Frankly, I used to be irritated about my students not doing their homework. Yet with time, I realized I shouldn’t. In fact, you can and should be ok with that. And in this article, I’m gonna be telling you why.
As teachers, we place a lot of value into homework. And if students don’t do the tasks they have been assigned to do teachers usually start to panic, get discouraged and respect their students less.
To handle this issue some teachers try to trick their students into doing the homework by different psychological manipulations, like, they try to motivate them or something. But the thing is that, apart from few exceptions, they can only be affected by it only during the lesson. When they are at home by the time they get round to their studies or even simply get home they’ll most likely have run out of that motivation because motivation and inspiration are quite fleeting things.
Some teachers would simply quit working with those students. They say something like, “What the point in dealing with those individuals? They aren’t committing to working hard outside class, which means they will have no progress whatsoever. Isn’t it a time waste teaching them?” And it might be the case in some situations, but with most students, you don’t have to break up with them, especially if you’re a teacher who has recently started off with this career If you don’t have that many options. Because it might turn out that you have nobody to teach. And guess what. As well as students teachers aren’t perfect too. And I’ll talk about it later. So, basically, if your students aren’t as hardworking and diligent as you expect them to be, you don’t need to take any radical measures or whatever, you still can have a good teamwork with them.
The thing is how you perceive this, what your attitude and beliefs towards it. And when you start to realize the key insights into this issue your worrying starts to melt away. The challenge is to internalise it.
Alright, let’s talk about it in more detail. How can we address this homework question?
1)Cure your unrealistic expectations
Oftentimes, teachers expect their students to be entirely committed to the subject they teach. And if the learners have an excuse or exception for the teachers it starts to seem like a lack of respect or betrayal. But guess what. Even if you’re a teacher you’re not perfect either. If you take on some activity yourself, let it be singing, for example, then it might be challenging for you to practise daily and not to skip every single lesson. And in this case, as a student, you will relate to your students. If your learners aren’t being committed it isn’t always because they do it intentionally, but rather because it’s actually challenging to stay always committed, especially as much as you expect them to be. Moreover, it’s your expectations, not theirs. Often, they have no idea what your standards are. However, you can discuss everything in the first lesson to make sure you both on the same page. So let’s have down-to-earth expectations and be tolerant.
2)Homework-is-important belief/The fear that the students won’t progress/Limiting yourself with only “yes” or “no” options
Most of the time teachers have this idea that homework is the single most important thing in the learning process. Like, without it, everything else is useless. And to some extent, it’s the case, but the thing is that we tend to overestimate the importance of homework. And this is a little bit tricky because it seems like it’s hard to overestimate it. Homework IS important. I’m not saying it’s not, but let’s have a closer look at this issue. Why do we need to do the homework? To have results. Will we have results if we don’t do our homework? And the answer is “yes”. Surely, we will progress slower than we could if we put in effort outside class too, but we still will, IF we attend the classes regularly. So, if your students, at least, don’t skip the lessons then you can be ok with their not doing the home talks.
But what if they also skip the lessons and do it too often? Well, this more complicated, but even here I dare to say that you can have a good time with them and make the most of these lessons. The main thing is to just inform them what it will lead to if they act like that. Everything else is their choice. Maybe they attend your lessons mainly because they like your jokes or merely because they enjoy having a lovely time with you discussing life experience or something. And, of course, they won’t have great progress being skivers like that, but on the other hand, you aren’t plateauing out completely, you have a little bit of improvement, although tiny. You are still participating in something useful. However, this situation is the worst case scenario, that is, very-very rare to happen. I bet your students are a lot more reliable than that. In addition, what if your panic is groundless? What if their non-committedness is temporal. Maybe your student is experiencing a hard time with their job or studies and can’t be fully committed, but still willing to find some time to study English and will get back to normal once they have dealt with everything which has been holding them back.
And I’m aware that it sounds like I’m justifying being non-committed, but it’s not what I’m saying here. I’m just advocating being flexible. Oftentimes, we tend to be very rigid considering only two options, like, “yes” or “no”, “love it or leave it”, “should I continue work with this student or should I quit?”, “Should I carry on working as a teacher or should I quit and find a better job?”, whereas there are a lot more possible options between “yes” and “no” to choose from some of which can potentially be the best option. Yet, I’m not saying that “yes” or “no” are the worst choices ever. Sometimes one or the other is the ultimate option, but not always. And I expect many teachers had to forever quit this activity not being able to bear the teacher’s challenges simply because it didn’t occur to them to expose themselves to other possible options (rather than just “quit” or “continue”) which they could turn out better off with.
