After Receiving Criticism, Teacher On TikTok Explains Why She Refuses To Give Her Students Homework
Even though most high schoolers might not yet have age-related health issues, wrinkles, or loads of adult-life problems, let’s admit—being young isn’t easy. Teenage years usually mean having quite a bit on your plate and you’re expected to somehow find a balance between all of it. Needless to say, with the whole COVID-19 situation, today’s teenagers have to deal with even more difficult things.
Texas high school teacher Courtney White clearly understands it. And to help her students deal with stress and all the things life throws at them, Courtney chooses not to assign homework. Recently, this teacher went viral on TikTok after she posted a video explaining her reasons for doing so.
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High school teacher Courtney White has a TikTok account with over 500k followers
Image credits: teachingwithmrswhite
Courtney White, a teacher at Alvarado High School in Alvarado, Texas, has a TikTok account and it seems like her unorthodox approach to teaching is getting her a lot of attention. To be exact, her account currently has over 500k followers.
Her unorthodox approach to teaching is getting her a lot of attention on the interwebs
Image credits: teachingwithmrswhite
Though not everyone supports her kind of teaching. After receiving some criticism for not assigning her students homework, the teacher decided to make a TikTok in which she explained her philosophy behind the decision to do so.
Recently, Courtney went viral on TikTok for explaining her reasons behind not giving her students homework
@cmw1129Reply to @tafgarcia Me not assigning homework, doesn’t make me any less of a teacher. My kids show me mastery of content in class. ##teachersoftiktok♬ original sound – Courtney 💕
“There’s no proof that homework is going to make them better students in my class. I respect their time outside of class, they work hard for me all day, they don’t need to go home and do more homework,” the teacher explains in her video. “Most of my students are high schoolers. They have jobs, they have FFA, they have sports, they’re in practice, they’re in band, they have other responsibilities outside of school.”
“There’s no proof that homework is going to make them better students in my class”
Image credits: teachingwithmrswhite
“Some of them are going home and taking care of their younger siblings because their parents are at work. Some of them just need to go home and sleep. Some of them have to go home and worry about how they’re going to eat because there’s no food at their house,” Courtney continues. “So, if I also give them hours of homework, when do they have time to be kids? When do they have time to relax? Because when you get off of work, you want to go home and relax.”
“I know homework can be essential for some classes, and you just can’t get around not assigning it,” Courtney explained to Good Morning America. “So, I totally understand the point of homework. But for me personally, I just like to have a little more leniency and letting them know like, it’s okay to be human and go home and sleep.”
“I respect their time outside of class, they work hard for me all day, they don’t need to go home and do more homework”
Image credits: teachingwithmrswhite
Speaking to Good Morning America about her unorthodox approach to teaching, White explained that her goal is to take “a small portion of the stress away from them by not assigning extra assignments” and “give them the little extra love that they need in class.”
“The sillier I am, the more interested they are in the topics. I try to make it fun. My favorite part of teaching is connecting with students. I like to get to know them as a student in my classroom as well as what they do outside of my classroom just to build that personal relationship. So they feel comfortable and cared for while they are in my class,” the teacher added.
Here’s how people are reacting to the teacher and her unorthodox approach to teaching
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Junior high teacher here. If you look at her pictures, you might start to notice some thing… They're not traditional images of a classroom for a high school. That's because this article does not provide a key detail that took me about 30 seconds to find on the internet and I knew exactly what I would find when I got there because of my career experience: this teacher is a special education teacher. If this was a traditional classroom with core students or honor students for a required course for graduation and not a self-contained special education course, there probably would be no way that this teacher could get away with not having homework occasionally. I am a junior high teacher with 170 students and I do my best to not give my students homework. I never give busywork just to make my students do something. But what I can tell you is that the requirements for every single subject are so strict and so overwhelming that there is no way that we can get away with never having homework... especially at the high school level!!! The common core state standards just don't let that be a reality… Unless you're a special needs student who has accommodations.
hi! i'm actually a student in this teachers class, and having just found this article and her tiktok, i was very excited for her, but i would like to say, she actually teaches Pre- AP english 2. i dont know if she teaches special needs and Pre-AP, but i do know she does treat us pre-ap students the same, and it's very helpful, and makes her a very easy teacher to trust and learn from (although i am terrible at english, in case you couldnt tell from my lack of capitalization and apostrophes, lol)
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I used to have homework til 11 pm every day. And in Belgium school is from 8.30 am til 5 pm. Long days and the homework did not help at all.
