Home What the HECK?

I'm a teacher by trade.

So I sort of get homework.

Sort of.

I get assigning math fact flashcard practice.

Reading minutes.

Outside book report reading.

Revising/editing papers.

I even understand--though I totally hate that due to time constraints and budget cuts, it's necessary--assigning certain "projects" for homework.  Things like dioramas, science fair projects, PowerPoint presentations.

And of course I totally get the homework that happens because the kid screwed around in class and now gets the logical consequence of "You can do it now, or you can do it later.  Your choice."


I do not, however, understand assigning a seventy-nine term word search in the shape of a Parthenon where the unused letters (in order) spell out the name of the creature that was engraved on Athena's shield (according to myth).

In addition to your "Cretes" and "mythologies" and "Poseidons" this thing has words like Down.  East. Farm. Plots.

I want to scratch my eyes out just looking at it.  And I like letters.  And words.  And Ancient Greece.

This is the sort of activity that you have in a file folder on the back table for those kids who always finish whatever you've planned for a fifty-five minute class in three seconds flat.

Or what you keep in your bottom drawer for the substitute to pull out on the day that your kid develops a 102 degree fever ten minutes before you're headed out the door and detailed lesson plans just "aren't gonna happen."

It shouldn't EVER be homework.

It isn't even a good extra credit assignment.

So I'm off to help my kid with a Google search on Athena's shield.

There's more than one way to skin a cat.