Avoiding the Bailout: Building Independence

At 2:30 on Thursday, seven of my sophomore biology students walk into my room.  Tomorrow is the deadline for retaking the genetics unit test.  We make a circle with the desks, and I hand out their first attempts at the test.  Three more students come in as we are starting to go over questions on the test they didn’t understand.  I’m writing on a small white board.  Students are writing notes for questions they missed.  “What was the answer to 6?”  “We are going over 4, right now.  Can you wait until we get to 6?”  The chaos of this particular afternoon is worse than I’ve experienced for after school help.  This particular group of boys (there is one girl here, also) are joking and distracting each other.  Their capacity for learning seems diminished right now.  I’m struggling to keep their focus, keep the emphasis on the learning and not just on the right answers.  I’m frustrated because none of these students have asked for help during this unit.  I know that I’m not serving them, and I sense that they are only here to raise their grade, not to understand the genetics.  The work I did to make sure they learned the content didn’t seem effective; I’m unhappy that the seedlings problem solving lab, the dragon genetics activity, practice problems, and review guide haven’t helped these students.  I’m sitting in a student desk after they leave, and I know, I have to change.

How we teach students how to deal with failure is a hot topic.   Books like “The Gift of Failure” and “How to Raise an Adult” are  popping up.  Also swirling: grit, growth mindset, racing to nowhere, engagement, teacher evaluation systems, and new science of the brain and learning.   As teachers, we are also honing our focus on preparing students for the deep and wide waters of the future.  So, it feels natural that we would shelter and protect our students where we can.  Parents advocate with best intentions, others hover and some fully immerse themselves in their student’s education.  Teachers scaffold.  We support, preview, reteach, pace, differentiate, personalize and attempt to engage in the efforts of student learning.  But, how do we walk the line?  

Struggle

For the past few months, I have been reading, listening and thinking about struggle.  I’ve been trying to tease apart working independently from struggle, and I have come to the conclusion that to be capable of working independently, one must have capacity for struggle.  Not only that, but struggle is crucial to learning. Before we can fully define what it means to promote independence, we should look at what it means to impede it.

Paul Andersen (Bozeman Science, Horizontal Transfer) likens learning to getting in shape.  We know what it feels like to get in shape when we first start working out: pain, pain, pain, and then the body adapts, builds more mitochondria to get the cells the energy they need for the running, jumping, rowing, skiing movements.  We, and especially students, don’t think this applies to our brains.  Just as I cannot get in shape by watching Usain Bolt sprint 100 meters, I cannot solve a complex genetics problem at first glance.  My students at the review session weren’t ready to run the race because they weren’t in shape.  Not in shape for genetics, and in a larger sense they weren’t in shape for learning biology.

What is the bailout?  

We know the banks were bailed out in 2008, and we could argue about if that was right or wrong.  But, when do we bailout students inappropriately?  This happens when we never allow a failure to stand.  When there is always a way to roll back the consequences.  When consequences are not applied.  When tasks are too easy, when we don’t intervene when we should, when we allow things to slip by, we are bailing out the students.  I fully acknowledge that we need safety valves when the pressure builds too high.  We need to step in during times of crisis, we need to protect students from catastrophic failure.

When do we prevent independence skill building? When we don’t offer appropriate challenges.  When we are only looking for one type of answer.  When we only assign one type of task.  When all assessments are summative.  When all work is group work. When we promote learned helplessness. 

So, what does it look like to promote skills for working independently?  This is the harder question when the goal is for all students to succeed.  We need to provide students with interesting and challenging problems that are not easy to solve. We need to provide an atmosphere of trust and time for students to wrestle with the tasks. We need to allow for failure, both where stakes are minimal, and when the stakes are slightly higher.  We need to hold students accountable for the quality and timeliness of their work.  We need to emphasize that grades are a measure of learning, not a measure of effort.  

When I think about the types of students I want to leave my class, I want those who are ready to tackle the big problems: confident, skilled, creative, and ambitious.  I want the students who will climb the hill to enjoy the ride down.  I want the student who scoffs at the chicken door in line for the roller coaster.  

So, how will I work this into my classes?

1. I will work to avoid the bailout.  I will emphasize that not all learning is pay-out.  We will have the pain of getting in shape to contend with. If I can prompt students to stretch, then I can monitor their response to that stretch and ease before the breaking point.
2. I will bring independence to the forefront in many contexts.  I will ask students to offer their best skills to the group and then reflect on their progress.  “In this group today, you can count on me to _______________.”
3. For unit test make ups, I will require students to not only meet with me, but to demonstrate independent review and relearning.
4. I will have student reflect on their capacity to struggle with different types of tasks.
5. I will carefully define what I mean when I use the word independence with students.  Their ideas of independence often emphasize concepts of freedom or choice, when ours emphasize responsibility and tenacity.

Next month: Critical Thinking

When I wrote this piece, I consulted these resources:

• The Horizontal Transfer podcast by David Knuffke and Paul Anderson, especially Episode 22: A Courseload of Struggle
• Several of the essays from the 2014 series of Unity & Diversity on struggle, especially, “Get out of the water or you’ll drown.” And “If we want students to feel safe to fail, teachers need to model it first.” And, the foreward to the 2014 collection by Brad Williamson.
• Veritasium: Learned Helplessness
• NPR: How Schools are Handling an ‘Overparenting’ Crisis
• NYTimes: What if the Secret to Success is Failure?
• NPR:  Struggle for Smarts? How Eastern and Western Cultures Tackle Learning
• TED Talk by Angela Lee Duckworth: The key to success? Grit
• NYTimes: How to be Emotionally Intelligent
• Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

Thanks to:

• The instructors and the participants in the Summer-Fall 2015 Yarmouth Technology Course: Engaging Learners Using Technology for sparking the idea and supporting its growth.
• Anne Tommaso and Marita O’Neill for writing support