Educational Rant- Work

I took the day off today.  I had to take my boys to the High School to get them registered for the upcoming school year.  I am sitting at a table with my 8th-grade son and his soon-to-be advisor.  She looks over his middle school transcript and sees that he is not doing very well in Social Studies.  She asks him why and he honestly tells her he doesn’t do the homework.

He is failing this class because of homework.  He doesn’t do the homework because he doesn’t see the relevance.  He says it has nothing to do with what they are learning in class.  Now, I do not know for certain if this is true- that it is not connected to learning- but my guess is that he may be right.  I know…just stick with me here.

There are two problems here:

#1- homework.

#2- the word work

The teacher/advisor starts talking to him about the importance of doing his work.  When he gets to high school, he will have to do all his work.  And if he doesn’t complete his work, he will have to take classes over again.  This word work pops up a lot in conversations about grades, passing classes, school.

My students ask me when they are absent- can I have my work?

Parents email asking for missing work.

I get requests from the office when kids are suspended, for work.

Work is a job.  Work is what we do.  It is not learning.

Maybe it helps learning, but it is not learning.

Grades=work.  Students turn in work and get a grade.  Now, there are different types of work, and they are evaluated differently.  Some pieces of work are authentic and show real learning, but most of the work we have students do is not an accurate measure of what they know.

And right there, that…what they know.  I wanted that advisor to say, instead of being able to do your work, be able to show your teacher what you know.  I want to change the language- show me what you know.  Tell me more.  Go deeper.  We don’t do that.  We collect assignments, work, and assign a point value, and that becomes a grade.  The grade is not always an accurate measure of knowledge.  Which brings me back to homework.

Once that work leaves my room, I have no control over how it is done.  Copied, internet, parents, and siblings could all have a part in the work.  I can’t really use it as a tool to evaluate the student.  If I want to give homework, it should be for practice or maybe a project, but the reality is once it leaves the classroom I have no idea what happens.  It is out of my control.

Yet, my son is failing a class because of homework. But I wonder..if the teacher were to ask him- Show me what you know- what would his grade be?  If the “work” was about providing evidence of learning- what would that look like?  What if we started to simply change the language…show me what you know and tell me more?  Maybe we start there, we can change the mindset from “what’s my grade?” to “what have I learned?”

Because isn’t that what school is supposed to be?  Don’t we want it to be a place where students get to learn?  And if so, couldn’t this be a start to what we really want?