Reason, Finally

I am so pleased to see this article in The Toronto Star today, on a new report on homework from the Toronto District School Board. Some of the recommendations include:

• no homework for kindergarten kids
  
• no homework over holidays
• up to grade 2, having homework consist mostly of game playing, discussions or cooking with family
• grade 7 & 8 students should have no more than 1 hour per night of homework combined across all subjects and high school students no more than 2 hours

I'm so happy to see some wisdom on this issue. Our new school has been pretty good on the homework front, but when TG started grade one in Toronto, you may recall some of my trepidation about the expectations laid out by her teacher. This extended to homework, which we invariably only completed fully about half of the time (we had a lot on our plates, and better things to do with our family time). Each week we got a little pink sheet detailing each day's homework (this is mostly fine, the report recommends assigning homework in blocks so parents can plan, but it didn't need to be assigned down to the day) with the ominous reminder at the bottom "Homework will be graded."

TG got a C in homework. Seriously. I just shook my head at that because she couldn't do that work on her own, she needed our help to read the instructions and sometimes more. When the work didn't get done it was very clearly our fault, not hers. The report also says that non-completion shouldn't affect a student's overall grades.

Some of our friends in Toronto are still lamenting the amount of work their kids are getting. I don't blame them. Before we left, TG's teacher told us she was concerned about her switching to full French (from immersion), and was worried she couldn't handle it. This teacher was nice, but I think had entirely unreal expectations of the kids. We got TG's first report card from her new school and she got a bunch of A's and B's. No C's. And no grade for homework.