Since the beginning of this particular school year I have heard much chatter in the online parenting groups that parents are frustrated with the new way schools are teaching math. The main reason is that schools are now teaching new methods and vocabulary that we as parents have never seen before.
My school aged children are in 1st and 3rd grade and I’ve often had to search the internet to figure out how to help them with their homework; a few times I have failed to come to an answer. I have 3 bachelors degrees, so you would think first grade math shouldn’t be that hard for me to figure out, right?! But unfortunately I learned how to add 2+2 differently than they are expecting the kids to learn it now. This is magnified for parents that may not have the internet to look up new vocabulary nor the education background to teach their kids how to do the problems in any way, new or old. This is only going to widen the already large achievement gap we have in Rochester, a city that is riddled with poverty with a school district that has a problem with truancy and the lowest academic proficiency in Western New York. I can imagine it’s only going to get harder for me (and others) as the years progress and the work gets harder.
EngageNY has a website that is geared towards informing parents of the modules their children are doing, but the website is difficult to navigate and I’ve yet to actually ever find what I’m looking for upon visiting the site (and I consider myself pretty proficient online), so in reality it is not very helpful at all.
I propose that teachers send home quick reference glossary-style guides to every parent that includes key Math and English terms. This guide has to be something that is a hard copy, and not just online, so it’s available to everyone. Many parents in our urban district may have never heard of an array or know the difference between a row and a column or know quite what a long vowel is or what plurals are. Little guidebooks or even monthly newsletters would be a perfect way to help parents be informed and knowledgeable enough to sit down and do homework with our kids.
I also ask that you are mindful of the directions that you give at the top of the paper. If you want students to show all their work then write show your work. If you want students to write in complete sentences, then write that in the instructions. Homework instructions should stand on their own each day so that they can be solved at home even when the students didn’t grasp the work in class time, or were truant etc.. Let us be helpers to our children. I know that teachers don’t always author the worksheets that are sent home, but it’s frustrating for parents when the instructions are not complete and a waste of a complete evening if we can’t figure it out.
If we as parents can aid our children with their homework it is only going to make the process and your lessons flow much smoother.
Last year I attended an RCSD family day program at the Memorial Art Gallery and they did give a booklet to parents (there was only a handful of parents there)of math terms and a booklet about internet safety, so I know this is something that is possible to give out. I have yet to be given anything similar in my five years as an RCSD parent from classroom teachers. It’s possibly a good request to make of your school’s PTO or PTA or something to seek donations or create fundraising events for.
Something Like This Would Be Perfect
