Homework Solutions

Your child has waited to the last minute to complete a project.  It’s due tomorrow and it’s 10:30.

Do you let the child stay home and finish it the next day? or

Do you make him/her go to school with the project unfinished and suffer the consequences of a bad grade.

There are two ways to look at this and both require some good coaching.

1.  If this is the first time they have been caught in this situation, I would use it as a learning experience.

My youngest daughter found herself in this situation at 10:30 on a Thursday night.  She had not planned on the amount of time it would take to type her paper.  She was a novice at typing, as they didn’t start keyboarding until sixth grade.  She was sitting at the computer, crying, “I’ll never finish this. Can you help me?”

I never was an enabler, but what she was experiencing was a result of having never had to type a project before.  She had no clue as to how much time was required to do the typing.  I didn’t want her to think she could abuse my time, yet I saw a wonderful teaching opportunity.  This is how the intervention went:

“I am not happy that you want me to stay up and type this paper.  I have to get up early tomorrow and I didn’t plan on this.  How do you feel about the situation you are in?”

“I am mad at myself.  I didn’t think typing would take me so much time.”

“I know you haven’t done this before, so I will help you this time, but don’t expect me to next time.  What are you going to do to avoid this again?”

“I’m going to start typing two days before it is due.”

“In that case, show me what you want to have typed and I will do it for this time. Now you know how much time you need to allow for typing.  That should help you in your planning next time.”

“Thank you Mom.  I promise I won’t do this again.”

After the project was returned, we sat down and did a little self-evaluation session.  In it, we discussed the steps she had taken and if she had allowed enough time for each of them. I asked her what she learned from her experience and her answer was very mature, “I think next time, I will need to add a couple of days to each step just in case something happens that I didn’t expect.”

She held to her promise.  Did she come up short due to other reasons she hadn’t anticipated?  Absolutely.  But because of this, she did backwards planning with the next project and padded each part of the project to allow for glitches.

2.  If this is a repeated infraction and intervention has been offered, don’t let the children stay home       and require that they go to school with the incomplete assignment.  Follow it with a self-evaluation to determine what happened to get them in the spot they were in and require them to come up with some solutions to avoid the situation again.

Get them in touch with how it feels to be in this spot, and ask, “Do you want to feel like this again? Then what can you do to avoid it.”

Poor planning is not their fault if they have never been taught how to “Backwards Plan.” To a sixth grader, a month seems like an eternity.  It creeps up on them.  If the project had started with some backwards planning, I guarantee the student would not be waiting to the last minute.

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If students knew how to plan better, they would.

Children who have poor time management skills are not logical sequential in nature and will not understand or internalize time unless taught.  Expecting parents to monitor their children is simply delaying the inevitable.  If parents are successful in managing their children, once they are removed from the formula, the children will fall into the procrastination pattern.  In some cases, the parents are no better at time management then their children, so asking them to manage their children is setting the children up for failure.

Students who procrastinate have no concept of time.  They think a month is a long time.  Just think of the child waiting for Christmas or the fifteen and a half year old waiting to turn sixteen so he can get his license, It seems like an eternity to them.  So it stands to reason that a project due in a month seems like light years away.  Backwards Planning has effectively helped students grasp a concept of time in a way that creates a sense of urgency to get started immediately. It is the most effective way to stave off procrastination.

A compassionate approach goes much further than scolding the students for being late.

1. Recognize that time and paper management is a difficult concept for many students.  Acknowledge how difficult it is for them and reassure them that as they learn to plan, they will feel less anxiety and be more in control of their time and experience more success.
2. Help them identify how it feels to be late or wait to the last minute.
3. Allow several opportunities for students to plan projects and prescribe the number of minutes, hours or days each task will take.
4. Planning for a day must be done before we can expect them to plan for a week.  Once they have fifteen-minute increments mastered, then they can plan for a day,two day, three day, four day, weekly and eventually monthly projects.  By time they get to a month long project, they will have a better concept of how much time they personally need to successfully complete different types of assignments.
5. After completion of the project, have students evaluate their personal performance.  They need to consider what pitfalls they ran into.  They will consider if they needed more time for one step or another, and what they will do in the future to avoid these pitfalls. If they had success, have them identify how it feels to have experienced a successful planning project and identify the behaviors that created the success.  If they did not have the success they hoped for, have them identify this feeling and how they will avoid it in the future.
6. With each subsequent project, the students need to be required to list all the pitfalls they have experienced in the past and what they will do to avoid them this time.
7. Speak in terms of time for the projects you are doing in class.  Most students do not have a concept of five minutes, or that a writing assignment takes an hour to complete.  Creating “time” awareness will help them preplan more effectively.

