Thoughts After Helping My Niece With Her Homework

I've been having an interesting experience helping my seventh grade public schooled niece with some homework projects.




We have this thing happening in Connecticut (wonder if it is all over the country) where the schools send home big projects for homework and say "work with your parents to do this". The thing is the parents sometimes have zero knowledge about the subject matter or skills (i.e. fine art techniques). The parents are sometimes left groping in the dark unless they are crafty and learn to use the Internet (the fastest and cheapest) to first teach themselves the information then to struggle to teach it to their kids. Two parents said to me, "I didn't want to homeschool them; I'm not a teacher, that's why I sent them to school!” Some parents I know through Scouts admit to doing the work for their child "there is no way they can do this, they don't know the information, so I have to do the homework for them". This is what public school has come to?



Last spring I was visiting my brother-in-law when voices were raised over finishing an art project. I asked if I could help. When I saw what the project was I was shocked. I offered to help but spent almost an hour researching the topic and teaching myself before then teaching it to my niece. I then had to pull the information out of her, get her opinions out, help her think about things so she could form an opinion then guide her to follow the directions.



Since that time I've helped with a total of five art projects. Yesterday I helped with a language arts project that I guess was supposed to be a literary analysis but it didn't quite hit the mark in my opinion.



The first sad thing on all these assignments is that certain words vital to the project were not understood by my niece. Such as to analyze the crime that happened in the book she was to discuss motive but didn't know what that was. I'd ask her to answer the question and then (thank goodness) she felt comfortable enough to say she couldn't answer as she didn't know what motive meant. So I'd backtrack to explain that then move forward.



I had not read this book so to prepare without any notice I used Google to search for plot summaries and analysis of the story (many were online and free). I printed off information from two sites and used that to get the gist of the story so I could pose questions.



There is a difference between teaching that is just telling the kid what to do and what the answer is. Pouring information in is not always teaching. It would have been simple for me to tell her all the answers then tell her how to write them out well, but I didn't.



I sat and asked her the information. What were the events? She then listed them. We discussed which were too minor to bother with (in the space allotted) then editing was done. Also by looking at the summary I saw some of her events were out of order so I asked her to go over it and rethink if it was all correct, and she found her errors. Peeking at my plot summary I was able to ask her "was there something with the dead body" and other such questions (the answer was a knife stabbed in the back was found).



For one part she had to interview a character and do a question and answer. I was tempted to lead her on this part but I withheld. I left her to do that all by herself later after I'd gone home. I figured she was on her own with that part since it was all from her imagination, let her use it freely. I won’t take her own opinion away from her even if I don’t like it or think the answer is ‘good enough’. When she answered the question about the famous work of art saying she would NOT hang it in her home because “the brown in the mountains doesn’t match the color of our couches” I let it stand, despite cringing inside. I just hope that somehow, some way I can get her to appreciate a work of art enough to want to hang it in her home with the color of the couches as a non-consideration.



I told her parents I'm willing to help but I'm not doing the work for her. I'm not guaranteeing all her work is correct or she'll get an A either. The grades are not my priority for my working with her.



It's just amazing sometimes how an adult (like me) can assume a student knows something when they don't. Kids are good at masking their confusion or their ignorance, especially the schooled kids, (I say this from my memory of being a schooled kid) they are trying to save face in the classroom.



This assignment was a crime scene investigation "like CSI" (she said). The assignment was done when they were perhaps 2/3 into the book so the outcome of who murdered a man was not yet known. This analysis was not a literary analysis in the traditional way (theme, protagonist, antagonist etc.).



She had to make a poster with headings then bullet point information underneath typed out on the computer and glued on. "The teacher refuses to accept handwritten work she says she hates our handwriting."



It was said that the use of creativity and artwork on the poster, and if it was handed in before Friday would give extra credit. This artwork was interpreted by she and her parents to be stencils of headings and scrapbook stickers of ships on the poster board.



I don't do projects like this with my homeschooled children. To be honest that assignment seemed stupid to me. Neither my kids or I wants to do projects like make a poster to display information to be communicated. I'm not sure what this was, perhaps a fancy reading comprehension exercise? Logical thinking? Prediction? I don't know.



Some of the assignments she's had for art class involve writing papers and sharing opinion. The topics are all new and my niece swears none of the content was taught in class. For example analyzing and critiquing a painting from Ancient China with significant historical meaning when they haven't learned a single thing about China and when none of the art terms were understood (tone, color scheme, texture). When I asked what they do in art class I was told "we listen to music and do freewrites in a journal". How can a student analyze an abstract expressionist famous art work when nothing is known about abstract expressionism? Or to recreate an art work of Van Gogh's in the style of Henri Matisse when the student has no clue what Henri Matisse's work looks like?



My goal is not to help my niece get A's on her assignments. I'd like for her to be able to think logically and form her own opinions. Going into the book project she proclaimed the book stunk and that it's a "boy book" (it's a Newbery award winner with a strong girl main character). I hope she likes the ending and winds up liking the story (and reading and books). Going into the art projects she was worried about making it "look right" and totally missing the concept that collage in the style of Matisse need not be all planned out and perfect. The idea of cutting designs out of colored paper with scissors without pre-tracing it was scary to her. I gave her permission to "just do it" and that making mistakes was okay, if it was really bad all she had to do was grab a new sheet and try again (how liberating!).



I'd like her to not hate art, to find some of art history funny or thought-provoking. I did have her laughing about Robert Rauschenberg's "Erased de Kooning" so there is hope. (Watch this video interview with Rauschenberg, I hope you will smile and laugh as we both did.) I did have to watch it alone first, then pause it when she watched it with me to explain certain things and give some background information that I knew from my own personal research of this art movement for my own pleasure in the past. Time will tell if she'll get the question correct asking what the author was thinking. She wrote what he said on the interview, a part of me is convinced the art teacher may mark it incorrect.



I am happy to help my niece with her homework. Any effort toward getting her to be a thinking person who realizes she can learn anything she wants to if she only researches it. I'd like her to see books and art and history and science as interesting topics not just boring school classes with dumb homework assignments. I want her to have some curiosity about things other than the latest trends in technology, music, and clothing. I guess what I want is for her to realize that learning happens outside of the school walls and sometimes learning in the real world with non-school materials is bigger and better and even sometimes fun. Her parents hope that my helping here and there will get her higher grades. I think it's okay that our priorities are a bit different. I feel pretty safe that by doing the work and learning and following the directions in the assignment the teacher would be hard pressed to give a grade lower than a B+.



I don't know if anything I do can help my niece get to that place of loving learning; at this point she hates school despite formerly loving it in the early elementary grades. So in the mean time her assignments for public school have me thinking about education and schooling and learning and about my goals and our process for homeschooling my own children.