7th grade, all four honors classes. Its an insane amount of homework, for work I already understand and know like the back of my hand! And even though this is the case, the stack is so big that I have no time for family, friends, eating, sleeping, its nuts.
I'd like to know where they go in Az because that's where I live and my kids have ass loads of homework every day, like ridiculous amounts. I often wonder what they do all day in the actual class, it's ridiculous.
I’m a sophomore in high school and I averaged out just ONE of my classes assignments, and my teacher has given us .9 assignments to do per day, counting weekends!! And that was just one of my classes! And I wasn’t even counting the extra crap that he has us do! We have Wednesday’s off, so on Tuesday I payed attention to what assignments we had. All of my teachers said “and you can use Wednesday for work time on this..” like we don’t have other classes too. I swear it’s like they’re taking every last bit of our time and say “iS fOr mE?”. If I take one day out of my week to not do any of my work, my A grades will all turn into Cs. It’s SOO stressful as a student and I wish they would just give us a break for once. I HEAVILY appreciate what this teacher is doing she is so considerate! (Plus, it’s a win win because the teachers don’t have to grade so much work!)
Basically, if they've understood it it class, they don't need to do more of the same at home. If they haven't understood it, their homework is helping them practice getting it wrong.
in 4th grade I never had homework because the whole class did it in class with the teacher
And that's because you were in 4th grade... not the last 4-years of your secondary education (High School) to graduate and get a diploma.
Load More Replies...
I understand what some people are saying but you got to realize that colledges don't make a homework exception and if they are not use or forgot in way how to time yourself to do homework this can be very bad for them in the future .. homework is like work papers but for school and i understand how kids hate homework i did too but as they grow they realize homework is a way to prepare to be a lawyer and your desk is stacked with them but i also understand this too both of my kids have down sydrome but enjoy to do homework but i guess every teacher and kid is different and ill leave it at that
In college you don't get homework. You just spend way less time with a teacher and are expected to do a lot of the research and learning by yourself. Where homework in school is just repetition of what was treated in class. Those are totally different skills.
Load More Replies...
I feel like homework should be... there, as an option, For example, if a child feels as if he/she needs more practice, they can take it. If a child is busy/feels confident, leave it. If you keep the homework there as an option, people might take it and review. Also, I feel like, sometimes, homework is okay, but teachers shouldn't be piling it on. We should have something milder.
I think not giving high school kids homework is a disservice. They need to learn how to budget their time and work with distractions. Not every night, not hours of homework, but projects they bring home and work on independently. If not, they will get in to college as an A student and be surprised when they fail out.
I was a terrible student in high school. I hated homework. I did the bare minimum, usually in homeroom or during another class. I skipped class whenever I could. I scraped by with a 3.6 in high school. Only managed a 1420 on my SATs. I imagine I would have done much better if I had tried. But, college was the opposite. Not being forced to do all the bullshit and busy work, learning became a joy. I only missed 1 class in my time a college.
Load More Replies...
btw, I do undergrad assignments for students on the side at a small fee. You can HMU through whatsapp at +254710749540 if you may need assistance with your work or are too busy to complete your homework
As a student, I agree. My teacher gives us roughly 2-3 hours of homework, which is usually fine, but my dad decided to make me take DOUBLE the classes I usually take, and now I sleep at 1-2 AM if I'm lucky.
As someone who has been an educator for 32 years, I just have to throw a bs flag or two. The research on homework is inconsistent at best. It really depends on the purpose of the homework. If it's busy work, it's useless. If it's meant to reinforce concepts that have been taught, or to have the students they've learned, it's actually helpful. Research does actually indicate that homework does correlate to success/better grades in high school. I applaud her sensitivity to the home life of her students. I just hope that in trying to teach her kids to have balance in their lives she doesn't short change them in terms of being ready for the demands of college. Even at a JC they are going to have to be ready for greater demands on their time in terms of studying and prepping for class.