3)Taking too much responsibility for your students’ progress
Almost every teacher gets into the trap of trying to gain the full control of the situation, especially beginners. We tend to take way too much responsibility for our students’ results, but the thing is that we are not the only ones who are responsible for our students’ progress. A good chunk of the responsibility should be on their shoulders. So, basically, you and your student have a shared responsibility. Teaching is not a one-way street. It never works that way. It’s kind of like if we would learn the language for them, we sort of try to live their life for them, to push the right buttons, to handle the controls as if they were machines, not human beings. Moreover, you can control them in the class only. Other than that, they can only be controlled by themselves, strictly speaking. They are by default and to a larger extent responsible for their advancement. Just make sure they understand it, make sure you’re both on the same page in these terms and feel calm.
4)Focusing on results too much
This also has something to do with unrealistic expectations. Even if our students are not the laziest and unwilling learners we’ve ever met, still, we tend to be worried about their not being entirely into English. When actually they do work hard, they do put in some effort, but it seems like we aren’t noticing it. Why? Because we are focused on results too much. It’s actually another extreme which is neurotic craving for fast progress. It’s actually so subtle, that mostly we don’t notice it. On the contrary, it even might seem like a virtue, when actually it’s not. Again, let’s be grounded and realistic and enjoy the process rather than be aim-conscious.
5)Cure perfectionism
Almost every teacher likes to think of him- or herself as an awesome teacher. They try to play this kind of role of being the best teacher in the world. And whenever this notion of ourselves is being threatened by various classroom challenges then we start to panic and get discouraged, because we are attached to this role we try to play and want to always maintain in our head this image of ourselves and if something gets in the way we can no longer consider ourselves as awesome until we prove it again. We try to be as perfect as possible to the point when we actually overperfect it, to the point where we become neurotic about it.
And the solution is to let go of that role, to admit that there’s no end to perfecting, you can do it infinitely. If you’re planning a lesson, for example, you can better your lesson plan literally forever, you just have to let it go at some point. Yet, I’m not saying that you should do it half-assedly. You just need to find the right balance. Basically, preparing for a lesson shouldn’t take that much time, I consider that half an hour is enough, or an hour at most. I’ll talk about it in in the future in another article. So, just be aware that nobody is perfect, neither you, nor your students, nor other teachers. Everybody has their strengths and weaknesses. Don’t get discouraged if not all of your lessons are a lot of fun. Some of them will be fun, some them will be boring in a way. It’s fine. Studying or teaching a language cannot be all about fun. It is also a challenge to one extent or another. As well your students won’t be able to perform great every single lesson, partly because they have their own life circumstances or whatever which can affect their performance. And this is the case for you either.
So, ultimately, be empathic, tolerant, flexible and forgiving both of yourself and your students. Cultivate mastery but from a place of self-acceptance.
Homework tips
The main part of this article was generally about letting things go, letting them be as they are. However, there’s a bonus. Here I’m gonna suggest some practical tips which can improve the homework issue in a way.
1)When giving homework to your students consider the amount of it accordingly to their daily workload.
Basically, according to my experience, you don’t always need to overload them with homework. Sometimes just a handful of simple assignments will do which takes about 15-30 minutes to complete.
2)Try to give them something more unconventional as their homework (like, watching a vlog and then making their own video on the same topic or whatever, but, basically, something more stimulating and related to real life situations), rather than academic exercises, such as multiple choice, multiple matching, etc.
3)Take more lessons with your students. The more lessons a week you have with them, the less homework they need to do because they kind of do it in the lessons. Or, additionally, try even excluding homework entirely.
And yet, the basic solution to this issue is the one I’ve already dealt with in the main chunk of the article which is, briefly speaking, to adjust to reality, rather than making reality adjust to you.
If you have your own solutions to this homework issue, which haven’t been mentioned in the article, feel free to share them in the comments.