Worst Homework Assignments Your Kids Have Had

[jaybirdsmommy]

Spelling.....anything to do with spelling. Learn the words, write sentences with them, draw pictures with them, anything to do with spelling.

 

[Magical2017]

Not really homework but my kids high school required 100 hours of community service over the four years to graduate. The school had a number of options that they had set up, or you choose your own, but it had to be approved by the school. Some parents were upset by that requirement. If your child was not yet 16, an adult had to go with them to supervise at a number of places. My daughter volunteered at the Food Bank, the Homeless Shelter and the Salvation Army. All were from the schools list of pre-approved places I went on all of hers. My son found his own, coaching Junior High flag football in the parochial league. That one did not require an adult present, and was near our house, I just had to get him there. They practiced for two hours four days a week after school, and had a 2 hour game every Friday. He got an extra rope on his Graduation robe because he did about four times the community service hours he needed.

We have 75hours of mandatory service-learning in our state as a graduation requirement. I personally love this because the whole family can get involved, but it is not feasible for all families. The schools allow some of it to get done at school with class and after school projects that help the community, but I am not sure what that involves. They start in middle school. I think one of the volunteer opportunities was over the summer and included transportation to and from the venues.

 

[Becky2005]

It was the leaf project for my kids! It was a 3rd or 4th grade project that *all* the kids did at that grade. I was overjoyed when kid #4 didn't seem to have this assignment! You had to go gather a bunch of different leaves, glue them down, identify where you found it, and something else I recall all made into a binder. Doesn't sound horrible until you realize 99.9% of the trees in our area are Maple and evergreens and you weren't allowed to duplicate. We had to go around many places to find what we could (I don't think we even found the number they wanted). Plus, I am not going to let my kids just go pull leaves off of people's trees in their yards! You aren't really supposed to do that in forest preserves either.

I despised that project so much! I think for kid #3, they had made it much shorter as I don't remember it as distinctly as I do for my first 2 and I know kid #4 didn't do the project at all because I was dreading it and kept waiting for it to show up!

 

[Turn the Page]

My now grad school daugher was being taught common core math processes in middle school. The process to complete fairly simple operations was intensly complicated and was very prone to create errors.

I met with the teacher and explained that, as a managing engineer, if I ever caught any of my junior engineers trying to do math this way, I'd instantly fire them. It's a waste of time and overyly complicates easy problems creating massive opportunity for error.

She couldn't grasp what a complete boondoggle common core math was. Argued with me about it's benefits saying that knowing the process was more important than the result.

SMH

I'm curious what it was you expected the classroom teacher to do about it. She was mandated by the school board, the local or more likely state board, to teach a particular curriculum or set of standards. What was complaining to her going to accomplish?

 

[geargrinder]

I'm curious what it was you expected the classroom teacher to do about it. She was mandated by the school board, the local or more likely state board, to teach a particular curriculum or set of standards. What was complaining to her going to accomplish?

It wanted them to understand or even acknoledge my concern. All I got back was arrogant push-back.

My point was the teacher's and most of the staff's attitude of "they know what's best for my child." They only want a parent's involvement in education when you agree with what they are doing. They want parents to sit back and be silent if you disagree.

It was the first step in my complaining about the cirriculum in the entire chain. Next was the principle. After that was the school district. Finally was the school board. None of which accomplished anything. They system is programmed to advance with rigid momentum.