MS. HANDLON: What about spelling?
MELANIE: Oh, yeah. I have a spelling test tomorrow.
Once home, Melanie takes time to snack and relax before beginning her homework. She asks permission to put on music. Gleefully, she selects “The Nutcracker” and turns the volume up loud on the stereo. With mother and daughter sitting together at the dining room table, the homework session begins.
MELANIE: What do I do?
Melanie’s mother reads the directions out loud and goes over the first problem with Melanie.
MS. HANDLON: See? You carry this remainder and put it in this box.
MELANIE: Oh.
As they move to the second problem, Ms. Handlon continues to help Melanie in a very hands-on fashion.
MS. HANDLON: Okay, what do we do here? How many times will seven go into fifty-two? Well, what’s five times seven?
MELANIE: Thirty-five.
MS. HANDLON: Right. So, that’s too small. So, what’s seven times six? What’s seven times seven?
MELANIE: Forty-two. Forty-nine.
MS. HANDLON: Right. So, where do you put that? And what’s the remainder? You have to borrow. Right. And then put the remainder in the next box. And how do you do this problem?
On another problem, Melanie resists her mother’s effort to make the task seem easier:
MS. HANDLON: This is an easy problem.
MELANIE: These are hard.
MS. HANDLON: It’s five! You know your fives.
MELANIE: I know my ones, my fives, and my tens.
MS. HANDLON: So, count by fives. (Melanie counts.)
MS. HANDLON: Right. So what’s the answer? (Melanie gives an answer.)
MS. HANDLON: Right. And where do you put that? (Melanie writes it down. Ms. Handlon takes the pencil and erases Melanie’s entry.)
MS. HANDLON: Not there. (Melanie tries again.)
MS. HANDLON: Right. And where’s the remainder? (Melanie says an answer.)
MS. HANDLON: No. What’s the remainder? (Melanie gives another answer.)
MS. HANDLON: Right, and put that there. And then carry that to the next problem. Good.
Melanie and her mother proceed in this fashion for about fifteen minutes. Then the interaction starts to break down. From Melanie’s perspective, the problems are hard and she thinks she can’t do them. She wants to stop. Her interest flags and her answers are increasingly far off base. Ms. Handlon reacts quickly.
MELANIE: This is hard.
MS. HANDLON: Melanie, I think you’re making this harder than it is. How did you do it in school?
MELANIE: We used cubes.
MS. HANDLON: How did you figure out the problems?
MELANIE: We worked as a group.
MS. HANDLON: Who was in your group?
MELANIE: Emily was. But we all worked together.
MS. HANDLON (suggesting a new strategy): Would it help if you used pennies?
When Melanie nods, her mother searches briefly in drawers and in her purse. She comes up with several stacks of pennies, which she puts on the table. Melanie starts lining the pennies up in two adjacent, horizontal lines. She stands up to do this and moves a little to the side of the table. Ms. Handlon comes over, stands next to her and asks, “What are you doing?” Without giving Melanie a chance to explain, Ms. Handlon moves the pennies out of the rows Melanie has organized. Melanie protests:
MELANIE: No! This is how we did it.
MS. HANDLON: Okay, show me how you did it. (Melanie lines up forty-two pennies in two adjacent, horizontal rows. She then takes the pennies and puts them in groups of four. Her mother again intervenes.)
MS. HANDLON: Melanie, explain to me what you are doing. (Melanie continues to move the pennies but says nothing. Then she stops moving the coins.)
MS. HANDLON: And?
MELANIE: And I count the groups.
MS. HANDLON: But you’re supposed to divide by seven.
MELANIE: OOHH . . . .
MS. HANDLON: That’s why I didn’t understand what you were doing. (Melanie reorganizes the coins, putting the pennies in groups of seven. She solves the next two problems. When she tries to tackle a problem that requires dividing twenty-seven by six, her mother again becomes heavily involved. Ms. Handlon starts putting the pennies into groups of six for Melanie.)
MS. HANDLON: What’s six times one?
MELANIE: Six.
MS. HANDLON (putting six more pennies down): What’s six times two?
