I hate homework!

Seriously, I do! I couldn't stand doing it when I was a student and I hate battling with my son for him to get it done. The funny thing is that I'm a teacher. When I was a classroom teacher, though, I tried to assign homework that was meaningful and not necessarily tedious. Take, for example, spelling. What's the point of a student writing his spelling words each in a different color crayon? In fact, research shows that writing the words over and over isn't going to help a child learn them. It will go a long way in driving both the children and the parents insane, though. It's busy work. I think about some of the assignments I had when I was getting my Master's Degrees (yes, I have two). The ones that were just busy work were torture for me, even if they were easy. They were tedious and I saw no point because they were nothing but mind-numbing. The ones that were meaningful, even if difficult, were the ones I didn't mind doing because I got something out of them. Perhaps that's too much to ask of a seven-year-old though. I wonder if they can see the value in any homework assignments. Maybe if the assignment involved Wii, X-Box, DS, Beyblades, or Star Wars, he'd be OK with it. I just don't know, but I'm feeling inspired to do a layout all about homework. I'll try to do it and post tomorrow night... unless my dog eats it. Until then, keep scrapping life, one dream at a time!