Don’t do your homework and still get credit????

Oh I never beat it at UF. I eventually discovered a math lab at a smaller school in Oregon and lived in it. I needed the smaller class and more access to tutoring. My TA at uf didn't speak a word of English

 

A zero or an F? Because those don't have the same value.

 

Why the push back against homework? I review my children's homework with them every night. I think it's a big help in completely understanding the curriculum. It's practice.

 

I had a geometry teacher that did almost precisely that. Weighted homework lower than the exams. In addition, he had a policy of using the previous 9 weeks as an incentive. If you got an A in the first nine weeks, you didn't need to do homework for the second nine and so on. It put the focus on the concepts and exams and still encouraged completion of homework and of learning. Seems a lot better than firing a teacher because they refused to give out a zero for not doing the work.

 

Homework is for suckers. But seriously, kids should be able to finish all work at school. I should say this mostly for youngsters. College, homework is a part of reality.
Possible exceptions are research papers and other presentations. But these should be minimal.

 

It's also extremely practical in many real life settings as not everything in your professional career relies upon your on-the-spot knowledge but your ability to work things out in a self-budgeted time frame. Beyond your professional career how many things in your life outside of work require a self-budgeted time frame to plan?

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

 

Teachers seem rushed to get through the lessons because there’s so much they have to present.
They are likely overwhelmed and mostly interested in the standardized testing.
It would be great to emphasize quality over quantity in lower education. Take away some of the fluff classes and let the students work extra time in a study hall, having access to their teachers at school. This would reduce most dumbass homework and students would probably master more of the lessons.
Too many households have both parents working and little time to keep up with the nonsense homework that gets sent home.

 

just needs to be a weighted average. Midterms and finals more important than quizzes. Certain homework or projects are weighed accordingly. Not a taking a final is not the same as not taking a quiz which is not the same as not turning in one homework assignment, but 0 completion of a task should be scored as a 0. You are doing a disservice to the student/8th grade child by giving them a 50% for zero work. JMHO

 

It's weird, it's not even the first time this story was re-surfaced. Admittedly, I don't recall having heard about this story the first or second time through, though.

What the author fails to mention is that the school no longer advertises a no-zeros policy, that line has been removed from the current handbook:

https://schools.stlucie.k12.fl.us/wgk/files/2023/02/Student-Handbook-1.pdf

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

 

The challenge with homework nowadays is all the answers are a few clicks away and students know how to hunt them down. Teachers should be using multiple methods for assessment and hw should not be a big part of the grade. Shit with chat gpt and other ai writing sources even writing assignments as hw don’t really work anymore.

 

Then wouldn't it be the same situation if school policy was to weight grades in that way and a teacher refused because they wanted missing homework to have a larger impact?

Fully agree. Just change the weighting so you can give a zero and still end up at the same final result.

 

What I like about homework is the additional collaboration that is required if the work is not fully understood (could be with peers from class or in discussions with parents or even siblings). It also gives the parents an understanding of how much the child is actually learning at school vs. how much they're having to figure out at home. And some things involve "try it at home" type of work for the kids to experiment with and practice their discovery and analytical skills.

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

 

Depending on the age of the kids, it's pretty easy to block certain resources for children. For older kids, it should be a matter of learning to incorporate practical tools into their expectations. For example, the calculator wasn't fully banned, it only increased the level of expectation that could be placed on the students work in both quantity and quality. Similar changes occurred when word processing took over for hand written assignments...or when the Internet started replacing having to go to the library and look at encyclopedias. Same thing needs to happen with resources like ChatGPT.

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

 

Not to mention it teaches the real life application of deadlines and meeting them.

 

When she was hired.

 

And fired in her first year, unless I read it wrong.

 

I remember having some terrible TAs at UF when it came understanding them.

With math, it's funny, I hadn't thought about it until now. I have two close friends that went on to become math teachers. Both also were two of the biggest potheads I know. Something about getting high I guess just helps you comprehend math beyond just the numbers.

 

My bad. I read it wrong although it wasn't completely clear since the story was dated April 11, 2023. One of the problems with basing a thread on a story from a fringe website.

While I think the firing was extreme in any event it was also not completely clear whether the grade of zero applied only to students who failed to turn in any homework at all (appropriate in my opinion) or also applied to students who submitted partially completed homework assignments in which case giving students partial credit pursuant to the school district's policy would not be inappropriate although even if that was case firing her was still an extreme response.

 

Research shows it isn't very effective.