Middle school expert advice from connie collins q: my fifth grade daughters are completely overwhelmed by their homework assignments. I've spoken to the teachers and they say it's out of their hands they have pressure from the top. When we do not have a sense of making a dent in the workload, it is easy to feel overwhelmed, and soon that feeling creates a road block that takes even more of our precious time to overcome.

Create a family schedule for the week that incorporates all required activities for each day. Identify blocks of time that are available, rather than just one long study block of time. By breaking the time up, the tasks can be approached with more energy at the beginning of each session. Using an agenda or planner, have your daughters make a list of work that has to be done. Let the girls do those sections that are easiest for them at times when you are not available to help them. By knowing realistically how long certain tasks take, they can allot appropriate time for future assignments.

Even a brief time to stand up and stretch before moving on to the next assignment feels good. By making the schedule up in advance for the week, your daughters can tell their friends when not to call, and you can try to allow a block of time devoted to family fun each night, in addition to study time. When your daughters begin to think of their evening being taken over by work, i am sure they blame school for disrupting their family time and their social free time. You have shown them real support by contacting the school and trying to gain information about what is being assigned. By keeping the time task log for each girl, you can re approach the teacher with this information.

The teacher can suggest additional strategies that can reduce time spent on work without reducing the quality of the job. Connie collins, professional school counselor, worked for 35 years in public education as a teacher and counselor at the middle school and secondary levels. Collins worked daily with the parents of the students in her various schools, and has facilitated several parenting groups.

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q amp a with sara bennett and nancy kalish press release new york times op ed: no more teachers, lots time magazine review q: don't teachers know best when it comes to homework? a: no. When we started researching the subject, we were shocked to learn that most teachers have never studied homework in their teacher education courses. Few are aware of the studies showing that homework has little or no correlation with academic success in elementary school or that overwhelming amounts of homework have a negative impact on learning in all grades.

Also, few teachers have learned how to devise good assignments, how to decide how much homework to give, and whether to involve parents. In fact, according to gerald letendre, associate professor of education policy studies at pennsylvania state university. Just as alarming, once they begin teaching, they get little guidance from their schools, only 35 percent of which actually have written homework policies. Q: if your child is overwhelmed with homework, is there really much you can do about it? a: actually, there's plenty a parent can do. Although parents see homework sapping their kids' spirits and causing lots of stress and arguments, they often feel powerless or afraid to speak up. So even well intentioned teachers may be unaware that they're assigning too much, burning kids out, and turning them off to learning. So sometimes, all it takes to reduce the homework load is to talk to your child's teacher in the right way.