How to Homework

Homework. Work to be done at home. Work done after school is over. Work to do because there was insufficient time to complete it in class. Work done before dinner. Busy work so that students' minds do not get dull. Review of the day's lesson to solidify learning. Work done after dinner. Preview of the next day's lesson to get the students' minds turning in the right direction. Work done after bed time. Work.

Hmmm... shouldn't school be fun? I mean, shouldn't students enjoy learning?

No, I do not believe I am an entertainer. But, am I a slave driver?

Let me say right now that my AP Statistics students have impressed me. A lot. We have been going at it now for almost four weeks and I have been laying the homework on. Thick. Because I have to, right? I mean, it's A dot P dot Statistics. This is a serious class. And we have something like 20,000 hours of material to cover during 110 classes. So, homework is necessary. Lots of it.

Or is it?

If you have read my blog before, you know well that this is my first year teaching AP Statistics. One of my initial stresses was how to plan out the course so that the students get to play around with every topic for an appropriate amount of time. And so rather than linger over the mean and the standard deviation and try to gain a deep understanding of the information they reveal, we rush, give them a high five, and check them off a list. Topic covered. Done.

But topic learned? Skill mastered?

To ensure that my students understand the ideas sufficiently, I had it in my head that they should expect to spend at least an hour on homework before every class. That means 4-5 hours a week spent on AP Statistics outside of class on top of the 3.5 to 4 hours a week spend in class.

My textbook was a godsend, or so I believed. In the Annotated Teacher's Edition, I found a sample syllabus and a suggested pacing guide which completed the book in 109 days. Holy cow, I thought. I actually can cover everything and even have one whole day leftover to do something from a different source! But, seriously, I was relieved to learn that it would be conceivable to get through the course in time and here was an outline to follow.

The catch? Well, not all statistics homework problems are created equal. Problem #68 may take two minutes, while #63 may take thirty. I did the lazy teacher thing (also known as the teacher-trying-to-create-a-good-set-of-assignments-while-still-maintaining-sanity-and-family) and I assigned the suggested problems without even reading through them all. And so I found out last week that a couple students were spending two hours on their AP Statistics homework.

As I said earlier, my students have impressed me. Not only have then done all the work I assigned, but they did so without complaint. Just sucked it up and got 'er done. And they have been learning. A lot. The brute force method of teaching has been effective. Efficient? I doubt that.

I only found out about the two hours of homework after casually asking one student about their homework load. Further investigation found that my students were spending 72.5 minutes each night on the textbook problems with a standard deviation of 25.9 minutes. And every night I assign a suggested reading. Some nights, I assign them a video to watch. There's another 40 minutes.

Silly me. I looked at the assignments and I figured 15 minutes on the video, 15 minutes on the reading, and 30 minutes on the problems.

I have already begun re-thinking my homework assignments. I will keep using the suggested assignments, but I will choose a few of the textbook problems to be required and the rest will be optional. And I will assign fewer problems when I also assign a video. Or maybe eliminate the problems on those nights altogether.

And now this question burns in my mind: Can I teach the AP Statistics course without any homework at all?

If you think homework is necessary, I suggest you read some of Alfie Kohn's work and reflect critically and honestly on the role homework plays in your course.