Having kids do their work at school also means you can sometimes have them work together as pairs or teams, which is a valuable skill. And if you teach kids to find answers then you don't need to have them memorize answers.
Yeah, try testing on physics formulas, calculus, etc without the kids practicing. Such nonsense.
●●●●●●●●●●●●●I get paid over $190 per hour working from home with 2 kids at home. I never thought I'd be able to do it but my best friend earns over 15k a month doing this and she convinced me to try. The potential with this is endless..., COPY HERE---------->>>https://xurl.es/epmho
I think they give too much often times, but none at all? I see the point of homework is so they can take what they learned in class outside of the classroom. It helps them continue to learn on their own. Practice makes perfect.
There have been no studies done thst demonstrate that homework is an effevtive teaching tool. Which is to say, maybe it is and maybe it isn't, there's just no proof it is. I say this as someone long out of school, so unaffected by this issue now.
She is nice and all but there are millions of teachers in the world and she doesn't really impact on other kids i'm a 5th grader and i have been getting pushed on to be the best of the best and i would get a lot of homework know I am in a gate program for talented kids.
"I don't know what happened to the U.S." 1783 happened. instead of losing the war for independence, which would be better for everyone, especially for the slaves and Native Americans, the war was won and now we have what we have in North America. Country, which shows exactly how the U.S. should be, but it is called Canada and the U.S. of Dumbfuckistan.
Junior high teacher here. If you look at her pictures, you might start to notice some thing… They're not traditional images of a classroom for a high school. That's because this article does not provide a key detail that took me about 30 seconds to find on the internet and I knew exactly what I would find when I got there because of my career experience: this teacher is a special education teacher. If this was a traditional classroom with core students or honor students for a required course for graduation and not a self-contained special education course, there probably would be no way that this teacher could get away with not having homework occasionally. I am a junior high teacher with 170 students and I do my best to not give my students homework. I never give busywork just to make my students do something. But what I can tell you is that the requirements for every single subject are so strict and so overwhelming that there is no way that we can get away with never having homework... especially at the high school level!!! The common core state standards just don't let that be a reality… Unless you're a special needs student who has accommodations.
hi! i'm actually a student in this teachers class, and having just found this article and her tiktok, i was very excited for her, but i would like to say, she actually teaches Pre- AP english 2. i dont know if she teaches special needs and Pre-AP, but i do know she does treat us pre-ap students the same, and it's very helpful, and makes her a very easy teacher to trust and learn from (although i am terrible at english, in case you couldnt tell from my lack of capitalization and apostrophes, lol)
Load More Replies... I used to have homework til 11 pm every day. And in Belgium school is from 8.30 am til 5 pm. Long days and the homework did not help at all.
7th grade, all four honors classes. Its an insane amount of homework, for work I already understand and know like the back of my hand! And even though this is the case, the stack is so big that I have no time for family, friends, eating, sleeping, its nuts.
I'd like to know where they go in Az because that's where I live and my kids have ass loads of homework every day, like ridiculous amounts. I often wonder what they do all day in the actual class, it's ridiculous.
I’m a sophomore in high school and I averaged out just ONE of my classes assignments, and my teacher has given us .9 assignments to do per day, counting weekends!! And that was just one of my classes! And I wasn’t even counting the extra crap that he has us do! We have Wednesday’s off, so on Tuesday I payed attention to what assignments we had. All of my teachers said “and you can use Wednesday for work time on this..” like we don’t have other classes too. I swear it’s like they’re taking every last bit of our time and say “iS fOr mE?”. If I take one day out of my week to not do any of my work, my A grades will all turn into Cs. It’s SOO stressful as a student and I wish they would just give us a break for once. I HEAVILY appreciate what this teacher is doing she is so considerate! (Plus, it’s a win win because the teachers don’t have to grade so much work!)
