upworthy

learning

Education

Mom shares how her first grader's homework on the second day of school broke his spirit

"It's breaking their spirit and it robs them of what little fun and family time they have when they come home after a long day of school."

Photo credit: Cassi Nelson/Facebook

How much homework is too much homework?

Debates about homework are nothing new, but the ability of parents to find support for homework woes from thousands of other parents is a fairly recent phenomenon. A mom named Cassi Nelson shared a post about her first grader's homework and it quickly went viral. Nelson shared that her son had come home from his second day of school with four pages of homework, which she showed him tearfully working on at their kitchen counter.

"He already doesn’t get home from school until 4pm," she wrote. "Then he had to sit still for another hour plus to complete more work. I had to clear out the kitchen so he could focus. His little legs kept bouncing up and down, he was bursting with so much energy just wanting to go play. Then he broke my heart when he looked up at me with his big teary doe eyes and asked…. 'Mommy when you were little did you get distracted a lot too?!' Yes sweet baby, mommy sure did too! I don’t know how ppl expect little children to sit at school all day long and then ALSO come home to sit and do MORE work too…."

Nelson tells Upworthy that she was "shocked" that kindergarteners and first graders have homework, much less the amount they were expected to do. "We didn't have homework like this when we were in these younger grades."

Expert opinion and research is somewhat mixed on the homework front, but there isn't any conclusive evidence that homework is universally beneficial for students and too much homework can actually be harmful. As a standard, the National Education Association (NEA) and the National Parent Teacher Association (NPTA) support a limit on homework of “10 minutes of homework per grade level."

With that as a guide, a first grader shouldn't have more than 10 minutes of homework on any given school day, but it's not unusual for young kids to have two or three times the recommended limit of homework. That can be stressful for both kids and parents, cutting into valuable family time and limiting kids' time to decompress, play and freely engage in imaginative activity.

As Nelson concluded, "It’s breaking their spirit and it robs them of what little fun and family time they have when they come home after a long day of school."

Most parents and even most teachers in the comments agreed with her that four pages of homework is too much for a first grader, especially on only the second day of school:

"Poor little man. Children below a certain grade should not be given homework! Small children have a hard time sitting still for a long period of time yet alone expected to sit and do hours of homework, for what??? They are SMALL CHILDREN! Let them snack, play, laugh and all the other fun things when they get home. You are only a child once, they don't need that taken away from them. Let them embrace their inner creativity, imagination, recipes, etc."

"This breaks my spirit. Our schools are huge scams. You're exactly right Cassi. Homework is ridiculous. Kids til the age of 10 primarily learn through real life situations and play scenarios."

"I hate that for him! My little one has ADHD and doing homework after sitting in class all day is very stressful to him and makes him hate school. They are in school for 7 hours they shouldn’t have homework. That definitely takes away any kind of family time and that’s why kids never spend time with parents anymore because they have all this homework to do after being gone all day.I feel that if it can’t be done in the 7 hours they have the kids then it should wait until the next school day."

"I don’t make them do homework at home when they are that little. It’s not fair!They are at school allllll day! And it’s already sooooo much for their little bodies and brains! I’ve never had a teacher upset about it either.. and even if I did oh well!"

"That breaks my heart. 4 pages is absolutely ridiculous for young kids. My daughter is going into 2nd grade next month, the 2 years in school it was always 1 page of homework sometimes back and front if it was math. And to read."

This article originally appeared in August "I was in this boat with my son…conversation with the principal and teachers helped dramatically!! It’s too much and we have to advocate for them."

Nelson was blown away by the response to her post, which has been shared on Facebook over 89,000 times. "I NEVER thought me sharing my thoughts openly about how my heart hurt watching my little guy struggle would connect to so many others worldwide going through the same thing," she says.

Many parents shared that excessive homework is one of the reasons they decided to homeschool their children, which Nelson took to heart. The week after sharing her viral homework post, she shared that they had had their first day of homeschooling. It was "A HUGE SUCCESS!!!!" she wrote, with her son getting far more work done in a far shorter amount of time, sitting for classes for just 1 hour and 45 minutes total.

Nelson tells Upworthy she was totally intimidated to try homeschooling. "I seriously thought there was no way," she says. "But I knew I had to set my fear aside and just take the leap for my kids. I told myself I'd figure it out one way or another. And here we are three days in and it's been the easiest and best choice I've ever made."

Homeschooling is not going to the right solution for every family, however, so the question of homework remains an important issue for kids, parents, teachers and schools to work out.


This article originally appeared in August

From Your Site Articles
education
Education

Former teacher gets blunt about the 'denial' some parents have about their kids education

"They're more concerned about the optics…than about taking care of the child's needs."

@bodacious.bobo/TikTok

A former teacher breaks downt he "denial" some parents have about their kid's academic performance

Many kids are seriously struggling in school. According to US News, an estimated 49% of public students started off the 2022-2023 school year behind in at least one subject as last year. That’s only a small fraction better than the 50% of students behind in the previous year.

