Home Sweet Homework

Teachers are often thinking of fun and creative ways for parents to help children with homework. But perhaps it’s time to think about the parents first, says Sue Cowley

I began my career as a teacher a decade before I became a parent. Consequently, in my first 10 years of teaching, I didn’t understand what it was like to have children of your own (as opposed to other people’s children who you hand back at 3.15pm). I didn’t really get how demanding it is to balance work, childcare and running a home. I didn’t understand how most parents’ evenings are filled up with doing everyone else’s cooking, and washing up, and ironing, and cleaning. And I certainly didn’t understand how a few minutes spent setting homework in my classroom could devastate the peace, love and harmony of family life.

Opinion is divided on homework, particularly at primary level, but it’s important to remember that what actually gets handed in to the teacher is just the tip of the iceberg. The teacher gets to see the beautiful icy peak, but under the water are several hours of parental nagging, cajoling, supporting and (if all else fails) shouting. Indeed, completed homework often tells you little about how self-motivated your children are, and an awful lot more about which parents can be bothered to do the nagging, cajoling, supporting and shouting.

The Cookery Bag must have sounded like a great idea at the ‘school’ end of the homework equation. Fill a bag with cookery utensils, ask parents to cook with their children, and add a diary to be filled out (with a request to add photographs). This was a homework that developed cookery skills, encouraged healthy eating, made use of IT and supported parent/child relationships, all in one happy bundle. What could possibly go wrong? Unfortunately, no one took account of the competitive parenting aspect. As it did the rounds of the school, the innocuous Cookery Bag Homework rapidly descended into the equivalent of The Great British Bake-Off, with parents vying to cook the show-stopper to end all show-stoppers.

By the time the bag reached our home, the photos in the diary told a story of smiling children in spotless kitchens, standing rosy-cheeked next to shining Agas, alongside their amazing culinary creations. The wooden spoons clutched in tiny hands seemed to indicate that the children had something to do with the cooking of said creations. Unfortunately for me, I forgot we were due to get The Cookery Bag, and our cupboards were officially bare. We ended up scrabbling around for eggs in the henhouse, digging up some potatoes from the allotment and making a tortilla. It was only once our delicious creation had been cooked, photographed and eaten, that we realised our printer had run out of ink. To this day there is a Cookery Bag diary at the back of a school cupboard awaiting photographic evidence of our attainment.

Projects are another lovely sounding homework – so many opportunities for extended learning! Unfortunately, the completion of projects at home often doesn’t pan out quite the way the teacher might have imagined. The rule of thumb for projects is best summed up thus: give a small child two weeks to complete a project, and the child’s parents spend 14 nights asking the child “Have you started your project yet?” and saying “Make sure you don’t leave it all to the last minute.” However, despite endless reminders, the project itself will only eventually begin at two minutes to bedtime on the night before it is due in.

Another innocent sounding task is the ‘please bring in a costume’ homework. There’s a Greek day, or a Stone Age day, or a book character day, planned for a couple of weeks ahead that requires the parent to fashioning together a garment. When the child gets home, the letter from school goes in a pile somewhere and promptly gets forgotten about until the night before the event. As midnight approaches, parents are busy creating togas out of old bedsheets or looking desperately at the family pet as a potential source of fur for that Stone Age cloak. And on the morning of World Book Day, mums and dads all over the UK can be found shoving a pair of old glasses onto their kid’s face, drawing a squiggly line on their forehead with eyeliner pencil, insisting this counts as Harry Potter.

About the author

Sue Cowley is an experienced teacher, author and presenter. Her mini guide, The Seven P’s of Brilliant Voice Usage, is available on Amazon.