Hellobee Boards

This is normal for some schools and not for others. We had one school like this and one not.

This honestly doesn’t sound too bad to me - do you think you’re just overwhelmed with everything right now and because this is new it seems like a lot? Could you do the 15 minutes of reading at bedtime so it’s some nice calm-down bonding time together, and then it’s scheduled? Initialing the binder is a habit you’ll just need to get into, but I wouldn’t feel bad about missing it one day.

That being said, I like a lot of communication from the teacher, so this sounds great to me.

@ShootingStar: DD is only 4, but my first thought when reading your post was omg, I'm not ready for that level of engagement. Yikes.

The messaging feels overwhelming to me. Also, the circling where you forgot would irritate me! It feels a bit passive aggressive to me.

@ShootingStar: totally depends on the individual teacher. My oldest daughter’s teacher last year didn’t send much communication at all, about anything. I mean, they had homework and a folder, but we never got messages online and very, very rarely got emails. I hear most everything from my daughter, so I was fine with it, but I knew a few moms of her classmates that wanted a lot more communication.

So there’s going to be teachers who do things you don’t like, but other parents will love it. There’s not really a general consensus on “enough” vs “too much”. Just like when we did virtual learning last spring—for us, it was just enough. But some parents on our class wanted way more and some other parents were very overwhelmed and thought it was already too much. 🤷‍♀️

Teachers are usually evaluated multiple times a year and one of those elements is often parent communication. Furthermore, districts evaluate schools, and one of the elements is family engagement.

I personally err always on the side of over-communication as a teacher, but NOT in terms of requirements. I use Remind and email weekly in normal times (almost daily Remind now while virtual.) As a school policy, we have to have parents sign progress reports 1x a month, and that's the only parent requirement, but I'm middle school.

I personally am opposed to homework at the K / 1 level, bc any homework at that age is homework for the parents. I'm not doing that and I plan to clearly inform the teacher. I also plan to pre-sign most things.

I would just reach out to the teacher and explain your situation. Tell her what you are looking for in terms of communication and what you can reasonably be expected to do with everything else that you have going on.

I’m a K teacher and it’s a fine line to walk... some parents want ALL the commutation, while others just want the absolute necessities. This year more than ever I would want to minimize families’ anxieties - so if I had a parent reach out that they were struggling I would certainly be receptive.

Good luck!

I agree this is very teacher-specific, and that some parents might really like this. I’m more like you in that I don’t even like having to check their folder everyday. I think part of it is that having to check a folder is so foreign—if it was emailed to me I could quickly do it while at work or before bed.

They have no way of tracking how much you read and that’s the sort of thing you can blow off (I wouldn’t blow off reading—just don’t worry if it’s 10 minutes one day and 30 the next).

Having to practice spelling is hard. I make a set of flash cards in the beginning of the week and some weeks we do them at breakfast or before bed, and other weeks I don’t remember until the morning of the spelling test. So I made it my daughter’s responsibility—if she cares about doing well on the rest, she’ll practice the words if I don’t remember.

I would also email the teacher. When we went remote I was so overwhelmed with working FT, being pregnant, and having to teach 2 kids all at home that I broke down sobbing and emailed the teacher to explain how overwhelmed I was, what our situation was, and to ask what was really required/necessary (like what if I forgot to hit submit on Google classroom since my daughter couldn’t figure that part out). Teacher was very understanding and let me know what was/wasn’t important.