And while there are several factors contributing to this issue—recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, a lack of resources for many public schools, a teacher shortage, etc.—several educators feel that a majorly overlooked aspect is the parents' involvement, or lack thereof, in their child’s education.

Recently, one former teacher bluntly stated that it was parents' “denial” that’s to blame. Odion, who now works as a flight attendant, made her case in response to another teacher asking parents “Why don’t y’all know that your kids aren’t performing on their grade level?” on TikTok.

In the original video, the teacher (@qbthedon) laments that even though he teaches 7th grade, most of them still perform on a 4th grade level, and, despite his efforts, those kids still move onto the next grade. The worst part is that the parents don’t seem to be aware that their kids are struggling.

@qbthedon Lets chat!! #fyp #viral #teachertok ♬ original sound - QBSkiiii

This lack of awareness and engagement dates back further than the pandemic years, says Odion, who taught Pre-K and Kindergarten in 2013.

Case in point: parent-teacher conference nights, where virtually no parent would show up. Odion then recalled one father who did attend with his daughter, called Tia for the story, but would not believe that Tia did not know the full alphabet.

"In kindergarten, you have to at least know, I think it was 80% of the 52 letters, as in uppercase and lowercase, and you have to be able to identify at random. So, I'm telling the dad that she barely knows 10 letters. And he's in denial. 'Nah, you know, she knows her letters,'" Odion says.

She then acts out that night, using a makeshift flashcard like she did to test Tia.

"I literally said, 'What letter is this?'” Odion says while holding up the letter “M.” “She said something that's not it. Put another one down. 'What letter is this?' She don't know it."

teaching

"I literally said, 'What letter is this?'”

@bodacious.bobo/TikTok

Even still, the dad insisted that Tia knew her letters, then eventually blamed Tia’s older brother, who, despite only being a sixth grader himself, was apparently “supposed to teach her.”

“It is not up to a child in elementary school, or middle school, or really any of your older kids, as someone who's an older child... It is not up to the kids to teach younger kids,” Odion says in the clip.

Using another example, Odion states that a fifth grader in her class was reading at a kindergarten level and could only process basic sentences like “I see you” and “I like to see.”

In this instance, the students should be held back in order to fully learn the year’s curriculum. But Odion argues that parents fight against it “because they are more concerned about the optics of a child being held back than actually taking care of the child's needs."

parenting

"Parents, y'all can't be backseat drivers about your child's learning."

@bodacious.bobo/TikTok

In this instance, the students should be held back in order to fully learn the year’s curriculum. But Odion argues that parents fight against it “because they are more concerned about the optics of a child being held back than actually taking care of the child's needs."

While the research shows that holding kids back a grade doesn’t necessarily improve their academic performance, and that there are pros and cons either way, the biggest point Odion seems to be trying to make is that parents need to be more proactive in their child’s education.

"Parents, y'all can't be backseat drivers about your child's learning. You have to help reinforce it at home. You put a kid in front of that phone or iPad whenever they come home, it better be on YouTube, and it better be learning about letters and sight words. You can't tell me you can't read to the kid. It takes 10 minutes to read to the kid. No one is that busy,” she concludes.

Watch the full video below:

@bodacious_bobo #stitch with @QBSkiiii ♬ original sound - Odion • $OdionE

This article originally appeared on 1.5.24

From Your Site Articles
learning
Education

Watching kids do lightning fast mental math is both mesmerizing and mind-blowing

Their finger twitching looks random, but WOW is it impressive.

Digamarthi Sri Ramakanth/Wikimedia Commons

2003 UCMAS National Abacus & Mental Arithmetic Competition

In the age of calculators and smartphones, it's become less necessary to do math in your head than it used to be, but that doesn't mean mental math is useless. Knowing how to calculate in your head can be handy, and if you're lucky enough to learn mental abacus skills from a young age, it can be wicked fast as well.

Video of students demonstrating how quickly they can calculate numbers in their head are blowing people's minds, as the method is completely foreign for many of us. The use of a physical abacus isn't generally taught in the United States, other than perhaps a basic introduction to how it works. But precious few of us ever get to see how the ancient counter gets used for mental math.

The concept is simple and can be taught from a young age, but it takes a bit of time and practice to perfect. Watch what it looks like for basic addition and subtraction at lightning speed, though:

If you don't know what they're doing, it looks like students are just randomly flicking their fingers and wrists. But they are actually envisioning the abacus while they move their fingers, as if they were actually using one.

There are various methods of finger calculations that make use of abacus concepts. Watch another method that uses both hands in action:

Even very young children can calculate large sums very quickly using these abacus-based mental math methods. Watch these little superstars add two-digit to four-digit numbers like it's nothing.

How do they do it?

