Homework
By Carol Kloskowski
My husband and I hate homework as much as our kids do. That’s why our planning calendar has a bright red circle around the date of the next school board meeting. We’ll be there with some serious complaints.
Part of the homework our second grader Joey’s teacher sends home are easy-reader books she expects him to read to his dad or me. Most of these books aren’t the least bit interesting to Joey (or us). Many nights, we drag every word out of our pouting son, who insists the book is stupid. We usually agree (silently of course).
Monday, Joey’s spelling homework was to put the fifteen words in alphabetical order, draw a picture and write a sentence for each word. This took two hours and 15 minutes. It included three time outs and 30 minutes of his hiding in the bathroom. I got a throbbing migraine.
Matthew’s fourth grade science assignment, due last Thursday, required trips to the hardware store and the drug store, plus several phone calls to an electrician friend. Matt was up until 2 am finishing it Wednesday night; we went to bed. The principal’s phone call the next day infuriated me. He had the nerve to insist that I needed to monitor Matthew’s bedtime more carefully. Matthew had fallen asleep in class and was now snoring noisily in the nurse’s office.
After the trauma my husband and I went through yesterday with Megan’s homework, my husband and I decided to complain to the school board. No kindergartener should be asked to cut out pictures from magazines for every letter in the alphabet and paste them in a booklet. While I baked cookies for Megan’s brownie troop, my husband looked for the pictures (little Megan didn’t have a clue; it was past her bedtime anyway). He made an incredible mess of the house and ruined many of my magazines, cutting out pictures with articles or recipes on their back – recipes I hoped to have time to look at someday. I got mad at him, stormed out of the house and went to my mother’s. My husband continued desperately searching for pictures of anything beginning with x and z.
Meanwhile, Megan decided to play beauty parlor with the scissors and glue. She cut off various lengths of her hair with the scissors, and used the white paste like “mommy’s face cream.” My husband failed at finding x or z, but Megan did succeed in something last night. She learned some new words from her father which she used when the kids on the school bus made fun of her new haircut.
Her language was reported to the principal who called me again about, “my lack of parenting skills.” I hung up on him. I really hate homework!