutor each and every night (with extra reading and enrichment time on weekends), I desperately need to see a paper trail of how things are taught in the classroom. Otherwise, I have no insight into the preferred teaching techniques and methodology for early learners. And teachers, bless them, have no extra time to reach out and teach me how to tutor my little learner.

Now granted, we have been receiving weekly math sheets and most of the homework exercises have been intuitive. And the sheets do have a helpful, albeit brief, sentence for 'at-home help'.

However, for completing homework like the problem bank assignment, I personally need more background, context, guidance, recommendations...especially for helping a primary school learner to arrive at the right answer. I would be curious know if most other parents have to 'teach' their kids to do word problems or if most kids already magically know all the techniques.

The Quebec government reform has been in place now for 10 years with an obvious emphasis on critical thinking, cross-competency analysis and situational problems. It's an extremely difficult curriculum for both teachers and students! To make matters worse, teaching word problems is both an art and a science and few have mastered it. Students requires alot of confidence and alot of practice to succeed. As parents, we need access (i.e. notes) to the strategies that can help generate word problem success.

Unless you have an academically-gifted and independent child, it can sometimes feels like home-schooling as opposed to homework. I have started to use my BlackBerry more to log school due dates, weekly assignments, monthly projects, the nightly reading log in French and in English, weekly dictée, weekly spelling test, library due dates and volunteer commitments...(pause here to breathe), than I do for business appointments. I use my IPad more to create mini math videos than I do for adult leisure. I use my IPod more to project audio books and reading comprehension exercises than I do for hearing my beloved yoga podcasts and Ted Talks. Admittedly, I have become a homework zealot... but only for survival purposes.

And because I refuse to leave early learning to chance - especially for math competencies. Word problems are going to follow us all the way up to secondary 5. So I have started giving my little student the step-wise strategies required to solve complex word problems. I see the gleam in her eyes when I take all the pressure off of her and funnel the rising anxiety into a tangible set of directions. That relaxed confidence is my reward and my solace for all the extra time I spend on making homework palatable and 'fun'.

'There is a secret to doing math problems with ease', I tell her. 'And Mommy is happy to share all those secrets with you. That way, you will always have tools and tricks in your back pocket'.

I provide the same step-wise mathematical approaches in my evening math course because I have noticed that even CEGEP science students grapple with word problems. When something is academically daunting, we should minimize student anxiety by giving more structure and teaching action-oriented strategies.

Which reminds me of a question which I posted at the top of my new homework blog...where are our math lessons and can I copy anyone's notes from the last 5 weeks?

I meet with the teachers every year to commit to 45 minutes on homework related to marks ONLY.
Although they think I am not normal to make it clear that our family life will NOT be ruined by their "tough" teacher reputation, I feel that I helped in protecting my daughter from the homework bullying.
I challenged them to lower marks because of incomplete assignments, so far, I feel my attempts at discouraging homework as a learning tool seem to be respected as I felt the pressure was less because of my interference and her marks did not suffer.
The parents who feel that pushing a child to do better, is not a parent who has a broad knowledge of what is required to make a good student.