HIBER-NATION:
OME and work have become so entwined in recent months that it is a shock for many parents and kids to realise they’re about to be reacquainted with a little task called homework.
Love it or loathe it, homework is back on the radar for primary students, while it never slipped from view for high school students, especially not for seniors juggling a steady stream of COVID-immune assessment tasks.
Mother-of-two Deborah Wightley said she had a distinct advantage managing the homework demands on her sons Coen, 15, and Max, 13, because she spent the past 12 years as a primary school teacher before taking an education policy role earlier this year.
“I taught across K to Year 6 and the homework policy was meant to guide what teachers did, in terms of setting homework and the expectation for families around what would be sent home,” Ms Wightley said.
“Homework is one of the most contentious issues you face as a teacher or a leader in a school, because there’s just so many varying views and perspectives by families about homework.”
Her own children responded to homework during lockdown in completely different ways.
Year 7 student Max undertook a number of self-directed homework projects.
“Because he’s such a practical kid and he loves building and making stuff and is always very self-occupied … he’d stride over to the work shed and put something together or make a catapult or build a bike track out the front,” Ms Wightley said.
“He was off being very selfcontained, but in a very creative and practical sense.”
In Year 10 at a new school, Coen was on Zoom or Skype almost all day, so the family made the decision to press pause on homework.
“I got a number of emails from his teachers … but it really affected his mood. It took over everything, to the detriment of his mental health,” she said. “For me, mental health is always going to come first at that age.”
The school was very supportive and Ms Wightley strongly encouraged parents to have frank communication with their own schools.
“I think having my teacher hat on as a parent at that point helped me a lot,” she said.
Pre-coronavirus, a heavy schedule of co-curricular activities spread across a number of siblings meant that many parents and carers ferried students to different playing fields and tutors every afternoon or evening of the week. Such a hectic schedule did not allow for much more in the mix.
When sports and other activities resume, these same challenges will immediately resurface.
“You needed to be quite flexible and you needed to give families some opt in, so there was a minimum level that was required and then an opt in of ‘We’re going to do these particular things as well’,” Ms Wightley said.
“But the family really had the option to say, ‘We’re just doing this’.”
Because schools set their own homework policy based on each state’s departmental guidelines, parents unavoidably get very different messages around the purpose and importance of homework.
“Once you start to add things you haven’t covered in the classroom, you’re putting the onus back on the parents, which causes all kinds of trouble,” Ms Wightley said.
“It also causes a big gap for th the kids, because some kids can p pick that up and others cannot.
“The key is making h homework relevant to the kids.”
The question of what to do with students, parents and teachers newly schooled in distance learning platforms like Google Classrooms is an interesting one.
Incorporating that same technology into homework could be a game-changer for engagement. Since coronavirus rapidly spread digital literacy around the country, it seems a shame to waste it.
“Perhaps now that innovation has now been embraced by teachers and the kids, and now parents can see it, it might be more purposeful and you could use it for more meaningful sorts of homework and interaction than just sending home some worksheets,” Ms Wightley said.