When doing planning for the first time, it is very effective to have the entire class plan together.  Using direct instruction, teachers can guide students through the thinking process of backwards planning.  Doing it as a whole class, allows those who have no executive skills to learn from their classmates who do.  The following are the steps to follow:

1. Have the class read the assignment and ask questions about what is unclear about the instructions. Providing students with due dates is not the solution.  Your time limits hold little meaning to your students.  It is best to give a simple skeleton of instructions.  They never read them in detail until the last minute anyway.  Having them ask questions to get the details creates promotes engaged listening.
2. Students list all the pitfalls this particular assignment could present.
3. Students brainstorm ways to prevent these pitfalls.
4.  Calendar the assignment as follows:
1. Record the due date of the assignment
2. List the activities that led up to the assignment being completed.
3. Next to each step, have students record the number of days they personally will need to complete aspect of the project.
4. Take the last activity and ask the students to record the number of days each feels it will take to complete the one task.  No two students will have the same number of days.  Move backwards on the calendar and record the due date for this step.  From this point, everyone’s calendar is going to be different.
5. Follow the same process for each of the steps.  The students will determine one of two things; They don’t have enough time to complete the assignment in the given amount of time, or they need to get started right away,
6. If they feel they do not have enough time, we can change the date, or show them how to manage it within their personal calendar.

This form of Backwards Planning is effective with students who are working in small groups.  This process will help them see that their teammates may need more time to complete activities and the group will need to take that into consideration when planning their project.

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The Missing Link Between Home and School

One of the most prominent frustrations voiced by teachers is the enabling behavior of parents.  Parents have become increasingly involved in their children’s lives. Well-meaning parents do reports, finish homework and fight their children’s battles with friends and teachers in the hopes of helping their children have happy successful lives.

One of the most prominent frustrations voiced by teachers is the enabling behavior of parents.  Parents have become increasingly involved in their children’s lives. Well-meaning parents do reports, finish homework and fight their children’s battles with friends and teachers in the hopes of helping their children have happy successful lives.

Parents would do it differently if they knew how.

They have become helicopter parents for two reasons; FEAR and Competition.

1. FEAR: Fealings and Emotions that Appear Real.  These fears result from twenty plus years of media bashing of the educational system.  It comes from test scores being printed in the newspapers.  It comes from the belief that their children “have to” get into the “Best” schools or they won’t be successful. Their FEARs are fueled when their children struggle, don’t get straight “A’s,” don’t come in first, or fail at anything.
2. Competition with other parents is the second reason they resort to enabling behaviors.  They want their children to be better than their friends’ children.  They want them to get into the higher groups, better classes, better high schools and better colleges.  They will resort to writing their children’s college entrance essays to give them a leg up. They fear having to tell a neighbor that their son is going to any school other than SC, Harvard, Stanford, etc. This competition starts as early as two years old when they compare their child’s develop with their friends. Sitting with some young parents at a two year old’s birthday party, I heard this competitiveness in their conversation.  “Stevie said three words yesterday,” mother number one proudly announced.                                                                                                                                                              “Mary Jane said a complete sentence,” mother two bragged.   I watched the face of the third mother, whose son hadn’t sad a word.  She was worried. I reassured her, “He’ll talk when he is ready to say something`.  When he does, you’ll wish he hadn’t learned how.”  She smiled.

Bumper stickers stating, “My child made Honor Role at X School,” also fuels parent

competitiveness.

Have no fear, helicoptering can be turned around!

In just one Parent Education Night and with simple tweaking of instruction enabling behavior can be disabled.

The following are a few things needed to make this change possible:

