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With a Berkeley Federation of Teachers (BFT) “work to rule” labor action scheduled to officially begin this week, meaning teachers refusing to work off the clock, the first effect Berkeley Unified School District parents and students are likely to see is a drop in homework. 

“But if that’s what parents are concerned about,” a high school math teacher told the Daily Planet in a telephone interview, “then maybe what it says is that parents don’t understand what it is that teachers do.” 

Last week, the BFT announced the work slowdown in response to Berkeley Unified’s latest contract proposal. Berkeley teachers have been working without a contract for two years, and contract negotiations are currently being coordinated through a state-appointed mediator. 

In an e-mail to union members, the BFT Executive Board said that work to rule “means that all work related to our jobs is completed during the duty day or during hourly paid time.” The duty day was describe as “7 hours 10 minutes...unless you are being paid extra for an after-school activity.” Teachers were encouraged to continue the work slowdown “until further notice.” 

Berkeley public school teachers said that means homework is going to be severely curtailed or eliminated altogether. At the request of BFT officials, who arranged the interviews, the teachers were to remain anonymous. 

A kindergarten teacher said that teachers at her school had decided to eliminate any homework that involves paperwork on the part of teachers. 

“That means no assignments that require preparation by the teachers, and nothing that requires grading,” she said. “There’s no time in the normal school day to complete those types of tasks.” 

A second grade teacher said that the homework action at his school was “a compromise between those teachers who favored no homework at all, and those teachers who said to assign homework, but not to grade it. We decided to simply give a generic form of homework, with teachers providing a minimum of feedback.” 

He said that he normally assigns a weekly homework packet to his students on Monday that consists of spelling words, math problems, and reading assignments. 

“I generally spend two to three hours over the weekend correcting the packets after they’re turned in on Friday, so that I can have them back to the students on Monday,” he said. 

He said that he planned to eliminate that form of homework, and instead would simply tell students to “read 20 minutes, write 20 minutes, and practice math problems. And when I get it back on Monday, I’m just going to check done, done, done, and that will be it.” 

A middle school English teacher said that homework involves three parts: planning it, using class time to explain it, and grading it. 

“I’ll continue to be able to give home reading assignments to my students,” she said, “but the type of homework that involves a collaboration between the student and the teacher—the type that is a vehicle for individual instruction—is going to be put on hold.” 

She explained the time constraints. 

“I teach 180 students during the course of my day,” she said. “If I assign essay homework that requires me to spend 3 minutes with each of them evaluating their drafts, that alone adds up to 9 hours of work. If I spend 5 minutes with each of them, that adds up to 16 hours. Assigning homework that involves that amount of my time is not possible to complete during the course of my contracted day.”  

But a high school math teacher called the curtailed homework policy the least important of the job action’s effects. 

“Nobody grades homework at the high school level,” she said. “The only thing we do is check off whether it’s done or not.” 

She said that the preparation of lesson plans will be the major loss to educational quality from the job action. 

“Many of the lessons are going to be cobbled together, rather than being well-planned,” she said. 

She explained that she typically spends 2 and a half hours per day on classroom work outside of her contracted time, “and I don’t spend it twiddling my thumbs. I plan lessons. I grade papers. I contact parents who have called me with questions about classroom work or their children’s performance. I have an hour of prep period per day to make out tests, run copies of them off, record grades on the computer, and deliver attendance logs to the office or complete other school business. Normally I spend my lunch hour tutoring students. Now I’m going to have to figure out how to do all of that within the confines of my duty day. So some of it will be cut.” 

She said that while she does most of her after-hours work at home, it is not unusual for teachers to work at the high school until 6 p.m. 

In its instruction letter to BFT members, the BFT Executive Board said that with the exception of Open House participation, which is mandated under the expired BFT-BUSD contract, all job-related work was to be completed during the 7-hour day. The board said that policy included parent-student conferences and participation in such committees as those formed through the Berkeley School Excellence Project and the various school site councils. 

In an interview with the Daily Planet last week, BFT President Barry Fike said that it was his belief that during the “work to rule” slowdown, some Berkeley teachers would continue to honor long-time commitments to after-school projects that are already in the works.?