Spike's Bitches 42: Which question do you want me to answer first?
[NAFDA] Spike-centric discussion. Lusty, lewd (only occasionally crude), risqué (and frisqué), bawdy (Oh, lawdy!), flirty ('cuz we're purty), raunchy talk inside. Caveat lector.
Sometimes, when I was teaching in San Francisco, the homework grade began to seem cruel and unusual. I mean, yes, the students really needed to do the homework, but they just simply absolutely wouldn't, so I started to feel bad taking off points every grading period.
Which is silly, because of course the problem is they weren't mastering the material, so their grades should reflect that. But if I'd been there another year, I might have shifted my focus a little away from trying (and trying and trying) to get them to do homework to trying to give them practice time in class.
Which, of course, I was also unable to do, because of all the other issues. Never mind, forget I mentioned it. I've depressed myself.
Of course, I suck at college because I never learned any study skills because I never needed them before college.
Wordy McWord Word. But then again, I did homework. It's just that if you're not challenged before college, you're simply not properly prepared for it. So that's a whole problem on its own.
Speaking of homework...
One of my profs' father died yesterday. She had warned us that this was probably coming and that if she had to miss class, she would e-mail us the night before. Also, she had some other profs potentially ready to teach if necessary.
So, today she announces that her father died and that she's decided to cancel class on Friday. Instead of class, we have to write a two-page response (answering some specific questions) to the reading due on Friday. PEOPLE BITCHED ABOUT HOW THEY SHOULDN'T HAVE TO DO THIS. I was flabbergasted!
Also, hi bitches! Hugs and ~ma all around. Must run off and do more stuff. I am such a busy girl these days!
Well I hope everyone will be glad to know that quantity, purpose, and quality of homework is an ongoing and controversial debate among educators. Current research suggests (duh) moving away from busy work and only assigning homework if it truly extends the learning from the class (or involves necessary reading for the class). Many schools are examining their policies and practices, but this type of change takes a lot of time and teacher buy-in.
Emmett does his homework regularly with mostly just grumping about it, but in second grade he used to have regular meltdowns about it. And he is finding the homework load this year (7th grade) very heavy and a burdensome.
He does way, way more homework than I had to do growing up. And since he does it, and gets good grades I do cut him a lot of slack around school.
His school is highly ranked by API scores and does challenge the students. But I really don't know if they actually know more than I did when I was going to my slackass school with halfass homework assignments.
I have a hard time reconciling the constant gripe that public schools are in steep decline compared to what they were, when I can clearly see that Emmett's schoolwork is far more difficult than mine was.
Huh. I guess I often enough had classes where they were hard enough that it took doing the homework to understand the concepts outside of class...but yeah, sometimes it was just busywork.
I totally get the "show your work", though. Otherwise maybe you're just cheating. Or, more importantly, maybe you get the wrong answer because [not that this would EVER happen to me] you add the numbers just a little bit wrong but you TOTALLY have the right CONCEPT, and if you show your work you can get a lot of partial credit that if you just gave the answer the teacher would have to be like "2? The answer is 75! Where did you get 2? SO WRONG!! FAIL!!"
compared to what they were
Yeah, I don't know if I quite buy this either. I think often people are comparing schools which are trying to educate all students with schools where many had already dropped out, or changed to vocational programs, etc.
But that's me bullshitting. Don't quote me.
I got my revenge with illegible hand writing.
That was me. In college one of the Prof's made me do his "blue book" essay tests in the computer lab. "I'm too old, my eyes too bad to try and read your chicken scratch". Mind you, this was pre-internetasweknowit days, so it's not like I could google info (not that I would, but teachers gotta make sure folks don't cheat and stuff). To this day, I'd much rather tap out notes than write them... funny thing is, if I write them, I learn them a lot better than tapping them. If I do neither, the info could very well pass from one ear, and out the other.
Also, I do have to say I was wrong and disrespectful to do homework in other classes!
Thank the goodness for free periods in high school!
When I watch "Are you Smarter than a 5th Grader" I am absolutely boggled at what is being taught in 5th and below. I would swear we didn't see some of that stuff when I was in school.
My nephew was one of those "skip the homework, ace the test" kids in school, too, but he found out it bit him in the ass this past year when he couldn't get into the school he wanted because of his grades being so low from lack of homework.
I think college will be much more his style, but his major, computer programming, is still going to require lots of homework to be turned in.
