Kids recognized they needed to practice, but
they didn’t think they learned much when
they were exhausted from too much work.
Even worse, students perceived that
grading homework fosters dishonest or
cynical behavior from both teachers and
students:
Some homework is just busywork, to give
us more grades. The end of the quarter
comes and teachers say, “I don’t really
have enough grades to put in, so I need
you guys to do this worksheet.” —Aaron
home locations. Many interviewees
said that rather than judging individual
homework, schools should devise
ways to help kids get the practice they
needed, such as an academic support
period during the day.
made nightly choices about which
homework to rush through or put aside
completely:
I get home from soccer practice at 7:00,
and I really don’t feel like doing all that
homework. I’m like, “OK, what’s more
important, math or history?”. . . When
I’m doing math homework, I go fast and
crazy, and in the end I still don’t under-
stand it.
It took me five hours to do this really difficult math homework, and I still didn’t
understand it, but I was trying my best.
Another girl copied it off the Internet—
she got 100, and I got a 39. If I ask her,
she doesn’t understand it. But the teacher
doesn’t care—she’s looking to see if you
got it right or wrong. —Vivian
Better Use of Time
Kids recognized they needed to do
a certain amount of practice that
wasn’t enjoyable, but they didn’t think
they learned much when they were
exhausted from too much work. Faced
with an overload, students like Vivian
“It’s better to understand what you’re
doing than to get the homework
done,” agreed Claude. By assigning less
homework, but gearing it toward deeper
understanding, he proposed, teachers
and students could have it both ways:
One focused question can make you
think as much as 20 or 30 homework
questions combined! And it shows more
understanding, instead of just having
questions where you can copy other peo-
ple’s understanding. Then everybody can
contribute to the question in class.
Students like Erika appreciated
teachers who supported risk taking in
homework:
My teacher would give us a worksheet for
homework, but he didn’t count answers
wrong. He gave you credit for trying. I
was more willing to try, because I knew
that if I got it wrong, he was going to take
time to make sure that I understood it.
Many students got more out of academic practice when they collaborated
with others. Small groups might work
together on assignments, Aaron suggested, focusing on what each student
needed most. “It could either be the
people that are bad at one thing all
grouped together, or people from
varying levels in one group, like if I’m
good at pronunciation and someone
else was really good at conjugating,” he
recommended. But arranging a time and
space for group homework often proved
nearly impossible for students with
different commitments and far-flung
Students Talk About
Homework Logistics
n Cooperate with other teachers.
Make our total homework load
reasonable.
n Give us time to start
homework in class so you can
help if we have trouble.
n Match homework to the
time we have available. Let us
know how long you expect us
to spend on each assignment,
and don’t penalize us if we can’t
finish.
n Don’t give homework every
day. Having several days to do
an assignment helps us learn to
manage our time.
n Provide times and places for
academic support, such as study
halls or hours when a teacher is
always available.
The “Four Rs”
Ideally, these teens agreed, engaging in
additional work after a lesson would
be like practicing a sport or a musical
instrument. Homework wouldn’t ask
them to try something they weren’t
ready for—after all, if they practiced
wrong at the start, bad habits could take
a long time to undo. Instead, it would
add value to lessons through what we
decided to call the “four Rs” of deliberate practice: readiness, repetition,
review, and revision. Students shared
examples of homework that hit one of
these Rs.
To get students ready for a class dis-
cussion, for instance, Jacob’s English
teacher asked students to read a poem
carefully:
When we first read it, many people didn’t
even know what the poem was about. It
was so complicated. But we practiced [at
home] breaking it down, stanza by stanza,
and then in class it all came together.
We looked deep into the meaning of
each stanza, and that way people started
understanding it.
