Less work, more play for bright children

AN ELEMENTARY school teacher in Texas has instructed her pupils to set aside the books when class is over.

Instead, she wants them to spend more time with their families.

Brandy Young, a Grade 2 teacher near Dallas-Fort Worth, gave a letter to parents telling them she would not be assigning homework this year.

“After much research, I am trying something new,” she wrote in the letter, which was posted on Facebook. “Homework will only consist of work that your student did not finish during the school day. There will be no formally assigned homework this year.

“Research has been unable to prove that homework improves student performance. Rather, I ask that you spend your evenings doing things proven to correlate with student success. Eat dinner as a family, read together, play outside and get your child to bed early.”

The letter, shared by a parent on Facebook, has been shared more than 68 500 times.

“This is so awesome as it demonstrates how many parents and teachers would support this kind of policy!” one person wrote. “It prioritises family time and youth activity! I feel 8 hours a day in school for kids this age is enough.”

Samantha Gallagher, the parent who posted it online, wrote that it “just goes to show how universal this subject is!”

Unwind

“We’re happy that at the end of a long school day our kid’ll get to come home and unwind and be a kid … go outside to play, make new friends, spend more time as a family,” Gallagher told CBS News.

Young has been teaching for about eight years. She lives with her husband and young son in Joshua, a small town.

“My family revolves around a love of God, sports, and hunting,” she wrote in her bio. “I love to travel, shop, make crafts, go out to eat and spend time with the people I love.”

Young told CBS News that she made the no-homework rule because the old system wasn’t working for her pupils.

She said her pupils “work hard all day”.

“When they go home they have other things they need to learn there,” she told the news station. “I’m trying to develop their whole person; it’s not beneficial to go home and do pencil and paper work.”

According to research from the Center for Public Education, the age of the pupils, the type of assignments and the amount of study time are important factors in the much-debated homework conversation.

“The central lesson of this research is that homework is not a strategy that works for all children,” the group said. “Because of its possible negative effects of decreasing students’ motivation and interest, thereby indirectly impairing performance, homework should be assigned judiciously and moderately.

“Heavy homework loads should not be used as a main strategy for improving home-school relations or student achievement.”

Superintendent Rich Dear said the second-graders were taking home homework all last year, but the teachers were not seeing the results. “They decided reducing homework would be best for our kids,” he said.

But, Dear said, the new policy did not mean the pupils would never work from home. “We’re not saying we are never going to assign homework, but we’re not going to assign it just for the sake of assigning it,” he said. “We want to engage our kids and ignite their passions, not bore them with work they see has little meaning.”

Young told CBS News: “Our superintendent really encouraged us to be innovators. Whether or not it’s popular, I just wanted to see if it would work. You can’t know if it’s going to work unless you try it.”

She added: “If something doesn’t work, change it.” – The Washington Post.