I would contact the teacher. I wouldn’t complain I would just send a message saying you appreciate how much time and effort she puts into communicating with parents, however due to family circumstances you will be unable to provide a daily check in. State that if there is a behavior problem or concern she should reach out but absent that you look forward to hearing more about your son at the teachers conference. Who knows if the teacher feels forced into this (in my mind) ridiculous system and will secretly be relieved. If your son is in a public school there is nothing they can do beside silently judge you. Also I would tell them your family is opting out if homework for your kid. There is tons of research showing it’s not beneficial at these ages and it sounds like it’s just adding stress to your family at an already stressful time. Tell the teacher that you regularly read to your son and will continue to do so. I was a huge rule follower as a student so I had to fight the urge to make my son do stuff like this. But ask yourself if any of this benefits your son, the school or the teacher in any way. Forcing our kids to do homework at these early (IMO) sets up this dynamic that parents are in going to be on top of this for you. They shouldn’t assign it until kids are old enough to take responsibility and then it should be between the kids and the teachers with parents available if the kid asks for help. Again, this teacher may think homework for 1st graders is ridiculous as well but feel pressured to give it. You can absolutely be supportive of your kiddo as a learner and be respectful of the teacher while opting out of this stuff.

ANNEM1990 raises a really good point about not wanting to undermine respect for the teacher or give the impression your son can opt out of work he doesn’t like. I still believe continuing with mandatory nightly reading will do more harm than good—turning the experience of reading together from enjoyment and connection to stress and drudgery-not something we want our kids to associate with reading. Absolutely don’t tell your kid “this reading homework is ridiculous and we’re not doing it.” Instead something like “we and teacher x both agree that reading is really important and we’ve decided that right now in our family it works best to continue picking our own books to read at home.” If other kids find out I’m not sure what the big fallout would be-perhaps their parents also asking to be excused from this? Would that be a bad thing? Again, this is a far cry from second guessing every teacher decision inside the classroom or telling a 4th grader he doesn’t have to do math homework. Just food for thought. And absolutely bend over backwards to be kind and appreciative to the teacher—all our educators are working so hard for our kids under huge challenges right now.

My son was in kindergarten last year, and I received emails from our teacher maybe twice a week with class info and announcements. We didn't have any apps to use. He did bring home a folder every day, and I was expected to initial his behavior each night. I did it while checking his folder for any homework or messages from the school. His homework was mostly reading each night, so it wasn't too intense.

He's in 1st grade now but is doing remote learning, so the communication is much different. I get daily emails and messages through our online learning platform. Everything is done digitally. There's no behavior chart, but I'm sure the teacher would let me know if there's any problems in that area.

@ShootingStar: lol, the pre-initialing made me laugh. In Grade 1, we got a note in my kid’s agenda every day (usually written by the kids). It was usually a reminder that it was library day or something like that. Reading (where she read) didn’t start until Oct and probably was so that families didn’t feel overwhelmed at the beginning. Homework was only 15-20 min over the weekend. Nothing on weekdays, but I’m in Canada and we don’t do crazy amounts of homework like they do in the US.

@ShootingStar: i think that’s a great idea! Part of learning to read is the comprehension aspect, so recording his thoughts totally has value. Last year, during virtual grade 1, my daughter got to respond to lots of things via video recording.

I’ll post my response to “how’s it going”: curious to see how other parents view these tasks, how you all handle them.

In between the last thread and now, My kids started back to school in person. They are in K and 2nd now. They both have daily homework, and a daily reading log. Here is a summary of the parental involvement required for the kids to get to school with everything they need:

-they need a mask and a backup mask(I individually pack 5 masks in snack-sized ziplocks, and ask the kids to put dirt ones in a ziplock).
-They need their lunches packed and snacks (2 snacks for k; 1 snack for 2nd).
-each day, the lunch bowls have to be unpacked, cleaned, dried, and repacked with the next days’ food.
-every morning, before 7:30am, we have to log into a school app and fill out a Covid Symptoms form for each kid, and digitally sign it. They can’t go into the building if that’s not done.
-both kids have a reading log where a parent has to write the book(s) read, the minutes read, and sign it.
-both kids have homework. K homework is fairly simple, but takes about 10 min, 4 nights a week (M-Th). 2nd grade homework is math, reading, and language arts every night. Approx 20-30 min total. The reading does not count toward the reading log (that was specified by the teacher).
-all quizzes for 2nd grader come
Home and have to be signed and returned next day.
-we get a note home in the folder if students’ “private supplies” (no sharing because of Covid) need a refill. Private supplies are their own bottles of hand sanitizers, hand wipes, extra water bottles (no water fountain usage anymore).

