https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i105vkXVok

Many things can have an impact on a child’s development and their ability to construct knowledge. One example of something that can have an impact is poverty. While poverty alone doesn’t directly affect a child’s development it can cause other things to happen. In these cases a parent, sometimes, cannot be available to the student as often as necessary. This can cause the student to fall behind in their development. According to Chaya Kulkarni, the director of Infant Mental Health Promotion, “Brain development is heavily dependent on relationships and that primary care relationship is probably the most important one.” This shows how the relationship between parent and child is incredibly important to the child’s development; especially at a young age. Another way poverty can have an impact on development is with nutrition. Sometimes a parent cannot provide nutritious meals and this can cause the parent to stress over this. When the parent is stressed about providing for the family they can become distracted and not be able to attend to their child in all the ways they need and this can have a negative effect on the child. When I am a teacher I need to keep this in mind. A student’s home life can have a direct impact on their day in school and I need to be prepared to cater to each individual students’ needs.

Teaching and research go hand in hand. Teachers study and discuss research every day in their classes. In the future when I’m a teacher I will be researching information that I can integrate into my lessons and then studying and discussing it with my students.

There is a debate on whether or not students should be given homework. After doing some research of my own I believe that most homework should simply be work that did not get completed in class. Since I am an English Education major and plan on teaching at the high school level I understand that it is necessary to assign a certain level of homework. For example, papers are a necessary assignment because it is my job to teach my students how to write critically. However, it is not necessary to assign a two page paper every week. Instead, four papers per year is sufficient enough to teach the student the skills that they need and for the students to improve upon those skills. The homework that would be assigned on a day-to-day basis would be reading parts of a book that the class did not finish during class.

The reason I think homework should be limited is because too much of it can be detrimental to a student since many have extracurricular activities. According to Natalie Wolchover in her article, Too Much Homework is Bad for Kids, “data shows that in countries where more time is spent on homework, students score lower on a standardized test called the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA”. The article also talks about how the study came to the same conclusions about students who spend more time on their homework. There are many more studies out there like this that prove giving students a lot of homework does not improve their grades and ability to master the subject, and in fact more homework can have a negative impact on the students’ work.

 

Citations

Brock, Cynthia H (2007). Does Homework Matter? An Investigation of Teacher Perceptions About Homework Practices for Children From Nondominant Backgrounds, Vol. 42 (4). 349-372. https://libproxy.uww.edu:4053/10.1177/0042085907304277

 

Hinchey, Pat. Why Kids Say They Don’t Do Homework, Vol. 69 (4).

 

Jianzhong, Xu (2009). Homework Purpose Scale for High School Students: A Validation Study, Vol. 70 (3). 459-476. https://libproxy.uww.edu:4053/10.1177/0013164409344517

 

Natalie Wolchover. (2012, March 30). Too Much Homework Is Bad For Kids. Retrieved February 6, 2017, from Live Science, http://www.livescience.com/19379-homework-bad-kids.html