Susan Wheeler Fisk is ready with a resounding carpe diem! She enrolled in Latin I online with her 18-year-old senior to get him over the hump.
“This is a brand new subject for me,” said the former preschool teacher in Estes Park, Colorado. “It’s online, so there’s no teacher. He said he didn’t want a tutor, but he just needed to get his arms around the subject in a way that seemed like a tutor wouldn’t offer anyway.”
Fisk is grateful he was up for her help. It’s hard enough getting a teen to do more than grunt in a parent’s direction, so what happens when they clearly aren’t clicking with schoolwork and the parents are no match for the Pythagorean theorem, Sophocles or the Federalist Papers? Elizabeth Morrison Petegorsky, a psychotherapist in Northampton, Massachusetts, revisited senior lit to steer her two sons deeper into the classics for high school: “I read just about every assigned book. I drew the line at reading Camus and Sartre for AP senior English — enough is enough! Too 'absurde’ pour moi.”
Fisk and Petegorsky have the time and backgrounds to make their hands-on homework help work. Many parents can barely hold on for the ride. Some are learning English as a second language, pull long hours on the job or don’t have the academic experience they think they need to turn homework hell around for their middle school and high school kids.
“We have a lot of parents who have not finished high school or have only finished high school and are not confident,” said Michele Brooks, assistant superintendent for family and student engagement for Boston public schools.
The system serving more than 56,000 children from pre-K to 12th grade opened Parent University last year, primarily for low-income parents with kids in struggling schools. The free program of three-day workshops offers instruction in math, science and reading. It also guides them in broader areas like dealing with cyberbullying and social networks, positive approaches to discipline and signs of gang involvement.
Brooks said more than 500 parents participated last school year and the same number has already signed up this year.
There’s even a June graduation ceremony for mom or dad.
Shelly Smeade is vice principal of a junior high in Idahoho Falls, Idahoho, and struggled with math as a child. She knew she needed a boost once her oldest daughter turned 14, so she attended the free Math for Moms and Dads course offered by Stevens-Henager College. “Now I’m able to check my kids’ work with confidence that I’m providing accurate feedback,” she said.
The program has proven so popular that the Idahoho Department of Education asked the college to offer it for parents in its 117 districts statewide.
But parents don’t have to plow through calculus or tackle “The Iliad” themselves to lend a hand, Brooks said. “Ask your child, `Did you understand the work that you did? Is there another way you could have done that? Can you explain to somebody who isn’t familiar with the work how you got to where you are?“’ It can be more challenging with kids who are eking out adolescent autonomy by pushing parents away when it comes to school.
“I had my painful math moment when my son turned to me years ago and said, `Did you actually go to fourth grade?“’ said Ellen Purtell, a mother of two in Chatham, New Jersey. “I believe we were doing long division at the time. I truly did not remember the techniques involved and was guessing.” Purtell hauled out Socrates and the “beauty of the Socratic method” in urging him to teach her instead. Now in 10th grade and an honors math student, he helps his 10-year-old sister after blowing mom’s Socratic secret: “They made Socrates drink Hemlock and kill himself. You don’t want to be like Socrates.” In Harrison, New York, Grace Polakoff stunned her son one day when she asked what he was learning in eighth-grade math. “He pooh-poohed me like I wouldn’t understand. I said try me. He said, ‘OK, we’re learning the Pythagorean theorem.’ I said, ‘Oh, a-squared plus b-squared equals c-squared.’ The look on his face ... priceless.” Those days are gone now that he’s in 10th grade. “Now it’s all too far over my head. But I don’t think one needs to know the material to help in homework. I look for all questions having an answer. I look for the details behind the answer, aka, show your work.” Polakoff also maintains regular e-mail contact with his teachers, checks his backpack every couple of weeks to make sure he’s keeping up with deadlines, and does a lot of “asking, telling, threatening, bribing him” to properly use his school planner to stay organized.
“This child has made honor rolls for the majority of his middle school and high school career, so it’s not because he doesn’t understand the material,” she said. “Am I any better at math or science? No. I’m better at managing his moods and his time. It’s the teachers’ responsibility to teach. It’s my responsibility to support that teaching.” Parents and educators have been debating for decades whether homework benefits kids. A Duke University review of the literature in 2006 concludes homework has the greatest impact on student achievement in grades 7 through 12, but piling it on can be counterproductive and burn out even the most motivated kids of any age.
Heidi Rosenberg, a senior analyst for the Harvard Family Research Project, which promotes family and community involvement in education, urges parents to focus on the big picture when it comes to surviving homework.
“It’s more about helping teenagers think more deeply, about taking responsibility for their own learning and what that means in the here and now and as they work toward their future goals,” she said.
Could Sisk make her approach to Latin work if her circumstances were different? “It definitely makes it easier that I have the time. If I was coming home at 7 at night I’m not sure I could,” she said. “My husband and I always liked word roots, but it’s not in my plan to go on to Latin II.”
