Homework Helper - December 2, 2020

 Homework Helper
By, Michael Earnshaw
December 2, 2020
@MikeREarnshaw

I am very fortunate to have a PLN, my crew, that spans the United States and even crosses our borders. I get to speak to educators from all over, with different backgrounds and experiences, to help me learn and grow. I hope they would feel the same about me. We’re able to collaborate and help solve each other’s problems, share stories of successes and laughs about funny times, and also shed tears for situations that may not have personally affected us, yet being in the game we know exactly what our comrade is going through. Throughout all of these conversations, there is one topic, one issue, that always comes up. 

“These kids are not completing their homework! 2020 and remote learning have made it worse than ever! You can’t believe how many kids are failing simply because they’re not completing their asynchronous work!”

I know, you’ve been part of this conversation, we all have. It doesn’t matter what coast you’re from or if you’re educating young minds over the borders, another pandemic the field of education is facing is that many students are not completing independent work. Much of this plague is happening for those students that are learning remotely. It’s not only remote learners, but the majority of our students either have been, currently are, or will be learning remotely at one point of the 2020/2021 school year. This non-completion of homework virus, much like the Covid-19 virus, is something we as educators must try and combat even if we do not have all of the answers. We can put some things in place to help our students, our future, understand the importance of asynchronous work. 

First, the homework debate has been going on for years and we’re not going to get into that with this blog. Every educator has their own differing opinion on the value of homework and honestly, I don’t see the argument coming to a consensus while I’m in the field (I’ve still got about 30 years or so). What we need to look at is the situation our students are currently in. For over a decade now educators have been stating that kids aren’t learning at the rate they used to, that engagement and attention are almost non-existent because we are competing with the technology at kids’ disposal when they’re outside of school hours. Hell, we’ve been competing with this DURING school hours with cell phones serving as mini-computers in the pockets of every child at every grade level. 

So the argument has been that today’s students are disengaged in school because they have too much screen time. Now with the Covid-19 Pandemic what have we done? We’ve added about seven MORE hours of screen time for our students with remote learning. Look, I understand this had to be done, how else could we reach our students when it’s not safe to bring us all together within our walls. We will never be able to combat or lower the amount of screen time students utilize when they’re not with us. If we thought that they had too much screen time before, the 2020/2021 year has now grown insurmountable! Screen time is screen time. It doesn’t matter if it’s video games, movies, Youtube, or remote learning, staring at a screen is screen time. 

Like I said earlier, we can’t control or limit how much screen time a student partakes in when they are on their own time. What we can do is limit how much screen time they utilize when they are with us, whether that is synchronous or asynchronous learning. We already know that during our instruction and class discussions they will be with us via a screen. Educators need to take inventory of how much time there they are requiring. Regardless of the grade level, students, and the educator, must take movement and mindfulness breaks. There’s no perfect formula, but personally, I would need one about every 20 - 30 minutes. 

Now we must look at what we are assigning students to complete for their asynchronous learning. I’m pretty positive that it’s going to include more screen time, especially if we are in a remote learning environment. I’ve talked to many educators and have also seen first hand that much of this asynchronous work is basically a digital worksheet. Let me ask you this, after sitting in a virtual classroom for even an hour, how exciting is it to complete more time on a screen with a worksheet? We knew that when our classrooms were full of students that worksheets weren’t engaging so what makes this time any different? 

Before you assign asynchronous work, or homework as many are calling it, stop and evaluate it yourself. Would it draw you in? Is it engaging? Is it going to assess and enhance what was learned that day or is it simply compliance? Is there any other way this same assessment could be given that wasn’t staring at a screen? Think back to all of the various, out of the box activities you used to use when school was “normal.” Dioramas, poems, songs, artistic paintings or drawings, interpretive dance, podcasting, blogging, and the list goes on and on. Why can’t we still utilize these assessment approaches even during remote learning? The answer is we can, and we must! By having students partake in an activity that is THEIR choice and focuses on THEIR strengths I’m sure we would get more “homework” returned. Plus, it’ll take students away from a screen for a while. Yes, they’ll have to get back on to submit or record what they’re doing, but the focus isn’t simply staring at a screen completing a digital worksheet. 

I don’t know if this is the solution, but I know that I can’t sit around any longer and just complain. I’m willing to try something to see if it will help. If it does, great! If not, then we try another approach. I hope you will too. Now it’s time to get up and take a walk around before I visit a virtual classroom.