Homework Sucks!

My daughter does not love "English" homework (well, they still call it "Reading" homework and "Writing" homework in 2nd grade). She does all of the math and science homework before she will touch the writing.

However, today I asked her to write a thank you note to her "Auntie Tina" (really a family friend) who recently set her a set of Jibbitz for her Crocs. I was hoping to get her to eke out a few sentences. After the requisite "thank you" sentence, I figured she'd give one more detail and sign off. Instead, she asked, "Can I make this a thank you note AND a letter?" Shocked, I said, "Sure!" She wrote and wrote -- she had 8 full sentences about her life, her friends, her pet mouse, etc.

Naturally, as an English professor I want to know why she wrote with abandon in the Auntie Tina thank you note, yet resists writing any more than the bare minimum for her homework. Then the $10 word I learned in grad school hit me: pseudotransactionality.

Students know that homework is not transactional -- much assigned writing goes into a teacher's file cabinet. Most homework does not address an actual rhetorical situation, with an audience who reads it to learn more or to solve a problem. My daughter senses this as young as 2nd grade!

Yes, there is value in practice, so homework certainly serves a purpose. But I try as much as I can to make my homework--the "practice" I assign--as transactional as possible. I'm asking my advanced comp students to post their daily writing homework to a blog so that it can (potentially) go to a larger public audience that could respond (instead of piling up in my bottom drawer). In my professional writing class, which is really all about practicing the genres of professional writing, my students are "practicing" with real, live people. They all have local agencies and organizations that need professional writing projects completed this fall. They know they are getting students, and they are willing to take that chance. My students know that agency directors and all of their clients will read their writing. So they are working! It's practice, but it's transactional.