I'm a fifth grade teacher, and I feel that is waaay too much homework! I think ALL of this testing nonsense is ridiculous. That's where all this homework is coming from, by the way. The No Child Left Behind laws created higher standards that schools must meet every year. By the year 2012, all students must be "above average." Okay, admittedly, that's just my interpretation, but it's an impossible standard. Administrators are stressing out, so they're putting the pressure on teachers. Teachers are stressing out, so they're putting the pressure on the kids. It's insane!
Kids need to have time to be kids. They learn from play as well as from school. They will have enough stress when they grow up. They don't need it starting in second grade! But parents have to take a stand. They have to contact their legislators and tell them what this is doing to their children so the laws can change. It's not enough for teachers to say it. They think we're saying it because we don't want to be accountable, but we're not. We're saying it because it's hurting children.
I once had a call from the teacher of one of my former students. She wanted to know why he had been successful in my class and what she was doing wrong. In her class, he was refusing to work at all and was vomiting every morning as soon as he arrived at school. How's that for stress? Turns out they had told him if he didn't pass "The Test," he would be retained. He was a student with learning disabilities! He didn't know if he COULD pass, no matter how hard he tried. Poor baby. No wonder he was sick every day. In my class, we helped him instead of threatening him.
As a teacher, I take all of the stress for test preparation on myself. I rarely even mention that we're preparing for a test (although we are). I sneak it in without letting them know what I'm doing. I make it as fun and interesting as possible, so it doesn't seem like work. I give relatively little homework, and I use it as a tool to teach responsibility more than as a way of getting in more practice. My students are meeting their testing goals, and my school has met federal goals every year since NCLB began, and this is in a rural school with a poverty rate near 70%. This kind of stress and homework is NOT necessary!
We will not continue to meet our goals, however. The goal set for our children is setting them up to fail. Schools everywhere are going to fail very soon, unless there are major changes. My children will fail as well, because I refuse to subject them to the kind of stress I see elsewhere at the tender age of ten. However, I will not allow them to feel like failures. They will leave my class with their heads held high, no matter what their test scores, because they will know they did their best.
So (blushing and stepping off soapbox), yes, that is too much homework. Tell the teacher. Tell the principal. Tell your legislators. Make it stop! Kids need to learn, yes, but kids also need to be kids.
