An interesting trend I am noticing in my students’ final reflections on the year, is that some are mentioning they didn’t ask for help as much as they should have, and they are recommending that future students ask for help when they need it. This is despite my constant refrains that, “the only dumb question is one not asked,” and “if you have a question, I guarantee you are not the only one with that question,” as well as the appreciative feedback I give students when they ask questions in front of the whole class, particularly when those questions help their classmates learn. As I reflect on this, it raises two questions for me: How do we learn to ask for help when we need it, and what builds our capacity to ask for help?
Over the past four years, I have noticed that my student population, in general, is reticent to ask for help. In person, when I move around the classroom questioning students about their work, asking students how they are doing on an assignment or project, that will often lead to questions, although it is certainly the case that I have students who are uncomfortable asking questions they believe are dumb. Many students have developed a fear that their questions and ideas are dumb, unimportant, or not worth asking.
To be fair, I do get “dumb” questions about instructions, even when I have them posted on the board as students work. In these cases, I thank the student for the question, ask if they have read the instructions, and ask them to clarify which element they are confused by. Sometimes we discover that my instructions are poorly phrased, and sometimes we discover that a close reading answers. Most of the questions that students ask are not “dumb’ ones – they are struggling to make sense of content or skills, don’t feel confident, and/or need to talk their thoughts over.
Now, this year, asking for help remotely is more challenging than in person. However, I have emphasized to students they have a variety of ways of asking for help when they need it. These methods include check-in questions through Google Forms, messaging me through Google Chat, email, tagging me in the Google document where they are stuck, or just pressing the “ask for help” button in breakout rooms. This variety of options has meant that in some ways, I have actually been more responsive to students’ requests for help this year because of the sheer variety of ways to request help without outing oneself as “dumb” to the rest of the class. And yet, when I circle through breakout rooms, students often ask questions that they wouldn’t have otherwise because I asked if they were doing alright. And still, some students reflect that they wished they asked for help more frequently.
It has typically been the case that I have 3-4 students per class this year who are great self-advocates, asking for help and feedback when they need it, in front of the whole class or privately. One in particular always frames her questions as, “so, asking for a friend…” which the class seems to get a kick out of. Those models of good question asking don’t seem to be that contagious though, despite my regular congratulations.
The central question I am struggling with, is how can I encourage more students – particularly those who wished they’d asked for help more – to become self-advocates? The first step is the identification of the problem, and students have identified this through reflection. The next step is identifying what the correct level of productive struggle is for students, what teachers often call the zone of proximal development.
Although students don’t always love it, I often turn their questions back on them. It seems to me that oftentimes what a student needs when they are struggling is someone to talk the work, idea, or skill over with. A little back and forth over a few basic directed questions from a teacher (or another student) helps the student to answer the question they had by themself. This more productive dialogue can happen through turning the question around, rather than a teacher supplying an answer, which leads to a form of academic dependency that isn’t useful in developing independent learners. In fact, it seems like a lot of the questions I get are more about validation, as students wonder if they are on the “right” track.
The questions are proof of process, and I wonder if part of the process is asking all students to ask questions, whether they feel they need help or not. There is skill in developing and asking questions, and value in putting yourself out there and asking them.