Thursday, February 21, 2019

Working Together to Solve the "Homework Problem"

Guest Blog: This post is written by 11th grade student, Beckett Pintair

As a student, homework is a daunting task, with all our countless responsibilities, sometimes, homework can seem like a trivial formality. However, if you think about homework from the teacher perspective, it's a whole different story. Teachers assign homework for various reasons, for practice on subjects taught in class, to read more content for the class, or projects to get kids to do new learning. Whatever the reason, teachers usually have a plan for class that somewhat relies on the completion of the previously assigned work. If students constantly come into class without their homework done, how do you move forward? 
Image result for motivation
In the past, to solve this problem, teachers were able to grade homework. Students would have to complete their work or their grade would drop. However, in the new age of standards-based grading, where Habits of Learning and homework are ungraded, teachers don't have this power. So the question is: 

How do you get students to complete their homework?


The easy answer is to go back to forcing kids to do their work by dangling a grade over their head. But we have learned through research, by Daniel Pink and other leading motivation experts, that "Carrot and Stick" motivation is a short term fix that leads to disengagement. "Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement." This quote by Daniel Pink is about the concept of intrinsic motivation. When students are given the freedom to explore and learn with the sole goal of learning, their engagement levels actually exceed any engagement from grades. With all of this research about intrinsic motivation (I encourage you to read Daniel Pink's Drive), we know that grading homework will only lead to stress, not engagement. 

Now all of this knowledge is great background information for overall education reform, but, none of it helps with the short term problem of homework completion. Here are a few tips from a student to help you improve homework completion without sacrificing long term engagement. 

1) Give students time in class to work on homework.

Now I know that this idea might seem like a time suck. However, I have seen first hand how well this strategy works. In classes I have taken where the teacher gives us time in class to work, it ends up saving them time in the long run and increases the quality of the work. When you think about it, a lot of teachers end up having to go over homework, line by line, during class because no students did it in the first place (or they rushed through). A student's schedule is very busy, with sports, SAT practice, college prep, and countless other things; we sometimes don't have time outside of school to do anything, let alone time-draining homework. By giving students time in class, it gives us a designated block that lets us work with no distractions from outside responsibilities. 

Image result for homework2) Give students a time limit for working on their homework.

This may seem like a small insignificant detail that won't change anything about students' motivation for homework. However, this small parameter often lets students plan accordingly and give themselves time to complete their work. Students work things up in our heads. A simple 10-minute task can seem like a five-hour project if we don't know how long it is supposed to take. By telling students, "Don't work on this longer than 15 minutes," it takes almost all the pressure away and helps us plan our schedule more effectively. 


It's easy to overthink homework, for both the students and teachers. By giving students these tools and focusing on what is most important, we can decrease student stress and increase class productivity.