Better Learning

How can I make asking for help a strength, not a weakness?

It should be the easiest act in the classroom, asking for help. After all, it’s why we are there. To help. And for me, it’s the act that makes me most feel like a teacher. It’s satisfying. It’s gratifying.

So, then, one might think that I am living the dream here in my room, satisfied and gratified to the nth degree. But one would be wrong. If my happiness hinged on help alone, I would be deeply depressed, for as important as it is, the want of help is in short demand. And so the supply goes to waste, and I am left to lament the loss.

Kids don’t/won’t ask for help. For a quarter century in the classroom I have been confounded by this. Why won’t kids ask for help? Surely they need it. Surely I can provide it. But it just seems to hover there in the air among and around us, an apparition never fully materializing to its full power and potential. And for years, this has haunted me.

And over the years in moments of manic motivation, I have sought to bring the ghost to life, to animate and activate the super natural, for it should be super natural, to ask for help–as natural as breathing. So, I try–too often in vain–to breathe life into Help.

This week, now four weeks beyond the quarter-century mark in the classroom, I tried once again to breathe some life into the incorporeal.

But this wasn’t any old, off-the-shelf, ordinary help. This was help on an assessment, a Learning Check. Can we help them on assessments? Surely, we never would have expected, much less asked, for help on a test when we were in school; it was an assessment of our learning. It would skew the results. And it is this very notion that I carried with me for far too long when I entered the classroom as the help holder. I had to “hold my help” in times like this, for how could I accurately label and sort my kids if I gave them help?

But times have changed. And so have my prepositions. Fortunately, I graduated from “of” to “for,” and I began to regard learning and teaching differently, and I became less “holdy” with my help as I embraced assessment for learning. The whole idea was to give the assessment to determine the necessary help for learning. But as endearing as my new preposition was, I learned to love another: as.

Assessment as learning. I give assessments, Learning Checks, as a necessary nutrient for growth. It is in this place where we meet as teacher and learner. It is our work. And no work is the same, for no learner is the same, and for each learner, I have to become a different teacher. Teaching is responding to the needs of kids, and it is here where we–the kids and I–create the opportunity for me to respond, for me to help. So, then, are you saying you are helping kids? Yes, but I am not saying that they are asking for it. And I want them to ask for it when they need it. I don’t only want it to happen after they’ve done. I want it to happen, too, while they do. And why shouldn’t it. It’s in the active part of the process, and maybe–just maybe–it’s better placed there, where and when they need it. I am not seeking to sort and label kids with assessment. I am seeking to join them in their learning with my teaching.

And this week, on a whim, I decided to meet them there in their learning with a “live” lifeline. In Google Classroom, kids can send me private comments “live” while they are taking the assessment. I have my notifications turned on, so when they send me a comment, I get a “ding.” And I can respond immediately–to whatever they need. I didn’t restrict what they could ask. What they need should not and, in my class, will not be determined by what I am willing to offer. So, I told them to let their needs determine the ask. In the end, I am going to help them anyway with my feedback. As such, I saw no reason why I couldn’t–shouldn’t–join them earlier in the feedback/response process. And, because it’s there in the comments, we will have already begun capturing their learning stories with a record of our interactions.

Did they flood me with requests for help? Nope. Still a stigma, I’m afraid. Still a weakness, asking for help. And one crazy idea isn’t going to change that right away. But it’s early. Lots of learning ahead. Lots of opportunities to bring help to life. If nothing else, it was an important step to frame help differently, to increase the demand for what is in great supply: my help. Waiting for their want.

Happy weekend, all. Hope you are safe and sane during this crazy time. Take care.

Do. Reflect. Do Better.