MELANIE: Twelve.
MS. HANDLON (putting six more pennies down): What’s six times three?
MELANIE (counting the pennies): Eighteen.
MS. HANDLON (putting six more pennies down): What six times four?
MELANIE (again counting the pennies): Twenty-four.
MS. HANDLON: Right. So, what’s the answer?
MELANIE: Twenty-four.
MS. HANDLON: No, that’s what you get when you multiply the numbers. That’s not the answer.
MELANIE: Four.
MS. HANDLON: Right. And what’s the remainder?
MELANIE: Three.
MS. HANDLON: Right.
As they slowly move from problem to problem, the tension between Melanie and her mother builds. Melanie becomes more and more agitated. Her face turns red, and although she is not crying, she appears to be on the verge of tears. More than forty-five minutes have elapsed since they began the math homework. Ms. Handlon suggests that they take a break and “put some ornaments on the Christmas tree.” Melanie doesn’t want a “break”; she wants to replace the homework session with cookie baking. Her mother repeats the suggestion of a break and Melanie repeats her desire to make cookies. Ms. Handlon resolves the stalemate by continuing to put down piles of pennies for Melanie and asking her leading questions to get the answers. After about five minutes, Melanie’s mood seems to brighten a little. Ms. Handlon gets up for less than a minute, and Melanie continues working. The last two problems Melanie does on her own.
MS. HANDLON: See, you can do it. You just have to try.
MELANIE: This is hard.
The tensions and conflicts that arise as Ms. Handlon and Melanie try to work together to complete her homework assignments are exhausting and distressing. Moreover, because Melanie’s mother accepts the principle that Melanie must do her homework and also perceives that some assignments, especially math, require assistance, the homework battles are repeated nearly every afternoon.4 Ms. Handlon believes that in some cases she and Melanie struggle over problems that are caused by the teachers.
Some of the teachers are just not doing a good job. They can’t explain things. I think some of them are setting the kids up for failure. Sometimes the kids will bring home questions and assignments and the teacher will write it in such a way that there are really two ways of reading into it. So, if I can’t understand it, how can they expect the kids to?
According to Ms. Handlon, Melanie is unnecessarily burdened by her teachers’ inability to supply adequate instructions for the assignments they send home. Not surprisingly, the teachers trace the causes of Melanie’s ongoing academic difficulties to quite a different source.
THE PERILS OF PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT IN SCHOOLING
In the fall grading period, when Melanie receives the lowest grade possible in both math and social studies, her classroom teacher, Ms. Nettles, seems nearly as frustrated with this outcome as Ms. Handlon is. Ms. Nettles is consistently friendly and cheerful during her interactions with Melanie’s mother. She cooperates willingly with Ms. Handlon’s request for spelling lists, preparing five weeks of lists in advance and sending them home with Melanie. She seems untroubled that the lists might give Melanie an advantage over her classmates; neither does she complain of the extra work it takes for her to produce the lists for Ms. Handlon. Ms. Nettles is similarly accommodating in her response to Ms. Handlon’s request that she supply Melanie’s private tutor with sample math problems. In addition, when Melanie’s illnesses cause her to miss days of school, Ms. Nettles makes up packets of materials to be worked on at home.
Given the efforts of Ms. Nettles and other teachers at school and Ms. Handlon’s efforts at home, why does Melanie continue to flounder? The classroom and resource teachers firmly reject Ms. Handlon’s contention that her daughter has too much homework and that Melanie’s confidence is fatally undermined by the educators’ tendency to emphasize her mistakes and shortcomings instead of praising her progress. Ms. Nettles estimates that the work she assigns the children to do at home can be completed in thirty to forty-five minutes. Garrett Tallinger, who is in Melanie’s class, routinely finishes the homework (without his parents’ help) in less than this amount of time. Neither do the teachers see any indication that Melanie is “intimidated” or “overwhelmed” by her day-to-day classroom experiences. Ms. Nettles agrees that Melanie “struggles” and that she may have a learning disability, but she rejects Ms. Handlon’s view that Melanie is miserable in the classroom: