Family Homework Policy Letter to Send to Schools

Fall 20__

Dear Teacher:

Thank you for teaching our child this year. We as a family strive to live a balanced life that includes a variety of activities. Those activities include volunteering in the community, family social time, rituals and celebrations, part-time jobs, music and art lessons, sports, fellowship clubs, church and much-needed downtime. We value those activities as much as learning academic subjects in school.

In order to make time for these activities; we need to establish boundaries that provide a fair division between school instructional time and homework that encroaches upon outside-school time. Therefore, our family homework policy is as follows:

_________(Your Family Name Here) Family Homework Policy:

The school assignments that are not given adequate instructional class time to complete in school hours, will not be completed at home.

We expect our children to give their best effort and concentration in the ___ hours of instructional class time that the government legislates and the school provides in order for our children to complete the required credits and marks. They can also use any school spares they have to complete school work between the hours of 9:00am and 3:30pm. I expect the school to provide adequate time and instruction in class for the student to complete the government requirements of the entire course.

We expect that our children will not be penalized for our established Family Homework Policy within the classroom and will not be penalized in terms of marks for work that can't be completed within the allotted school time. The current available research supports our belief that supplemental homework is not required for adequate mastery of the subject matter. We appreciate that you respect our decision on how to spend our time at home as much as we respect your decisions regarding your time/curriculum management at school.

Thank you for your cooperation in this matter.

Sincerely,

Your Name______________

Judy Arnall is a professional international award-winning Parenting Speaker, and Trainer, Mom of five children, and author of the best-selling, "Discipline Without Distress: 135 tools for raising caring, responsible children without time-out, spanking, punishment or bribery" She specializes in "Parenting the Digital Generation" www.professionalparenting.ca (403) 714-6766 jarnall@shaw.ca

Copyright permission granted for "reproduction without permission" of this article in whole or part, if the above credit is included in its entirety.