Skip to main content

Homework = Tears? What's the upstream problem?

 


Tell me if you've heard this one before...

          Parent and child at the table working on child's homework. 
          Child becomes frustrated and begins to cry
          Parent becomes equally (or more) frustrated by the tears/the                      assignment/both. 

        Sound familiar? 
      
  It's pretty common, but let's ask a new question - what's the upstream problem?  


Not familiar with the idea of "upstream problems"? It was new to me until very recently - but the best description I've heard is this: 

There's a town in which every evening a child washes up on the banks of the local river. Every day the fire department rescues the child and is lauded as heroes. 
One day a new fire chief takes over. After a week, he throws up his hands and just as the child washes up, he hops in, saves the child, but doesn't stay for the celebration. Instead he marches upstream. 
When he's questioned on his way out of town he responds, "Why keep saving kids if I can figure out who's throwing them in upstream?"

If homework (or virtual schooling) is causing tears in your house on a regular (or even sporadic) basis, ask yourself, "What's the upstream problem?"


The answer will vary based on the age of your child, but here's a quick list of questions you could ask yourself when dealing with the homework meltdown.

*Early grade elementary - has your child had a chance to be outside, be wild, be a kid yet today? Have they had something to eat recently? 

*Late grade elementary - has your child been sitting in the same place for a long time - can you find a change of scenery? Has your child felt some academic/school success recently - can you find a way for them to feel that? 

*Middle and High school - has your child been working on the same problem for longer than their age in minutes? Have they had some significant "unconscious think time" on the problem or task? 

For any grade, check out these suggestions for easing the homework stress: 




Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Keep, Borrow, Change...Right?

Subtraction - Take Aways - Whatever you call it this is the first "big" hurdle for many students in a long race of mathematics. It turns out that this first hurdle is often the first time parents seem to get beyond frustrated with the MANY ways students are presented with solving a subtraction problem. All of the skills you'll see in this video are essentially shortcuts that many discover on their own through mental math and practice. By presenting them to students at a young age they become more and more comfortable with numbers and their reasoning and number sense improves overall.  Enjoy!
Post a Comment
Read more

Cognitive Dissonance - adapting to new information

The last year or so has shown us all a lot about the world we live in and the people we share it with. It's interesting to see how tightly individuals may cling to ideas or beliefs that have later been shown to be inaccurate and have been updated. That's the scientific method in a nutshell - make a prediction, test it, learn something, adjust. Math works the same way, but I'm seeing that the "adjust" step is becoming harder and harder for students to make.  I had an experience in my Algebra class that sort of outlined the apparent push to reject what is proven in favor of what makes us comfortable (more about that in the video) and it got me thinking. This whole math education thing (or compulsory schooling in general) isn't about cramming kids' heads full of information. It's more about opening them up to conflicting ideas (cognitive dissonance for all you psychology/education fans out there) and giving them the tools to determine true from false, fac...
Post a Comment
Read more