

You can do the rest of the problems, but you don’t have to if you run out of time or energy.” Please show them to a parent to explain what you’re doing. She said, “OK, tonight you have to do these three problems. She asked the class to write a number next to the problem and to rate their ability to do each of these independently (1= no help needed). Then she asked the kids to use a 5-point scale to rate the difficulty level of each problem: 1 is thumbs up, a piece of cake 5 is super hard. She didn’t ask them to pick the easiest problems, but she built in some easy items to make this work better up front. The following day after the meeting, Zach’s teacher asked all of the kids to take a look at their homework and pick out three of the 15 problems assigned that they were most likely to get right. Zach’s dad and mom shared their frustration and worry with Zach’s teacher and, together, they worked out an arrangement, a plan to motivate Zach to get his work done - and boost his resilience and confidence along the way. Zach resisted doing his homework almost every night. “I don’t wanna,” says Zach, “It’s stupid and boring” (which usually means, “It’s too hard”).ĭad coaxed, encouraged, sweet-talked, and bribed his son, to no avail. “How ’bout math? You usually have math,” his dad said.

A very smart 10-year-old named Zach used to come home from school, sigh heavily, drop his backpack on the floor and say, “I don’t have any homework!”
