How much do you help with homework?

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Feb 3, 2011
1,880
48
DD is a HS junior at a very academically competitive school. 9 th & 10 th grade, the work load was manageable - it was a are night if DD went to bed after 10 PM.

Junior year is a harsh dose of reality - Fall sport (field hockey); 2 honors classes; PSAT/PLAN/ACT Prep & a junior year thesis and a 100 hour community service requirement (to be done in the winter when there are no sports for her). On a great night she's in bed at 10:30; most night 11:15 and the tough nights 12:30. 4+ hours a night of school work isn't unusual so it's tough to get ahead of the homework cycle. There are many a morning she's finishing her home work on the 25 minute drive to school we have.

Is it hard - yep. Is it manageable - barely; but she lives at home, has no other responsibilities and hads mom & dad to fall back on if necessary. Mom helps out with mom things & dad proofreads writing assignments when asked, but our assistance is minimal.

Where dad helps out a lot is keeping up with the recruiting emails, updates, sending transcripts etc, since DD is being recruited for both fielkd hoickey & softball.

What comes out of this is the top 20%-25% of each graduating class all matriculate to the highly academic schools good students attend - some are athletes some not. The field hockey team is sending the captain to an Ivy for the 2nd consecutive year - that Ivy FH coach comes to see DD's team play as they now have a pipeline for players who can play & get through Admissions.

Most of the other athletes attend the very academic D III schools, with a smattering of Ivy's & Di's thrown in. Two soccer players in D's year just committed as a package to a very academic ACC school - big new on her campus - both are great kids and very talented players.

I'm sure you know it very well, but other posters here may not realize what a unique area you live in. In a state that has so many very strong public school districts, Morris County is always near the top. I wish that the rest of the country was willing to invest in education like you have. It's just a part of your culture there, and the results speak for themselves. Whereas the top 25% of your graduates are seeking and gaining admission to competitive colleges and universities, that number isn't even 1% where we live.

Thriving in such a competitive academic environment has your DD on a path to a very bright future. Well done.
 

JAD

Feb 20, 2012
8,231
38
Georgia
I will have to admit that my DW goes "overboard" when helping with homework. She is getting better, but she still helps my DD a lot more than my parents ever helped me!!!
 
Nov 29, 2009
2,975
83
This thread reminds me of an old situation. While my DD was playing HS there was a girl who was a great pitcher. Set the single season record for strikeouts for the state one year in HS.

There were rumors running around about her parents doing her school/home work for her on the local message boards. Of course everyone called the poster spiteful and made many other accusations for the reasons behind the post.

The player gets recruited and signs at a D1 school. See her on the team roster in the fall of her freshman year. In the spring she's gone from the roster. The DD asked another girl she knew on the team what happened. It seems the girl got to college and could not do the work and had no idea what it took to succeed in college academically. What the DD found out was the girl had 5 incomplete classes and an F in another during her freshman fall season. The school "Asked" her to leave. I never saw or heard of her being on another roster.
 
Nov 26, 2010
4,784
113
Michigan
What a joke. I read that article and it sounds like a bunch of parents whose sole interest is in crippling their children. I had to 'show my work' in the 70s and 80s. Why are these parents acting like that's some sort of punishment now? Idiots. My complaint was that the students were not required to show their work in grades 1-5.

The amount of homework on a typical night should increase a bit each year, but the average should never be more than about 2 hours/night.

The issue with common core math isn't necessarily that you have to show your work, but it does not allow for Rote memorization of math problems to be part of the shown work. For instance what is 8x8. If you put down 64 you are wrong because you didn't show your work. Its not long division or algebra that people are upset about, its the simple or typical math.

When I went to school, that was the work. You memorized the answers to the basic math problems and learned how to apply that to the higher levels where you had to show your work to prove you know how to solve. But the basic building blocks of the work you didn't show, 8x8 was always 64. Now you have to draw 8 circles and put 8 tick marks in each one and then count them up to get to 64, or some similar BS strategy that takes 5 times longer.
 
May 7, 2008
8,506
48
Tucson
China, I have a son that absolutely would not have stood for that nonsense. The first 6 weeks of school was always so difficult for him, when the other kids caught up. I suspect that Common Core is going to leave students such as him, at the bottom of a heap.

A teacher friend of mine told me that an acceptable answer for 8X8 would also be 60, but not 65. She said just wait until these students go to prepare their taxes and owe $1345.00. They will send in $1000.00.

I taught 2nd grade and we learned to multiply, from a tape I made and they had to write down the answers. Haha. No time for "ticking" there.
 
Nov 26, 2010
4,784
113
Michigan
China, I have a son that absolutely would not have stood for that nonsense. The first 6 weeks of school was always so difficult for him, when the other kids caught up. I suspect that Common Core is going to leave students such as him, at the bottom of a heap.

A teacher friend of mine told me that an acceptable answer for 8X8 would also be 60, but not 65. She said just wait until these students go to prepare their taxes and owe $1345.00. They will send in $1000.00.

I taught 2nd grade and we learned to multiply, from a tape I made and they had to write down the answers. Haha. No time for "ticking" there.

My elementary school had the 390 club. It was an award for being able to do the 100 basic Addition, Subtraction and Multiplication problems and the 90 division problems in 3 minutes or less per sheet. It was not optional, every kid had to take these timed tests several times each year. Every kid from that school knew how to do basic math.
 
May 7, 2008
468
0
Morris County, NJ
Momo:: Morris county, NJ has a very fine network of public schools, some of the best in NJ, which as a state has a great ranking in the US for its public school system. The flip side to these fine public schools are real estate property taxes that are some of the highest in the country. You do get what you pay for.

The DD how ever attends private school in the neighboring county, thus the 25 minute commute each morning. The decision to send her to private school wasn't an easy one - atteding a new school in 9 th grade when you don't know a soul in the place & youre starting socially form scratch. My wife and I sacrifice to send her - but what better gift to provide to your child than what perhaps is the best education available to her.

The school sent out announcements via email of the collegaite Early Decision acceptances for the Class of 2014 ( class size is one of the larger -110) - BC-2, Brown, U Chicago, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Lehigh, Penn -2 ( including the FH captain), Princeton, Richmond, Rutgers -2, Smith (FH captain), South Carolina -3, St. Andrews, Tufts, Wisconsin, Yale -2.

Lots of very hard working bright students at this school. We're happy she' s attending.
 
Aug 29, 2011
2,581
83
NorCal
Momo:: Morris county, NJ has a very fine network of public schools, some of the best in NJ, which as a state has a great ranking in the US for its public school system. The flip side to these fine public schools are real estate property taxes that are some of the highest in the country. You do get what you pay for.
I was a graduate of Morris Hills HS. It was a pretty a good education but I'm not sure it was much better than what my kids are getting now. Prop 8 keeps our property taxes relatively low, the flip side is our schools suffer unless you live in an area willing to pass a fairly hefty parcel tax. Unfortunately even the modest $99 a year parcel tax that's been tried a couple times has difficulty passing in our district.
 
Mar 13, 2010
1,758
48
I'm reading the stuff on this core style and am confused, because that's pretty much how I was taught. Books such as the Secret Garden are for middle schoolers? What are third and fourth graders reading, picture books?
 

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