Photo via psychologytoday.com

It has been great reading the feedback on the post I wrote a few days back titled “How Necessary is Homework?” If you haven’t had a chance to read the post and the comments, I hope you’ll take a moment to read it and then add your opinion on the issue. It is imperative that we have open discussions about topics like this that have such a great impact on our students and that we review our practices to ensure that they are accomplishing the outcomes we desired.

Another positive of having this discussion in a web-based setting has been the fact that we have gotten feedback from people in other parts of the world who have had these same discussions. We are truly fortunate to live in a day and age where this type of sharing can take place so easily.

David Truss

One of the links shared came courtesy of David Truss, a school administrator from British Columbia.   David shared a post he wrote back in April of 2011 titled “Homework.” I love how he handled the topic of homework when he was a classroom teacher:

 “As a math teacher, my first lessons were not about Math they were about life. I wrote this formula on the board:

Equal is not equal to fair.

Sometimes certain students didn’t get homework, or they got alternate homework. Some didn’t write the pre-tests, some only did every other question, some only had to do 5 questions, some had to do them all. It’s not fair to give 3 students the same number of questions when one student is bored to death by them, one can do them in 20 minutes and still another student will struggle with them unsuccessfully for an hour… it would be equal, but not fair.”