Do Not Do the Teacher’s Homework

"May I send a bit of housework over to school?”

• Guerilla Tip:  Never do homework for anyone else.  Period. 

    Three steps to clarify:  

1. Make sure the kid is making a serious effort in a quiet, regular spot. 
2. Make sure she knows how to do the assignment.  If not, and you know the subject, do one or two examples, then stop.  If neither of you knows what to do, write the teacher a sweet note saying so. 
3. Before you walk away, watch her do one on her own.  Then say, “Call out if you need me.”

• Listen, homework is something to support, though in school, it was painful drudgery for me to get through.  But it is work the teachers send home while you as a parent running a home do not get to send your chores to school, right?  You have no skin in the game in doing homework.  So, if a teacher sends homework home, that’s fine, but it’s not your work, it’s the school’s work assigned to your kid. 
  
  Helping with homework may even be hurting. 
  
  Guerilla Tip:  If a kid can do the homework but doesn’t, let the grades reflect that—the natural consequences will teach their own lesson.  If a kid cannot do the homework, the teacher needs that key information —do not withhold it with a cover-up. 
  
  If you do the homework the kid cannot do, that’s the cover-up.  Talk to other parents in the same class so you are generally on the same page about how much to help out. 
  
  I remember Daniel in fourth grade had a hard time with some homework.  After an hour, he was not done, but he had worked hard enough.  I wrote the teacher a note saying that although the assignment looked unfinished, since it took a full hour of work, the homework was done.  I added that if she would not accept that, I could be reached at work to discuss it.  She never called. 

• When Miriam M. of South Amboy, NJ taught kindergarten, she was required to assign homework.  While she may have questioned the wisdom at first, Miriam believes kindergarten is what first grade used to be.  And what is the purpose of homework for barely toilet-trained five and six year olds?  For one thing, it helps the parents who never got the hang of homework.  Now, with little at stake for them or the kids, there is homework to do that any parent can help with.  So homework in kindergarten is a matter of building good study habits. 
  
  In kindergarten and first grade, Miriam would use a technique very helpful for the shy ones.  Students would first pair up and she would ask a simple question with a yes or no answer.  Before answering, though, students would tell their partner their answer.  Now instead of the shy ones being brave enough to speak up, there were options: 

•      You get practice at remembering someone else’s answer. 
•      You get practice at saying someone else’s opinion. 
•      You can hear your own thought spoken out loud when you would have been too shy to say it out loud yourself. 
•      You can see that your thought carries some weight when it is voiced.

• Swami Rama of Bengal, India wrote that a teacher’s home life can carry over into blame in the classroom.  “...things like this can happen.  ‘Your child is so destructive; he does not know how to behave properly.’  Whenever you receive such a report, you should go and see if the teacher is behaving properly with the child.  Children are only children, and they should be treated properly.” 
  
  Sure, we want kids to respect teachers, but it is not a one-way street.  Justice Louis Brandeis wrote, “If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.” 

• Setting it up with Schoolteachers
  Whenever I was talking with my kid’s teacher, I was advocating for my kid.  Let other parents do the same for theirs, and let the teacher do the best to balance it all for the whole class. 
  
  Guerilla Tip:  Identify your kid’s style and advocate for it.  Does your kid need to sit up front to hear better?  How would a teacher know unless you ask for it? 
  
  In advocating for my kid’s learning style, I asked teachers at the start of the year if they gave tests to find out what the kids learned or to catch them at what they missed.  They would say learned, so I would ask, “Then will you test a student orally, if that is the best way he shows what he learned?” 
  
  Guerilla Tip:  Teachers and kids must show respect for each other.  It is not a one-way street. 
  
  I used to complain to my parents about something the teachers did to me in class.  My parents would always ask what happened right before that, until it became clear there was a regular pattern of hearing me out while also supporting the teacher. 
  
  At a christening party for her 20th grandchild, Jane J. of Glen Rock, NJ, herself a mother of eight, confided that a big family means the older ones must help out with the youngest.  She said otherwise you have chaos, but she didn’t think she had a set, formal system.  Rather, she found ways of dealing with each kid in the way that kid needed.  In this style, the parenting gets individualized, while each kid gets consistency. 
  
  Guerilla Tip:  Expect the classic, “That’s not fair,” and prepare to counter with, “Sorry!”  The Talmud agrees, advising that each student is to be taught according to the pathway of learning that is his. 
  
  It is easy to recognize that so many students are visual, so classrooms are decorated vividly.  Can you also pick up that some students are more auditory?  Recognizing is seeing.  Picking up is hearing.  For other students, picking up is also action, movement, feeling, kinesthetic, experiential. 
  
  At home, tailoring how to convey education and love as best received is the highest art.  In the classroom, educators are well trained in the art, which is harder to stage due to the larger scale.  Yet, whoever said that teaching is not a performing art? 

