Homework

With sixteen kids in school and fifteen of them having homework, homework is something we battle all the time. Of course, a few, a very few, do their homework with no battle. But that is the exception, not the rule.

School is winding down and some of the kids have tons of homework before exams begin. It is a lot of homework and to make it more doable, I counted the pages in each child's notebook and divided the number of days until the homework is due. I told them how many pages they had to do each day.

Yesterday, Daniela and Jose found out how many pages they had to do and sat down and did them. Fernando and Ana did not. Ana battled all morning. Fernando had seven pages. That still seemed like a lot, so I told he had to do five in the morning and two in the afternoon. On the fifth page Fernando had to do, I put an X and underlined it. Five minutes later, Fernando came in and said he was done. I knew that was not the truth, knew before I even looked at the notebook. He had erased my X and put an X on the first page he had to do. He even undelined the X. I may have been born in the morning, but I wasn't born yesterday morning. And besides that my boys tried every trick in the book to get out of homework.

I seriously thought about telling him he had to do all seven pages, but we had to get ready for a program at school.

We went outside to sit on the back steps to work. I sometimes allow that since there is less distractions out there. But, I was very suspicious of Fernando. I walked to the other side where he could not see me and watched for a few minutes. He very carefully counted those pages and very thoughtfully tore out the middle page. He was leaving the last completed page and leaving the page with my X. He was more than a little surprised when I asked what he was doing.

He got to move back in the house and sit by me all morning. I taped the page back in the notebook. I watched every letter he wrote. He still was wanting to play a little.

After 30 minutes he had almost 2 pages done. Dalys, the counselor, has a reward system with the kids. She gives her rewards on Saturday morning. Fernando received one. It was a little tootsie roll that had 3 pieces. I broke that tootsie roll into the three pieces and told him he would get one piece when he finished page 3, one pieces when he finished page 4 and one piece when he finished page 5. He was almost hyperventilating as he mumbled something about chocolate.

He got the last three pages done quickly, having a piece of chocolate after each one. He asked if he would get more chocolate when he did the pages in the afternoon. I was pretty sure he wouldn't.

Terri