![\"Boat\"](\"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Boat.jpg\")
We understand the principle of the math packet. Kids do a bit of algebra over the summer so they keep their math brains engaged and start up Algebra II with all gears running. It\u2019s a nice idea, in principle. In reality, it\u2019s something else, and my heart goes out to families facing the end-of-summer homework crunch.<\/p>\n
The first problem is that some kids, (like upcoming tenth graders, who last had Algebra I a year ago, in eighth grade, before an intervening year of geometry), aren\u2019t refreshing; they have to re-learn the math. It\u2019s hard to learn math on your own, off of a sheet of problems. I know one mom who is going by the middle school this week to try to borrow her son\u2019s old eighth grade algebra textbook.<\/p>\n
The second problem is that a lot of kids, like their parents, procrastinate, which means they try to do two months’ worth of summer homework in the two days before school begins. They have to parse time between that math packet and the assigned summer reading (Gladwell\u2019s Outliers<\/em>) just when they\u2019re supposed to be focusing on Grama\u2019s visit during the last week of vacation. They end vacation with a big dose of stress right before school begins.<\/p>\n The third problem is that some of the kids won\u2019t do the summer homework at all, for whatever reason. They\u2019ll arrive at school already feeling behind. They\u2019ll sense that the other, prepared kids have earned their teachers\u2019 approval and bonus points. They\u2019ll feel embarrassed when they don\u2019t know something that\u2019s being discussed and they won\u2019t know if that thing was covered in the summer homework or not, so they won\u2019t ask for clarification. They\u2019ll start out with a familiar sense of failure before they learn one new thing.<\/p>\n I\u2019m all for summer learning, but I don\u2019t think required summer homework is the answer. Optional<\/em> summer homework would be better. Best of all would be no homework, but a long list of recommended books, libraries, beaches, bike trails, tubing rivers, swimming holes, and state parks. It\u2019s important to let our kids play and explore their own minds. Maybe then they could start school refreshed and eager for more new ideas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We understand the principle of the math packet. Kids do a bit of algebra over the summer so they keep their math brains engaged and start up Algebra II with all gears running. It\u2019s a nice idea, in principle. In reality, it\u2019s something else, and my heart goes out to families facing the end-of-summer homework […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[55],"class_list":["post-4227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous","tag-school"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4227"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4232,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4227\/revisions\/4232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}