Basically, if they've understood it it class, they don't need to do more of the same at home. If they haven't understood it, their homework is helping them practice getting it wrong.
in 4th grade I never had homework because the whole class did it in class with the teacher
And that's because you were in 4th grade... not the last 4-years of your secondary education (High School) to graduate and get a diploma.
Load More Replies... I understand what some people are saying but you got to realize that colledges don't make a homework exception and if they are not use or forgot in way how to time yourself to do homework this can be very bad for them in the future .. homework is like work papers but for school and i understand how kids hate homework i did too but as they grow they realize homework is a way to prepare to be a lawyer and your desk is stacked with them but i also understand this too both of my kids have down sydrome but enjoy to do homework but i guess every teacher and kid is different and ill leave it at that
In college you don't get homework. You just spend way less time with a teacher and are expected to do a lot of the research and learning by yourself. Where homework in school is just repetition of what was treated in class. Those are totally different skills.
Load More Replies... I feel like homework should be... there, as an option, For example, if a child feels as if he/she needs more practice, they can take it. If a child is busy/feels confident, leave it. If you keep the homework there as an option, people might take it and review. Also, I feel like, sometimes, homework is okay, but teachers shouldn't be piling it on. We should have something milder.
I think not giving high school kids homework is a disservice. They need to learn how to budget their time and work with distractions. Not every night, not hours of homework, but projects they bring home and work on independently. If not, they will get in to college as an A student and be surprised when they fail out.
I was a terrible student in high school. I hated homework. I did the bare minimum, usually in homeroom or during another class. I skipped class whenever I could. I scraped by with a 3.6 in high school. Only managed a 1420 on my SATs. I imagine I would have done much better if I had tried. But, college was the opposite. Not being forced to do all the bullshit and busy work, learning became a joy. I only missed 1 class in my time a college.
Load More Replies... btw, I do undergrad assignments for students on the side at a small fee. You can HMU through whatsapp at +254710749540 if you may need assistance with your work or are too busy to complete your homework
As a student, I agree. My teacher gives us roughly 2-3 hours of homework, which is usually fine, but my dad decided to make me take DOUBLE the classes I usually take, and now I sleep at 1-2 AM if I'm lucky.
As someone who has been an educator for 32 years, I just have to throw a bs flag or two. The research on homework is inconsistent at best. It really depends on the purpose of the homework. If it's busy work, it's useless. If it's meant to reinforce concepts that have been taught, or to have the students they've learned, it's actually helpful. Research does actually indicate that homework does correlate to success/better grades in high school. I applaud her sensitivity to the home life of her students. I just hope that in trying to teach her kids to have balance in their lives she doesn't short change them in terms of being ready for the demands of college. Even at a JC they are going to have to be ready for greater demands on their time in terms of studying and prepping for class.
Having kids do their work at school also means you can sometimes have them work together as pairs or teams, which is a valuable skill. And if you teach kids to find answers then you don't need to have them memorize answers.
Yeah, try testing on physics formulas, calculus, etc without the kids practicing. Such nonsense.
●●●●●●●●●●●●●I get paid over $190 per hour working from home with 2 kids at home. I never thought I'd be able to do it but my best friend earns over 15k a month doing this and she convinced me to try. The potential with this is endless..., COPY HERE---------->>>https://xurl.es/epmho
I think they give too much often times, but none at all? I see the point of homework is so they can take what they learned in class outside of the classroom. It helps them continue to learn on their own. Practice makes perfect.
There have been no studies done thst demonstrate that homework is an effevtive teaching tool. Which is to say, maybe it is and maybe it isn't, there's just no proof it is. I say this as someone long out of school, so unaffected by this issue now.
She is nice and all but there are millions of teachers in the world and she doesn't really impact on other kids i'm a 5th grader and i have been getting pushed on to be the best of the best and i would get a lot of homework know I am in a gate program for talented kids.
"I don't know what happened to the U.S." 1783 happened. instead of losing the war for independence, which would be better for everyone, especially for the slaves and Native Americans, the war was won and now we have what we have in North America. Country, which shows exactly how the U.S. should be, but it is called Canada and the U.S. of Dumbfuckistan.
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