For the last three weeks, my daughter's teachers have picked Mondays as their day to pile on the homework.
Monday is one of the days my girl is supposed to train from 4:00 to 7:30. She is already in the doghouse ith Head Coach for missing a lot due to illness. She went home early Friday night and missed Saturday, too.
But looking at her assignments for the evening (three pages of math, plus English, History and Science) -- we both agreed that even if she showed up for workout today, we should get her home early. Megan decided that 6:30 would be an appropriate time -- allowing her to do most of the training she's supposed to do, and still give her time to get the homework done.
It hasn't turned out that way. Because it was the hardest (and her science/math oriented father is home), she decided to start with the math. She's been working on it for two hours and she's still not finished.
The problem, of course, is that she simply doesn't get it, and no matter how many times her dad has tried to explain it to her, it's not registering. It doesn't help that she's tired.
But now it's after 9:00, she's still trying to finish the math, and she hasn't even started on the rest of it. She's tired, so it's not likely any of this information is going to sink in. She's also being extremely whiny. We've suggested she go to bed and try again in the morning, but she doesn't think she'll have time to finish and she's afraid of walking into class with incomplete assignments. And I don't blame her, because the teachers penalize them a lot for not turning in completed work. I understand that. But at this rate, she is going to be up all night and will have to miss school completely, because she'll be too tired to go.
One of the attractions of this school was that they are "team teaching," and so we parents were told that they would coordinate the homework assignments and tests so that the kids wouldn't be overwhelmed . So Megan only has two teachers for all of these classes -- one teacher alone gave her four of the assignments. WHY??
And why do they pile on the work on Mondays only? Especially when Tuesdays are short days and the kids all have an extra hour to do the work?
Some of the other gym parents and I were talking about this yesterday. I mentioned that I had been worried about this transition to middle school and that I'd seriously considered home schooling Megan -- but both she and my husband basically told me that was a crazy idea.
The other gym parents don't think so. One of them -- who is a teacher -- sees how it would be beneficial. "The reason they have to give so much homework is that most of the time in class is spent working with the 20 kids who AREN'T motivated to learn. There isn't enough time to get all 30 students to do the exercises, so they have to assign it as homework."
Home schooling -- working one on one -- can be much more efficient. My daughter could learn the same lessons in half the time and not have this homework burden.
The teacher sighed. She said her daughters would love to be home schooled, but she won't do it. She has enough trouble getting them to do as she says - she's not confident that she'd be successful teaching them at home. Better to leave that to a third party.
So many of the girls at gym are talented but quit when they get to middle school, and now I know why. They simply cannot keep up with the work while engaging in this demanding sport.
I see the writing on the wall. Megan will probably have to quit, which is OK as long as it's what she wants to do. But I hate the idea of her being forced to give it up before she's ready, because of an inflexible school system that won't allow her to waive Physical Education (which is redundant for her) in favor of a study period.
I know. I should just be happy with the fact that I have a happy, healthy, intelligent, athletic child. So she gives up her sport and finds something else to do. There's no tragedy in that.
I just think it sucks.
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