My kids also take dance, piano, and Girl Scouts, so there are various activities related to that, namely both girls have piano practice each night for 10-15 min each.

So it feels like a lot, from a parental perspective. And I definitely have my days where I struggle with the “2nd shift”. My husband and I both work full time. But at the same time, since I’m a middle school teacher, I know what’s coming in the next few years, and I know this 20 minutes of homework is going to change to 1-2 hours of homework. So I think of this stuff as training my husband and I, as the parents, to check on this stuff daily and keep tabs on their schoolwork and progress. And it’s training the kids in best practices—having a routine, following the routine. It would be so much easier for me to just lie and write their reading log for a whole week at once, but doing it every day as part of their homework routine teaches them how to check their folder daily, how do do each item and check it off the list, etc.

I don’t actually know a fool-proof plan for getting kids to be successful in school as they get older, but basically, from the teacher perspective, by middle school a chasm has been created—and it is just SO CLEAR which students are on top of their daily work and which students aren’t. And I rarely see the strugglers suddenly morph into the organized kid who always turns their work in on time. It does happen sometimes! But usually with Herculean efforts from parents, who hire tutors, check homework daily, email teachers daily, etc. And I have to think a 6th grader doesn’t wake up on their 11th birthday suddenly willing and able to organize and complete 1.5 hours of homework on their own—so I tell myself that putting the building blocks (the scaffolding) in place now when they are young is part of the key. I’ve read all the homework/no homework wars stuff. Like, all of it. So I know the studies and the studies that say the opposite of the other studies, and I know there’s a big “no homework” movement. But I also have a husband from another country, and my kids have made friends with parents from other countries who now reside in the US, and overwhelmingly I hear from all of them that US schools are not rigorous enough. Even our nieces/nephews in Canada have more rigorous work (with better results when compared to the US on global tests).

That’s my philosophical take and what’s been working for my own mindset. Do I like supervising homework, doing bedtime stories, and then coming back to their folder to write in their reading logs what we just read? No, I dislike it fairly intensely. But I do it, because I don’t think this stuff is going away.

It may evolve...I’m only In year 3 of this public school parent thing. But I’m on year 18 of the public school teacher thing, so seeing both sides gives me the push to add these tasks to my own nighttime routine (along with my husband, of course, he partners with these tasks, too), in hopes that by the time they reach the more intense years of school, our kids will be well-prepared.

From a parenting perspective (now I’m just musing), I take a lot of cues from my husband, whose parents really emphasized education, but managed to do it on a healthy, non toxic way. My parents were extremely, extremely hands off with my school. Probably because I’m one of 6 and they both worked and they just didn’t have the bandwidth. But if I didn’t do my homework, from grade k-12, they would not have even known, they were so uninvolved. They frequently forgot to sign field trip forms. And test grades. As a result, I didn’t ever do my homework. I missed a field trip once because I had no signed form. My grades weren’t that great as a result.(Not terrible, but As and Bs, when I could have made all As.) I didn’t study or prep at all for the SATs, and no one in my rural HS did. Lots of kids didn’t even bother taking them. My choices in college were limited because of my mediocre grades, and I’d like my own kids to have more choices. I know some parents are the opposite and veer into really toxic grade-grubbing, perfectionist territory, and I don’t think that’s the right angle either. So for now, we try to emphasize effort and doing what’s asked over final result—Hoping to make homework a regular part of our family nighttime routine. We used to let them watch shows or have screentime, and now we’ve cut it all out on week nights unless miraculously all of their stuff is done and it’s not bed time. Eliminating the screen time has given us enough time for homework, signing stuff, reading logs, piano practice, after school Activities, and free play time, and they are still in bed by 8. I guess the next few years will show if my parenting is failing miserably, haha.