Much of the skill here requires a solid understanding of how an abacus is used to calculate and lots of practice with the physical movements of calculating with it. That's not exactly simple to explain, as it take a couple of years of practice using an abacus—for these mental calculations, specifically the Japanese soroban abacus—to gain the skills needed to be able to calculate quickly. BBC Global shares how such practices are taught in Japan, not only for mental math but for overall cognitive memory:

Abacus mental math programs online recommend learning it between the ages of 5 to 13. It is possible to learn at older ages, but it might take longer to master compared to younger students.

But if there's a finger method you want to try for addition and subtraction up to 99, one that's simple and quick to learn is called chisanbop, in which ones are counted on one hand and 10s are counted on the other. Here's an explainer video that shows how it works:

Chisanbop!

Most of us carry calculators around in our pockets with us at all time, so such practices may feel like a waste of time. But learning new skills that tax our brain is like a workout for our mind, so it's not a bad idea to give things like this a spin. Even if we don't learn to calculate large numbers in the blink of an eye, we can at least exercise our mental muscles to keep our brains healthier. And who knows, maybe we'll get a party trick or two out of it as well.

From Your Site Articles
education
Pop Culture

People are sharing 'hard-hitting' life lessons they wish they'd learned earlier

The older you get, the clearer certain lessons become.

Canva

Lots of people have regrets about not prioritizing their personal lives.

Sometimes life feels like a nonstop string of lessons we need to learn in order to be the best humans we can be. And much to our frustration, some of those lessons get repeated over and over, and some of our learning comes far later than we wish it would have.

Learning firsthand is often necessary for our own growth, but sometimes we can glean wisdom from what others have learned, especially folks who have been around a while. Older doesn't always mean wiser, but there are some things that age and experience offer that can be useful for younger people to pay heed to.

A Reddit user posted on Ask Reddit, "What's a hard hitting life lesson you learned way too late in life?" and people chimed in with some valuable insights. Some of the answers clearly came from a place of feeling hurt or beaten down, but the most popular answers are little gold nuggets we may have seen but not picked up ourselves.

Here are some of the top answers:

1. It's okay to say "no."

"The importance of setting boundaries and saying no. Turns out, people won't love you more for sacrificing your own well-being to please them. Wish I had known that sooner, would've saved a lot of unnecessary stress and burnt-out moments." – HappyPenguin112

""No." is a complete and perfectly acceptable sentence. I struggle with this myself regularly." – phlostonsparadise123

"If anything, setting boundaries and saying no will earn you MORE respect than saying yes." – Nonrandomusername19

"There are so many benefits to learning to say no. Even just the time saved alone from things that don't serve you." – LilyLove_xoxo

2. Work-life balance isn't negotiable.

"Work life balance is critical, and hustle culture is stupid. The only people who notice all those extra hours you put in at work are your family and friends." – GigabitISDN

"'I work 80 hours a week!' '40s are nothing' Yep. Yep… that’s why your wife divorced you and you never see your kids. Because you put your job over them." – slamuri

"Seriously. I had a CAREER. I trained up within the company, I got certified as a professional in the industry, and I was doing well and was well liked. It was a crazy busy and high paced job though, and I wasn't able to stay on top of it all without giving myself to it almost constantly. Checking emails at home, and even my time off that was time with my family turned into time spent panicking about work and how I will get everything done and make everyone happy.

I couldn't stand it anymore and abruptly left the industry. Now I have a better paying job that is more my speed, a true 8 hour day, and doesn't take any of my personal time. Never let work take over your life; it's just work. All it does is give you the money you need to do life. Don't let it absorb your happiness." – BoobySlap_0506

3. Don't assume everyone will think or react the way you do.

"Quit expecting you from other people." – goddess_of_fear

"I’ve heard it as: Never assume other people’s brains work the same way your brain works. Because they don’t." – Invisig0th

"My version is don’t expect yourself in others. Biggest stress reliever of all time!" – iam_caiti_b

"My hardest time with this is work ethic. I was taught to have pride in every job you do- no matter how small the task, do it to your best ability.

I expect this from everyone around me as it's such a basic premise to do things well and extremely frustrating when someone does a job haphazardly." – Top_Chair5186

4. Stop comparing.

"Comparison is the thief of joy." – assinmysock

"I’d be a lot further in life if I had stopped trying to keep up with the Joneses." – abearmin

"Stop comparing where you would've been if you'd done things differently, with where you are. Just enjoy where you are. :)" – Yet_One_More_Idiot

"Or, as my grandma would say, 'There will always be someone prettier, smarter, richer, etc. than you. Think about what you HAVE rather than what you don't have and you'll be much happier.' She was right." – SweetIcedTea73

5. Just say no to the smokes.

"Smoking isn't worth it." – SweetIcedTea73

"Yyyyep! I'm watching my dad slowly after smoking his whole life. Just avoid that sh*t." – piespiesandmorepies

"Stop for your children. They need you more than you need the nicotine and lung cancer. You've got this." – techzeus

"This is the one folks." – Pun_dimen

What lesson do you wish you had learned earlier?


From Your Site Articles
life lessons
Trending Stories