I agree about organic learning vs. rote, it’s something I try to communicate daily to those around me. So often we try to synthetically impose “change” upon people, to “do” teaching to someone, rather than to learn and grow with them.

As I said near the end of the post, “homework” is really just a code word for those rote tasks which are low-level and unsupported. I give students things to think about or casually take out of class and chomp on, but never “read pages X-Z” or “write a theme on Y.” I’d much rather be a part of that process in class where I can facilitate peer intervention and some cooperative structure.

Homework in itself isn’t necessarily bad if we are conscious of what we are trying to accomplish. I don’t assign homework for students to read or do. What I usually end up doing is posting links to interesting articles, blogs, or topics (regardless of connection to glass) that I think kids might enjoy reading. Interestingly enough, I found that if something really was interesting, a kid would come in and want to talk about it in class the next day. We would kick the topic around for a bit, and I would say that I would try to find some more articles on the topic. Sometimes the kids beat me to this and actually posted articles on the page ahead of me even finding any.

The key is that we can’t expect this type of phenomenon to happen every day, every week, or even once a month. It has to happen naturally. Once we find something that interests kids we need to tap into it, harness it, and play to their interests.

Most would say that what I give them isn’t “homework,” but let’s be real. You sit at home to do it and it is work (sorta) to read and think about.

As for “answering questions” or any of that other stuff, It’s all a waste of time. True learning is organic; not rote. Many lose sight of that (clearly you haven’t).

Great post!

This post was mentioned on Twitter by stevejmoore: 14 Lines of Homework: A sonnet & reflection on Cathy Vatterott’s book Rethinking Homework http://bit.ly/d5DSyW @ASCD…