Are we doing homework wrong?

I just finished reading the book The Perks of Being a Wallflower and it made me consider how we treat our talented students.  This is not to say that it didn't cause thinking about other things such as how crazy high school can be, that Charlie lived a very different high school experience than I did, that I hope drugs are not that prevalent (but pretty much acknowledge that they are)...

Regardless, Charlie was an extremely intelligent boy who ran into a teacher that truly cared about him.  In that caring was giving him additional books to read and essays to write about them.  Charlie didn't see these as extra work or even a labor to do.  He enjoyed doing them.  Is that so different than our classrooms?  There are students in our classrooms that depending on the subject area have an interest that goes well beyond the normal student.  For this student, we expect of them the same as every other student.  We expect them to do the normal work, at the normal standard level the same as every other student.  We don't give them any other work or tasks to meet their needs because we are told by so many people that too much homework is bad especially in the elementary grades.

However, for students like Charlie, extra reading and essays are not more work.  Its playtime.  Its a time to think like they want to think.  Its an opportunity to explore an area they already love to work in.  We can't keep thinking of an assignment as a prototypical assignment but as an opportunity to take them further.

This work cannot be more problems but a deeper experience with math.  If you've read previous posts I obsessively talk about Math Tasks.  We have them.  They are provided in our tables we use for our topics.  We just need to give them to our students either in selective groups or as a classroom.  Regardless, just like the caring teacher in the The Perks of Being a Wallflower it's all about how the discussion after the task.  Charlie's discussions were always with his teacher.  Our discussions could be with us as teachers but more importantly should be with other students.

We need to treat all students as individuals.  Some need the standard level of instruction, others need additional help because they struggle.  Still there are those others who can sneak through the cracks.  Not because they end up struggling but because we never approach them to see if they could do more.