• Is math is a writing skill?  I asked a fourth grade teacher if she could test Daniel’s math with an oral test, but she countered, “Math is a writing skill.”  In his sixth grade, I repeated that story to a math specialist who was really getting through to him.  This specialist said, “No, math is not is a writing skill.  It is a thinking skill sometimes represented in writing.”  In her array of powerful techniques, she handed students actual paper money to count—exciting for a 6^th grader—and occasionally allowed the student to keep a dollar—exciting for any student for its tangible novelty. 

• In the '80s and '90s, Harvard PhD Howard Gardner published a novel theory that we all are intelligent in many ways, and none are better than any other.  Eight different intelligences are included in his theory, which many educators and parents have found to be very practical.  Dr. Gardner’s multiple intelligences are:  Spatial, Linguistic, Logical-Mathematical, Musical, Kinesthetic, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal and Naturalist.  (Two other categories of intelligence that Gardner also looked at, existential and moral, he never granted the full status of the other categories.)  What is the advantage of so many categories?  The advantage is in appreciating the individual as an individual. 
  
  Guerilla Tip:  Individualize your approach to each kid.  You’ll be well compensated for your efforts. 
  
  Don’t worry, you’ll be paid, though not … exactly … in cash.  Well, it is cash, and while you can take it to the bank, you cannot take it to your regular bank.  What you can bank on is that your kid will gain a calm self-confidence and will eventually recognize that you were a contributor.  When you respect differences, you embrace individuality.  
  
  So, you pay the dues while the kid benefits.  Fair enough, because it is no one-way street.  You will feel wonderful.  In my tradition, we call it schepping naches:  bathing in the glow of how our kids turn out.  Parents naturally schep naches when the kids reach graduation (of some kind), show tenderness to others, start a business (of some kind), succeed in business, accomplish anything on their own, bring home the bacon (of some kind).  
   Honor your kid’s special style.  Honor your own understanding of your kid and what you know works for him.  Show him he deserves to be proud of just who he is.  Yes, we want our kids to work to please us, but not to worry that if they do not please they are not still loved immensely just as they are. 
  
  We used to say different strokes for different folks.  Honor those differences.  Creative?  Good, but not for an accountant, a euphemism for dishonesty.  The world needs a healthy mix.  We even need dishonest people, as shown in the following story. 
  
  Hasidic tale:  A rebbe turned down a beggar only to find the man died the same day with pockets full of money.  The rebbe said, “Be thankful for some dishonesty, for if every beggar were deserving, we would all be obligated to give whenever asked.  If we could never doubt his need, we could never turn him down.”

• When Alex entered high school, his placement exams allowed him to take AP Biology.  The advanced placement class was given by a highly regarded teacher named Dr. L.  In a non-science subject my daughter took, the same teacher had been reasonable, but in Biology he kept his students up nights doing his work and his alone. 
  
  In his session for ‘Back to School’ night, his standards were unusually high for ninth grade, and his demanding assignments were unrelenting.  Looking over the handouts with endless typed notes filling the narrow margins of every page, it struck me that the author was in his own world.  There were notes on the notes.  Material was badly disorganized like that of an absent-minded professor.  The usual focus that allows learning to take place was all a blur, but stellar results were expected. 
  
  Psychotic was the word that came to mind—just my impression.  The papers reminded me of the endless ranting on the packaging of Dr. Peppermint’s castile soap sold with health foods. 
  
  Guerilla Tip:  Be on the lookout for lack of focus, a big barrier to making intelligent decisions and allowing others personal space. 
   
  As for his demands, the teacher gave an example of a rich, very well thought out answer to a homework problem and said he would give such an answer no more that a grade of B.  If my son could handle it, more power to him, but it still would be an abuse of power that punished the wrong people. 
  
  The climax came when Dr. L. punctuated his toughness with the cliché, “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?”  This clincher for justifying his tyranny brought a rousing yes from all parents but me.  They appeared to say, “I’m not powerless.  I’m not.  But God has arrived.  Finally someone outside our clueless home is taking charge, getting what he wants done without backtalk.  Now we see it, and it is good.”  So, real polite now, I asked the teacher, “In your opinion, is that conclusion an opinion or fact?”  Being an honest man, he admitted it was an opinion, but to the other parents in the room, it had all the cheap appeal of tough love.  Apparently, they couldn’t be tough, and where to find the love in all this is unclear. 
  
  Guerilla Tip:  Just because someone is doing what you think you should be doing does not mean he’s doing it well at all. 

     Although Alex was good in the sciences, his great interest was not biology, but law and politics.  A tough biology class could have been a good thing anyway, but he realized within a few weeks of class, a few weeks into high school, that the class was too much.  He transferred from AP Biology to Honors Biology, with a different teacher but the same textbook and got all A’s for the class. 

