Constructivism is for Tutors

[Adam Ross]

The Student Support Center attracts a very diverse group of students. For both students and tutors/staff, the male:female ratio is roughly 1:1, and I think gendered differences are something that are handled really well. In my own experience, high school classrooms can have blatant gendered problems of females needing to assert themselves more to be heard and males being placed under unreasonable scrutiny for their behavior, but the Student Support Center does not present these problems. I think students regardless of gender would feel comfortable here.

I believe that the main issue the SSC has with relation to diversity is its racial feedback gap. When I have worked with students of color, they have been less responsive towards my input than the white students have. Compared with white students, certain students of color have more often stared at me blankly, made excuses for not doing work, left for extended periods of time, and told me they didn’t know how to do things without asking specific questions. A caveat is that this problem has only occurred with some students, it is not a general rule, I have had positive experiences with students of color. It seems like while white students come to me with the expectation that I will be able to help them solve their problem, students of color sometimes do not want to spend the energy to show me their problem and help them solve it.

Interestingly, out of the four tutors I see regularly at the center, one is black, so 25% of the tutors I see are tutors of color, which is a greater fraction of POC as tutors than as students. This does not seem to solve the problem which makes me think that the issue has more to do with the culture of power which manifests in the curriculum of the school and in the student interactions in the SSC than with any social-cognitive issues of students not relating themselves to their models. It seems like the problems identified in Delpit’s Silenced Dialogues would not be solved immediately by placing more role models of color in the SSC, it would have more to do with incorporating anti-racist teaching, which I am not aware is being implemented at NHS.

To address the problems of racial inequality, I see the tutors checking up on the students to make sure they are completing the work that needs to be done, and treating them with dignity in all aspects. I think everyone including myself is coming in with the best of intentions, but I think formal anti-racist practices would go a long way to address the problems in the SSC.

This week, the SSC implemented a great example of active response! This is the end of the first quarter of the year at NHS, which means student’s report cards are being sent out. A tutor passed out forms which I have taken a picture of and attached to this blog post. I identify that the use of such feedback forms forces the students to consider their grades in every class and assess what can be improved for the future. Rather than just passing out report cards which students can think about or ignore, prompting students to reflect on their performance lets them identify the behaviors that they would like to work on and what they would like to keep up. This is an improvement on the reinforcement which they would receive from only reading their report cards because it asks them to make a commitment to change something which the teacher will know and can hold them accountable for.

I find that the most rewarding strategy of teaching to use with students is constructivism, seeing a student ask the right questions which lead to their own understanding of the material being boosted on subjects that they have already learned seems like it is more effective than other ways of learning. When I am helping a student, I always try to ask them questions, I picked up this strategy working as a Lab Assistant at Carleton for Intro Physics, where I was taught to utilize the socratic method. At the place on Bloom’s taxonomy where I am seeing students at the SSC, they have the knowledge they need to answer whatever questions they need to already, they just haven’t synthesized it. As compared to operative conditioning and social learning, Constructivism seems to be ideal for engaging the upper stages of Bloom’s taxonomy. This is also the most fun to implement when I am helping students with science homework, because it challenges me to use my scientific knowledge to provoke the questions that will make students access the knowledge they will need to answer their homework.

[Thomas White]

Hey Adam,

 

It’s super interesting to hear your perspective on the SSC. I have similarly noticed that students of color have (on average) been less responsive to my input. Personally, I understand this to be a failure on my part. Delpit’s ideas on the culture of power tells us that “those with power are frequently least aware of… its existence.” It is more than likely that this culture of power (and my blindness to it) has shaped my tutoring interactions with students of color. I hope to try my hardest to work against this dynamic in the future– the first step to do this is to recognize it! Thanks for your extremely thoughtful response! 🙂

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