In my last post, I talked about the possible benefits of having a classroom teacher talk less. Along that same line of thinking, today I want to focus on the need for teachers to help students less.
We elementary teachers tend to be a caring, compassionate bunch. As a result, it’s easy for us to want to jump in and immediately rescue a child who is struggling to understand subject matter material being presented. As we do, we fail to notice the opportunity costs in doing so:
- When we help students too quickly, we take away their opportunity to independently problem-solve and reason out a solution to the problem at hand.
- When we help students too quickly, we take away the opportunity for students to form great questions about what they don’t understand.
- When we help students too quickly, we take away the opportunity for other students to be leaders and help the student who is struggling.
- When we help students too quickly, we create a classroom where the teacher is seen as the one and only resource upon which students can call when they need help. Since the teacher won’t always be with the struggling student, it’s far better that the student would learn to turn to internal problem-solving strategies or even tech tools to help them instead.
It isn’t just teachers that have this problem; Dan Meyer has often lamented the fact that math textbooks can be far too helpful as well. (His blog subtitle, “less helpful,” is a phenomenal reminder to all of us.)
Perhaps Maria Montessori said it best: “Beyond a certain point every help given to a child is an obstacle to its development.”
I’ll say it this way: To ensure that our students don’t become helpless, we as teachers must help less.
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Lynn Shackelford
November 29, 2011
I think this is a good lesson for parents too. By constantly rescuing our child, the message we send is, “I don’t think you can do it.” Whether this is the intended message or not, continuous rescuing (or hovering, as some call it) will over time cause the child to be resentful. “Mom must really think I can’t do anything!” is the message received. It’s such an easy trap to fall into; we want life to be fun and easy for our children, but we do them no favors in preparing them for life if we can’t let them fall down on their own sometimes. They will figure out how to get back up.
sandi warren
January 9, 2012
“LESS” is the key word here. There is validity to all the comments on this blog. However if you don’t teach the children what you are doing and why, then how they can help each other and themselves, it will NOT help them become more successful and independent.