• It took me until my 40’s to recognize that I learn best experientially.  After many years of struggling to follow the classic advice to take written notes during a class, I found I was better off without them.  Watching and listening, I was already taking in a high-fidelity recording of the teacher’s whole presentation.  Not only were my written notes not strong enough to study from, but every moment spent concentrating on writing was a moment of interruption in the very good recording I was already taking with my eyes and ears. 
  
  Guerrilla Tip:  For me, paying attention was better than taking notes. 
  
  Picture two film critics—one who watches a movie and looks down to take notes, and one who watches once as a moviegoer and a second time as a critic.  Double viewings may sound like a slower process, but the second critic would be reporting on a movie experience much closer to the average viewer. 

• As far as following convention—Is it out-of-the-box?  What box?—I found as an adult that my study technique, while frowned-upon, worked very well for me.  When I study for complete understanding, not for general reading, I read to myself aloud in my head, which is fairly slow.  I could be doing it right now to see how this reads.  Although verboten, this technique is a guilty pleasure, and I absorb material in a single pass to such a degree that it comes close to memorized.  Apparently, the technique is both forbidden and efficient.  Live and learn. 

• Here is an example of learning in your own style.  By 10th grade, Daniel discovered two techniques that were to get him through the rest of high school:  Study with a classmate and listen in class.  The buddy system helped him stay on track, meaning more work got done because it was scheduled with a friend who was also there to study. 
  
  The listening helped because of being an auditory learner.  Most students are visual, so they get the most from reading an assignment at their own pace.  My son either had a hard time absorbing what he read, or he got so little out of reading his assignment that he skipped it and relied on listening instead.  He told me he personally figured out the trick below, and I could not disagree or break it to him that is unoriginal.  It was original to him when he found it worked. 
  
  Guerilla Tip:  Kids have discovered, “If you listen very carefully in class, the teacher tells you everything you need to know for the test.”  Adults call it paying attention. 
  
  Imagine how well a student takes ownership of such a technique, because when he experiences it personally, he recognizes its value to him. 

•      Facing Unfair School Grades
  Grades are not important by themselves, they are only indicators.  If you know the kids are doing A work and getting B’s occasionally, do not interfere.  Tell them you think the work deserves an A.  After you empathize with the frustration, teach them that life is not under our total control. 
  
  Guerilla Tip:  Start kids early, in 2^nd or 3^rd grade, with encouragement for them to ask their teacher for a private word if they have a concern. 
  
  If the grades are unusually off, schedule a meeting for the teacher to explain, and let the principal know you’re concerned—a euphemism for investigating a rip-off. 

•       In second grade, Alex told me a disturbing story about his arm being yanked really hard by his teacher, and I believed my son’s pain was real and uncalled for.  I phoned the teacher and repeated that my son “told me a disturbing story about his arm being yanked really hard.  Please, help me out here, any idea what he can be talking about?” 
  
  Guerilla Tip:  Instead of calling a cruel authoritarian a bully and liar, you can communicate by asking a question—or a counterfeit question. 
  
  The teacher said nothing could be further from the truth about the yanking, although she admitted she might have held Alex’s arm too tightly.  I was after bigger fish than a confession.  The roughness had to stop. 
  
  It made most sense to me to let her save face about it, as long as I got her commitment it would not happen in the future:  “So, good, good, then we both agree that the story I heard would have been over the line.  Okay, then, thank you.”  Reporting back to Alex showed him I got right in there for him without leaving the teacher any worse for the wear nor making her angry enough to retaliate against the whistleblower.  Everybody won. 

•       Teachers say, “If she only tried harder!”  Since that assessment can be made of everybody who breathes, it is empty advice.  It may well apply to my kid specifically, but I asked for the basis for the conclusion.  Can’t get an A?  If you only tried harder!  Can’t get a better job?  Can’t get to the top of a tall building without the elevator?  Same assessment goes. 
  
  Guerilla Tip:  If you are told your kid needs to try harder, and maybe she does, try to agree but ask for an explanation:  “Oh, I see.  Why?” 

•       Ending a school year with a party is a good idea.  A graduation ceremony from kindergarten, though, takes away from the real achievement of graduating high school or college.  If each student in every class gets a trophy for showing up—a good thing in itself, to be sure—it dilutes the trophy as an award of achievement. 
  
  Guerilla Tip:  Finish kindergarten with a bang and later, finish high school with a graduation.  

•      Bullying is Insecurity
  A bully temporarily masks his personal powerlessness by showing a group that he is powerful and that the victim is the powerless one.  Note that an audience is almost always needed for the show.  Depriving the bully of his supportive audience sucks the energy out of his show. 
  
  A bully’s support system consists of two groups:  those who actively hold a victim down for the bully’s assault and those who passively watch without protecting the victim.
    
  Guerilla Tip:  Teach your school’s bullying program to remove the bully’s support system.