Both boys had a good day at school but Elliott’s a bit frustrated over his homework for the week. Homework proves to be a struggle when he has four days in which to do it. I’ve written about this countless times.
Elliott is frustrated because it’s a short school week and yet they’re given the same amount of homework to do.
I can understand his frustration and I’m not quite sure of the logic that goes into the decision to do this. If homework is a problem on a full week, why not reduce the amount proportionally on a short week?
That seems reasonable to me, because I know Elliott’s far from the only one who struggles with homework in his class.
We’ll help Elliott to get as much done as he can but it’s not worth distressing him the point of a meltdown. Elliott’s way ahead of his class and his last report card was the equivalent of straight A’s. I’m not worried about him academically..
That said, we are going to make an honest effort to get this done.
I’m so over this whole homework thing though and counting the days until I don’t have to worry about it for the summer.
Kim nailed this one. It is fantastic that Elliot is doing well academically. His intelligence has and will serve him well. But in a way, that makes the fact that he struggles to get homework done all the more unfortunate, since it’s in no way about the concepts. It’s about focusing, executive planning, or whatever specfic challenge(s) he may have. But just as some kids need homework to reinforce the concepts they learn, Elliot needs it to simply learn how to be able to sit and complete the task at hand. I would take it even further than Kim did in raising her concerns about future schooling- what about life in general? I’ve got this guy on my team at work- brilliant guy, but I can’t rely on him to get things done because he just can’t get himself organized – he’s all over the place. Now being the enlightened guy I am I sort of understand what the issues are with this guy but the fact remains that he’s a detriment to the team, no matter how smart he is, since I know that tasks have to be broken down for him in an impractical way that we just don’t have time for…
Anyway, I know that you work hard with trying to make sure homework gets done. But just remember completing it serves a different purpose for him than a strictly academic one.
Best of luck.
Thanks Jimmy. Hope all is well on your end. One of the things we recently realized and I hadn’t remembered to share, is that Elliott is often getting homework that relates to topics he hasn’t learned yet. This is especially true in Math.
When we were dealing with IEP’s this year, his teachers explained that Elliott is so far ahead, they are having to continually increase the challenge for him. Elliott informed us the other day that his Math homework on fractions, we’re things they hadn’t learned about yet.
We’ve chosen to put the focus on using homework to teach things like time management.
While I understand the logic in Elliott questioning the amount of homework for the shortened week, I think you might be doing him a disservice by thinking that homework isn’t a huge deal because he’s doing well academically. At some point, the boys are going to leave their school and more will be expected of them. It may not happen until they reach college, but it will happen. If Elliott isn’t given the tools to learn how to buckle down and do the work now, how will he ever be expected to make it beyond the walls of their current school? I am very curious what the school is doing to make sure that the kids leaving it will be able to survive at the next level. Their school goes through what, 8th grade? What happens after that? Elliott really doesn’t have too much time left in this current environment.
I agree with you Kim. The problem is more to do with reaching the limits of what he can cope with in a given day.
I absolutely agree with you. He needs to be able to do these things. Generally speaking, he’s doing better with homework. We gave to stay in him to get it done but it’s not the knock down drag out brawl it used to be.
The problem I believe is that most of the teachers aren’t actually special needs teachers. Emmett’s teacher is actually special needs and she handles homework very differently.
After 8th grade, there’s the high school. Lizze and I aren’t super thrilled with the high school.. I’m not sure what we’re going to do at this point.
Kim nailed this one. It is fantastic that Elliot is doing well academically. His intelligence has and will serve him well. But in a way, that makes the fact that he struggles to get homework done all the more unfortunate, since it’s in no way about the concepts. It’s about focusing, executive planning, or whatever specfic challenge(s) he may have. But just as some kids need homework to reinforce the concepts they learn, Elliot needs it to simply learn how to be able to sit and complete the task at hand. I would take it even further than Kim did in raising her concerns about future schooling- what about life in general? I’ve got this guy on my team at work- brilliant guy, but I can’t rely on him to get things done because he just can’t get himself organized – he’s all over the place. Now being the enlightened guy I am I sort of understand what the issues are with this guy but the fact remains that he’s a detriment to the team, no matter how smart he is, since I know that tasks have to be broken down for him in an impractical way that we just don’t have time for…
Anyway, I know that you work hard with trying to make sure homework gets done. But just remember completing it serves a different purpose for him than a strictly academic one.
Best of luck.
Thanks Jimmy. Hope all is well on your end. One of the things we recently realized and I hadn’t remembered to share, is that Elliott is often getting homework that relates to topics he hasn’t learned yet. This is especially true in Math.
When we were dealing with IEP’s this year, his teachers explained that Elliott is so far ahead, they are having to continually increase the challenge for him. Elliott informed us the other day that his Math homework on fractions, we’re things they hadn’t learned about yet.
We’ve chosen to put the focus on using homework to teach things like time management.
While I understand the logic in Elliott questioning the amount of homework for the shortened week, I think you might be doing him a disservice by thinking that homework isn’t a huge deal because he’s doing well academically. At some point, the boys are going to leave their school and more will be expected of them. It may not happen until they reach college, but it will happen. If Elliott isn’t given the tools to learn how to buckle down and do the work now, how will he ever be expected to make it beyond the walls of their current school? I am very curious what the school is doing to make sure that the kids leaving it will be able to survive at the next level. Their school goes through what, 8th grade? What happens after that? Elliott really doesn’t have too much time left in this current environment.
I agree with you Kim. The problem is more to do with reaching the limits of what he can cope with in a given day.
I absolutely agree with you. He needs to be able to do these things. Generally speaking, he’s doing better with homework. We gave to stay in him to get it done but it’s not the knock down drag out brawl it used to be.
The problem I believe is that most of the teachers aren’t actually special needs teachers. Emmett’s teacher is actually special needs and she handles homework very differently.
After 8th grade, there’s the high school. Lizze and I aren’t super thrilled with the high school.. I’m not sure what we’re going to do at this point.