1. Acknowledge parents’ fears. FEAR and competitiveness is what has brought parents to private schools.  Because they lack an understanding of the how the brain works, they misinterpret the reason their children can’t do nightly homework. They fear the school is failing their children and feel they have no other alternative than to step in and do what the schools are failing to do for their children.
2. Recognize our role in fueling parent fears and provide student instruction that eliminates meltdowns. If teachers assign projects and assignments that are not at an independent level, we are simply validating parent fears.  Students rarely look at their work “as if” they are going to do it right away to determine if they can do the work.  They wait until they get home, realize they don’t know how to do it and then go into meltdown.  This behavior feeds into and validates parent fears.   We assign long-term projects and have never taught time management.  This fuels parent FEAR.                                                                                                                                             To resolve this situation, the first step is remove parents from the homework process.  Insist that your students look at their work before instruction is offered to determine what they do not know. Allow time to ask questions and let their questions direct your instruction. Through their questions your instruction will support the individual needs of your students and guarantee the homework will be easy, reducing homework stress and allowing the parents to relax.  Backwards Planning instruction also needs to given before any long-term projects are assigned.
3. Instruct students and parents as to how the memory system works.  The brain decides in two to three seconds what to pay attention to. If your students get help at home or have tutors, they have no need to focus when they do not understand what the teacher is talking about.  Because they get help at home they don’t ask questions for clarification, and they will go into a stress mode that slows brain-processing speed. Then they zone out and miss all the instruction. After all, why would you focus and ask questions in class if you know you can get one-on-one instruction at home.
4. Overcoming the fear of asking questions is easy to achieve. I have offered a simple way to help students overcome this fear in my blog on asking questions.
5. Help parents recognize the value of failure and over-coming challenges.  As teachers, we need to take on the responsibility of creating an environment where failure is an opportunity for change.  It needs to be built into every assignment by having students identify their errors, evaluate the reasons they were made and prescribe behavior changes for improvement.

If we teach strategies for dealing with stress, memory loss, and backwards planning, we will be certain that the work we assign is at an independent level and our students will be prepared to complete assignments without any outside support.  If the students can do the work without assistance, they won’t go into meltdowns.  Parents will gain a newfound confidence in our ability to provide superior instruction and their children’s ability to succeed without their input. “

It hurts to the core to see our children upset.  We don’t want them to feel pain and would love for them to go through life without any difficulties.  The reality is, we can’t prevent painful experiences.  What we can do is help children process their feelings and teach them strategies for coping with life’s challenges.

Communication is a very tricky thing.  I can say something and another person receiving it can put a different spin on what and how I sad it. One person can read my facial expressions as humorous, while another can read it as serious or stern.

My mother had an interesting way of helping me process how I was interpreting others’ words and actions.  She would say, “There are always more sides to the story than you think.”  She didn’t jump to call the teacher and tell her what she had done wrong or call my friend’s mother to tell her how her daughter had hurt my feelings.

Instead, she offered coping strategies for me.

She was clear that not everyone means what I think they mean.  She wanted to me become a good communicator and ask for clarification when someone sad something that I took one way.  Often, I found that it was just my misinterpretating of their body language and tone of voice.

Kevin’s Story

About fifteen years ago, Kevin’s mother came to tell me that Kevin didn’t think I liked him.  Kevin was a very sensitive child, so I thought it would be a good idea to clear up this misconception. When asked what exactly he interpreted as not liking him, he said, “When you answered a question, you had a funny look on your face.”

After discussing the situation, it was clear that he took my expression personally, when it reality it was a day that I had decided to come to school ill.  I remembered the day he asked the question and how I was thinking, “Why did I come to school today?  My head is killing me.”

Once Kevin heard this, he felt better.  What came out of this situation was an awareness on Kevin’s part that what he might observe is not always what it seems.  He also learned that if he feels the teacher is unhappy with him, he needs to communicate his concerns with the teacher.

Sara’s Story:  ”I’ll behave if I get a prize.”

Sarah was very impulsive.  She was not accustomed to being help accountable for her behavior. Her parents used positive reinforcement at home to get her to do what they wanted.  Unfortunately, teachers can’t constantly be offering prizes to promote positive behavior.  When she is disciplined in the classroom, her immediate reaction is to assume that the teacher doesn’t like her.  

If the parents focus on the her not being liked instead of the behavior that was the result of the discipline, she will never learn to self-monitor.  

There are times when students need to follow the rules because that is their job.  As children age, those that are motivated to behave because of prizes, will not develop the internal controls necessary for successful lifetimes.  

If children are disciplined because of misbehavior and complain that the teacher doesn’t like them, parents need to help them see how their behavior is what the teacher does not like, not them.

How have you coped with challenging situations and what strategies have you shared with your students or children?  Share with us.

“Don’t tell me, show me.”

The following poem was offered by Dennis Waitley.

“I’d rather watch a winner, than hear one any day.

I’d rather have one walk with me, than merely show the way.

The eye’s a better pupil and more willing than the ear.

Fine counsel is confusing, but example’s always clear.

And the best of all the coaches are the ones who live their deeds.

For to see the truth in action is what everybody needs.

I can soon learn how to do it, if you’ll let me see it done.

I can watch your hands in action, but your tongue too fast may run.

And the lectures you deliver may be very wise and true.

But, I’d rather get my lessons by observing what you do.

For I may misunderstand you and the high advice you give.

But there’s no misunderstanding how you act and how you live.

I’d rather watch a winner, than hear one any day.”  Dennis Waitley