Back To School - Homework

Homework is not the reason for the falling birthrate in G8 countries. Parenting is. Homework is part of parenting and women are still a factor.

Most women in Europe and North America continue to choose careers and independent lifestyles over having kids. There is also the possibility of divorce, which leaves women with kids while men continue seamlessly with their lives.

Women that have one or two might work full time. Kids mean school and school means homework. In 2014, Victoria recorded the lowest birth rate in Australia, and Italy, where big families were the norm in the 19th century, also has a declining birth rate.

Babysitters depend on children’s ages and parental choice, but what is important to parents is someone who can contribute to their development during those two to three hours.

Kids who are in school have some projects or homework. Maybe the solution is ‘homework-sitters wanted’ instead of babysitters.

Ideally, parents should help kids with their homework, but survival comes first. Some parents do not hold two jobs for fun. They need money for basic things which include electronic gadgets kids like. It is even worse for single parents because everything is on their shoulders.

Hiring homework-sitters instead of babysitters might ease the guilt parents feel about leaving their kids in somebody else’s care.

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Homework has different subjects. If parents insist on homework, rather than babysitters, will they hire five different sitters for five subjects? It depends.

An A student might be competent in all five subjects. Maybe you want homework sitters to help your child with just two. Once again, homework varies according to age and current schools.

Homework sitters shift the emphasis from making sure that kids do not play with electrical appliances or fall down the stairs. It makes homework the focus. It is one-on-one teaching like His Royal Highness Prince George Alexander Louis of Cambridge, third in line king of England, who will have tutors when he grows up.

Homework sitters are just that, tutors. They fill in the gaps between what kids learn at home and school. Synchronization. What homework sitters teach kids should not be different from their parents' beliefs.

For example, homework sitters cannot say there is no Santa Claus, when parents say such a man exists. That is why hiring homework sitters needs careful planning.

There are young and older babysitters. We dealt with elder citizens and their wealth of knowledge before. This particular piece concentrates on younger people.

People take babysitting jobs for a variety of reasons:

1. University students that need money to supplement their scholarships or stipend they get from parents.

2. Students from extremely large families that are financing their own education.

3. College students that live in the dorm and want a quiet place to study away from roommates and friends.

4. People who are working full time but want to save for their trip to Kenya to see why Mount Kenya has ice when it sits on the Equator.

5. Young people who just graduated from high school and taken a year off to think about what they really want to do in college, Archeology, Chemistry, Computer Engineering or International Studies?

The interview will help parents gather the following information from potential homework sitters.

• Availability. Can they work afternoons (especially after school), nights and weekends?

• Do they have a car?

• Where do they live?

• What are their strong subjects?

• Do they mind if you make a photocopy of their I.D. and student card?

• How many languages do they speak?

Once parents have identified successful candidates, they can invite them home for the orientation dinner: meet the children, go over past assignments (depending on their ages), set down rules like not copying anything from the internet, meals, agree on gas money or bus tickets for the homework sitter, that sort of thing.

College professors have rules about lifting things from the internet, but I do not know if they are winning. Just visit mega-libraries like the Toronto Reference Library and you will see lonely book aisles because students are glued to their computers.

Parents must explain that they are not against the internet, but want their children to have human interaction, to learn from somebody who knows the problem of learning the calculus, who can project where computers are going to take us, who can explain how the stock market works, who knows why China produces what we eat, drink and wear and who can ride a bike.

Just talk to my child.

Family is the ideal place to source homework-sitters because kids already know family members and are comfortable with them. You also don’t have to worry about security.

Kids face so many unknown dangers today, countries such as Australia, Canada and the U.S. insist on security checks.

Kindergarten teachers, sports instructors, babysitters, volunteers etc. must be cleared by the police that they were never involved in drugs, kidnapping and other crimes. The security check also exposes paedophiles and people who have sexually or physically abused kids in any other way.

Another place to find homework sitters would be schools themselves. There are many part time teachers who will love to supplement their income. The problem with this might be a conflict of interest.

Do you hire your child’s Mathematics teacher to be her private tutor? I once saw a Bollywood movie where a professor made more money tutoring his student at home compared to his salary as a teacher. That is fiction.

The flaw with that is the age gap. Babysitters are usually younger than parents and teachers. They are in between. They are fun because they don’t have ‘authority’ stamped on their foreheads. They are young and bring fresh ideas to the table.

You can easily find ideal candidates for homework sitting if you are involved in your kid’s school. You know about the music teacher who is also very good with computers.

The young volunteer who teaches kids skating might be a mathematical genius and the plus is that he loves kids already otherwise he wouldn’t spend time watching them tumble on ice.

Church is also a possible place to find reliable homework sitters. The advantage of finding somebody in religious organisations is that they are tight knit organisations which means people know each other. That powerful tenor in the church choir might be an A student in Natural Science

You can also find homework sitters among your colleagues. A co-worker might have a teenager who has just returned from a dig in Arizona and is going to study archeology in 2016.

You might have to go through a few homework sitters before you strike gold, but it worth a try.