In the comments on the post about the younger Free-Ride offspring’s science fair project, Isabel asks:
I don’t remember if I’ve seen your response to this question before, but, if you don’t mind my asking, how much do you help your kids with their homework/science projects?
Actually, I’m pretty sure I haven’t explicitly answered this question on the blog before, partly because the answer is something that constantly feels like it’s being renegotiated. We’re constantly trying to find the right level of assistance/engagement/oversight that ensures that the kids are:
- really mastering the material they’re supposed to be learning,
- maybe seeing some of the stuff they’re learning has cool extensions or consequences (because this is where a lot of the fun in learning seems to be),
- showing their teachers what they know (so that there’s some chance of their grades reflecting that knowledge),
- doing their damned homework (please don’t get me started on this),
- finishing their damned homework before bedtime.
As you might imagine, these goals are sometimes in tension with each other. Also, it turns out that I and my better half often have a fair bit of work that we’re trying to accomplish at home (“homework”, if you will), and no one is stepping up to help us with that — the point being that we have to strive for some level of efficiency in supervising/helping the sprogs, else get our hands on a time machine.
I should share two nuggets of experience that I think inform my strategies on helping my kids with homework and projects. One is an interaction I had with a colleague maybe six years ago, when the elder Free-Ride offspring was in kindergarten. This colleague had a child in fifth grade and was bemoaning the fact that the school seemed to be assigning projects that it would be practically impossible for a fifth grader to do on his or her own. “So the parents end up doing much of the projects, because what choice do they have? If you resist it, it’s your kid who gets the bad grade.”
This state of affairs, dear readers, rather pissed me off. It helped me decide that, if my own clever kid’s best effort was not enough to satisfy the requirements of a given project or assignment, I should be conferring with my kid’s teacher about whether that project or assignment was actually appropriate.
The other experience that has informed my view here is what it was like to get help on schoolwork from my dad. His approach was, in a word, Socratic. I could approach him with what seemed like s straightforward question (e.g., how do I get started balancing this redox reaction) and he could be counted on to launch into no fewer than twenty minutes of questioning designed to help establish what I already understood and to help me figure out how to extend that knowledge to the problem at hand.
When I was a teenager, this bugged the heck out of me — sometimes enough to motivate me to engage in my own (more focused) Socratic inquiry. But darned if I didn’t develop some effective problem-solving strategies as a result of his questioning.
So, we pretty much went Socratic on the sprogs as soon as they gave any evidence of paying attention to what we were saying. (The Friday Sprog Blogging archives will attest to this.) And, this naturally carried over to homework once they started bringing it home. We routinely asked questions like:
- What are you supposed to do here?
- What can you tell me about how to do that?
- How can you check whether doing it that way works, or whether your answer is a reasonable one?
- Can you think of any other strategy for figuring this out?
Obviously this is not the most efficient way to get the homework done, at least in the short term. But it does seem to have helped the sprogs to get better at answering their own questions and developing their own problem-solving strategies, if only to get their Socratic parents to shut up.
For longer term projects, like science fair projects, we get a little more involved, not so much in directing the projects as in helping the kids assess whether the projects are plausibly doable in the time available and with the materials we have on hand or are willing to purchase. We help somewhat in developing the initial idea (I want to grow mold) to something like a testable hypothesis (although again, this help is Socratic in flavor). As well, as they’re coming up with their experimental design, we’ll ask more questions to help them think about whether their observations will really help answer the questions they’re trying to answer, what confounders might complicate things, and so on.
The execution of the experiment is then up to the sprog.
I will cop to beating the time-management drum loudly and regularly for this round of science fair projects. Both concerned biological systems and data that was either necessarily to be collected over time (mold growth) or of a sort that you couldn’t count on being able to collect all of the night before (because the rabbit gets bored hunting for treats after a while). Also, since the elder Free-Ride offspring’s project involved research with a USDA regulated vertebrate animal, I was a hardass about getting the kid to commit to an experimental protocol in time for a veterinarian to give feedback on it before signing the required forms (and before any data collection commenced).
I did not micromanage how the sprogs kept their project notebooks. This meant that the younger Free-Ride offspring had to reap what was sown (with data recorded on dated but not chronologically ordered pages) when it came time to collect and analyze the data. I have a feeling that’s a lesson that’s going to stick.
As far as data analysis and visual representation of the data, this is something I discussed with the sprogs (again, Socratically) as they were deciding on the approach that they thought made the most sense. Once they settled on an approach, it was up to them to execute it.
They wrote up (and typed out) their own narratives for their project boards. They also decided how to organize text blocks, photographs, tables, and graphs on the project board. I, however, wielded the can of spray adhesive, on the theory that the sprogs would get into more trouble with sticky hands than I would.
Our approach to helping here is not always successful from the point of view of getting the sprogs to do their best work (or to actually turn it in). But, I think it has been a reasonable strategy in terms of ensuring that the sprogs know how to do that work, even the more challenging long-term projects. Also, they bring home grades that reflect their work, not their parents’.
Obviously this is not the most efficient way to get the homework done, at least in the short term. But it does seem to have helped the sprogs to get better at answering their own questions and developing their own problem-solving strategies, if only to get their Socratic parents to shut up.
This sounds very similar to mentoring in the lab. You can do it all yourself, micromanaging from the beginning, which might appear to save time in the short term. Or you can invest time early to help develop an independent thinker, and reap the rewards in the long term. Not to mention that, in both cases, the latter is our job.
I was thinking that question when I read that entry, so I’m glad someone actually asked and you answered. I also wondered the impact of you being a scientist had on a science project. Do your kids (sprogs?) get similar help for other subjects? I suppose at elementary level it’s not hard.
I think it’s also important to let them make mistakes, like your young one. He’s more likely to remember that for next time. IMO school is supposed to be about learning, not getting grades for the sake of it, it’s not a competition (unless you want scholarships and crap like that).
I wonder if the amount of home help kids get has an effect on their education in the long term? For example, I received minimal help as my parents didn’t speak English well and joined the workforce early high school. Then you get others practically doing the assignment for them. And of course the middle ground where parents are the supvervisors/tutors. Or there are parents that can’t help with homework but can with time managment (eg I want to see you do 1 hour music practice tonight).
I suppose homework can serve different pruposes in each case.
If our oldest son thought we had helped him too much with his homework, he would not turn it in.
I wonder if Socrates would have yelled at me (and deservedly so) in a similar manner.
I find it particularly frustrating that my children (teenagers) seem to lack even a modicum of motivation. My husband and both grew up in academically competitive families but our kids could really care less about the learning opportunities that do exist in the package deal of traditional education. My partner and I cannot force our children to actually do anything, *especially* homework. The one thing we will not do, however, is do the work for our kids. I cannot begin to count the ways in which we have failed them (as parents), but we have always made it clear that although we are always willing to help with homework, etc., the children are ultimately responsible for their own academic performance, including poor grades and light-weight study habits. We love them unconditionally, whether they come home with straight A-s or fail every subject — and we have tried more than a couple of carrot/stick approaches (all of which have turned out to be useless). I do not understand how it is possible that the kids have terrible grades, yet pass the EOG/EOC exams with flying colors. (What does that mean? And furthermore, what does it mean when kids do well in their classes but fail the EOC/EOGs? ) As Churchill said, “It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps (god willing!) there is a key.” I want that fucking key. Any suggestions?