Teacher Chris Conohan ’94 participates in reduced homework movement

Chris Conohan ’94 has been teaching for 12 years, all of them in the Middleton-Cross Plains Area School District, and is a fifth-grade teacher at Kromrey Middle School.

WISC-TV in Madison interviewed Chris for a story that put a local spin on a national trend that was highlighted by a teacher in Texas. Second-grade teacher Brandy Young passed out a letter to every parent at the start of the school year to explain her new no-homework policy. The story went viral but revealed an existing practice that has been quietly bubbling across elementary schools in particular.

Chris noted that in the past five or six years, he's observed a change in philosophy about homework among his colleagues as well, saying, “Sometimes (homework is) just frustration for the sake of frustration for the sake of task completion.” He now assigns less take-home “busywork” in favor of more in-class practice and collaborative, group-learning activities. “If we can accomplish [meeting standards] during the day with instruction and collaboration…then homework at that point isn’t really necessary.”