The Secret Teacher: Lots of homework is left undone because parents aren’t strict enough

The reality is that the carrot features too rarely and the stick too often. Some individuals have become so used to the stick that its appearance is water off a duck’s back, and so it serves little purpose (if any at all) in terms of reforming them. There is so little evidence of the carrot that those who need it most stall in their efforts.

Stuart knows that. He never does his homework. Not quite true – he did it once for Home Economics and his teacher didn’t even notice, so as far as he is concerned there isn’t any point. Now he will always be the boy who doesn’t do his homework, even when he does.

Evan struggles to get to school on time. Given what is going on at home he does well to come to school at all. He would love not to be the boy who has to walk in when all the others have settled. When the teacher goes back over what she has already explained she can’t hide her frustration at having to say it all again. Evan knows she doesn’t mean it badly and he wishes he could tell her how much he hates that it is necessary.

We risk missing out when we get too busy chasing down the extraordinary"

This is true in many other walks of life too, not just schools. When I see headlines about how many hospital patients are currently on trolleys and how long they have been there, I yearn for the complete picture. On that same day in that same hospital lives will have been saved. Patients will have recuperated as a direct result of the care and expertise of the staff, who continue to deliver despite the headlines drawing attention to negative stories and shocking statistics. Isn’t the parallel story of the hospital’s regular achievements just as important as highlighting the challenges it faces?

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According to Brené Brown, “joy comes to us in ordinary moments. We risk missing out when we get too busy chasing down the extraordinary”. I have 29 students in my first year class. They never all have everything: copies, books, pens, homework. Should I spend time reprimanding the minority who have forgotten something or celebrating the majority who have brought everything? Can’t we more easily embrace gratefully what we already have and work with that?

Heaping praise on those who have got the work and are getting on with the task is a more effective way of proceeding than spending time – our own and everyone else’s – on the problem.

In their different ways Stuart and Evan are just striving to be ordinary students. The same ordinariness that other kids sabotage for foolish reasons. Plenty who can make it to school on time loiter en route or linger at their lockers. Lots of homework gets left behind or left undone just because the parents aren’t strict enough or the punishments severe enough.

What would be wrong with both parents and teachers making the rewards greater? A form of reward training might incentivise them – its success in a wide variety of fields suggests this is the way forward: supermarkets which reward shoppers in points on a store card achieve high volumes of return customers; reputable dog trainers advocate for positive reinforcement of good behaviours. Common to them all is the individual’s behaviour generating a positive reward directly aimed back at the individual. A huge factor in our difficulties in relating to young people is that we aren’t celebrating the ordinary enough.

The colleagues who do not make demands and would never dream of making a fuss are too easily forgotten as they quietly and efficiently get on with what they are supposed to be doing.

Many teachers feel their ordinary contribution goes unnoticed and undervalued. Principals and deputy principals in schools often divide their time and attention disproportionately in favour of trickier members of staff. These are the ones who need to be tamed, or at least kept on side.

The colleagues who do not make demands and would never dream of making a fuss are too easily forgotten as they quietly and efficiently get on with what they are supposed to be doing.

Relationships between management and staff, teachers and students, parents and teachers, all depend on a willingness to openly appreciate each other’s efforts. What principal has taken the time recently to thank the diligent core members of staff who are rarely absent and never late, and who do not feature in the complaining letters and phone calls from parents? And do parents put pen to paper as readily when things are going well, albeit “ordinarily” well?

They don’t have to, naturally, such letters are not necessary, but teachers would massively appreciate parents taking the time to consciously acknowledge the successful ordinary. And as teachers, do we commend the deserving as readily as we admonish the wayward?

Though they are taken so much for granted in the daily round, all these ordinary aspects of school life, these regular efforts must not go unrecognised or unrewarded. Because if they do … well, see above.