Welcome to Edutopia Radio. This is School of Practice, where we share what works inside real classrooms. I'm Kristin Leong, an editor at Edutopia, and I'm also a former middle school teacher. How do you know if your students are asking for help when they need it? For one teacher, it was hard to spot, but she could tell something was off.
When it came to, "Hey, let's, let's start the instruction." Some people would put their heads down. Other students would just kind of shake their heads, but not really begin. When I asked a kid, I was like, "Well, it looks like you have a question." And he was like, "Well, I don't wanna be stupid and ask a question."
And so that's when that aha moment hit me that questioning has a negative association for students. That's Cathleen Beachboard. She's been a middle and high school English teacher for almost 20 years, but she never forgot that moment. What Cathleen encountered is a common problem. Sometimes students are so lost that they're not even sure how to articulate a question.
In other cases, students lack the metacognitive awareness to realize they need help. And then there's the very real embarrassment factor. A 2021 study from researchers at Stanford and the University of Chicago showed that kids start to avoid seeking help in school at age seven. The study authors write that it's often because we "connect, asking for help with looking incompetent in front of others," and that stigma persists into adulthood.
When Cathleen realized something needed to change in her classroom, she started experimenting with new strategies. Today she'll talk about how she turned the concept of speed dating into a question-generating strategy and why she's fallen in love with post-it notes. Plus, we'll ask her whether there are any downsides to a classroom with a lot more questioners in it.
Okay. Let's pick up with how Cathleen started the process of remaking her classroom. I went literally searching around the school for cultures that just had questioning built in and where it was just part of the expectation, and I found it in the weirdest place. Where did you find it?
Yeah, so I went to the carpentry class. And he literally had like this little area where he just stood, and he's like, "When you have your questions, I want you to come over here." And everybody got question tickets, and they were expected to use them during the lesson. And I was like, "Wow!" Because they had to use at least one, and he always announced the question to the whole class.
And so it created a deeper learning environment. Do you remember that teacher's name? Can we give him a shout out? Yes. His name is Mr. Zingari and he's amazing. So Cathleen, you saw that in action in his classroom. What did that look like in your classroom when you brought it back? I took down the posters, and posters are great, but they really don't make a difference.
Like I can't think of a poster that ever changed my life in school. So I took down the posters and I created this space that I call Living Wall. And what it is, is it's a place for learning and also questioning. Kids would go over and take Post-it notes that I color-code based off of the lesson, and they would post a question because it was expected you had to contribute something to the wall, either a piece of advice or answer someone else's question.
And so kids were asking more questions, they were answering each other's questions, and it just really helped with just having that expectation that questions are a part of learning. Oh, okay. I can definitely see Mr. Zingari's influence here, and I have to say I love a color-coded Post-it system. How are you using color to classify these questions that kids are asking?
So it is a lot of Post-it notes, teachers. I am telling you upfront. So I order them in bulk, but it also helps the students see, well there's this learning, but it's not gone. It's still there. We're building on it. So you are using the color by unit -- green Post-its are for our To Kill a Mockingbird unit.
Yep. Yellow post-its are for our Hero's Journey unit. Yep. And then they're all together on the wall. Yep, so I save yellow. And the reason why is when they wanna connect something that they see from one unit to another, that's where yellow comes in. I love this. Can you think of a specific time where you saw one of those yellow Post-it notes and you were -- like, your own brain was sort of blown by the connection your student was making?
So you mentioned the Hero's Journey and then we were doing a unit on powerful orators, and so, A kid was -- they were watching Martin Luther King's speech and they were like, "He's literally living the hero's journey." And he's like, "Gimme a yellow Post-it." And he wrote it down and he said that the most powerful people, the reason we connect with them is because they have to rise up and face something, just like on the Hero's Journey.
And that's why we love the Hero's Journey because we appreciate the underdogs who go and do amazing things in life. As a fellow former English teacher, I'm cheering that yellow Post-it note of that student who wrote that. That's amazing. Yeah, and I usually read those yellow ones out loud as students make them because that's really showing them connecting their learning.
Now, I know that the Living Wall requires writing skills, but I'm curious if you think that there's a way to adapt this one for elementary students. So in K-3, I had a teacher actually message me how she does it. So she actually created a computer station where the students would record their questions.
And she would take the recordings and students could come over and listen to some and record and answer back. So she ends up with all these recordings, and it's just very fun that she has a digital Living Wall. We have two more strategies to cover, but first I wanna loop back to some basics here.
What happens in a classroom where kids don't ask for help? A couple of things happen. One, it actually hinders the learning environment because their question, it very easily could have been something that I might have skipped over. Because we're not perfect as educators. We might have the content knowledge, but when we present it, we might forget a critical concept or a tip that they really need.
And so by not having students engaged with the questioning first, you don't know where they're struggling to understand and you can't change or pivot. And then the second thing is it can also hinder other kids in the class who might have that same question. I wanna pause and unpack this for a minute because I'm hearing three important ways that help-seeking can enhance
Learning. First, there's the individual student's need for help. Second, there's the collective need, where a single kid asks a question. Several students may realize that they have that same question. And then there's the third impact for teachers. When kids dare to ask for help, that lets teachers know that they need to reteach a concept or clarify something.
Is that right? Yes. Now I know you have another strategy called Problem-Solving Speed Dating, which, by the way, is an amazing name. And this one engages every student in help-seeking for a short, focused period of time on a regular basis. So it's building that help-seeking muscle. How does it work? So once a week, the kids would go back through and look at every piece of feedback they'd been given, things that were hanging them up, and at the end of the week, they were expected to write down a problem they were having.
It was expected that you have problems during learning. And so during this activity, the kids would stand across from a partner and they would say, "Hey, here's my problem." And the other person would either give a piece of advice or a solution, or sometimes if they didn't have either, they would give empathy. And after a minute, the other person would share, and then they would move down the line.
Ah, there it is again, that expectation of questions. So Problem-Solving Speed Dating is a strategy that you used with your high school students. Have you heard from other teachers who've used it with younger learners? Yeah, so actually in one of the younger classrooms, it was a first-grade teacher. She sent me an email and she said that she does it actually at the end of every day.
And she said that tattling was like a big thing in her class, but because of this, students started sharing their problems with each other. Not just problems with the academic side, but problems they were having with their relationships in the classroom. And she said it's been a game-changer. After the break,
We'll talk about one more strategy Cathleen uses to encourage help-seeking in class. She calls it the Help Desk. Plus, we'll discuss how these strategies can build students' metacognition. We'll be right back.
Cathleen, your third strategy prioritizes students asking and answering questions with each other rather than coming to you. You call it the Help Desk, and it's something that you do in the last 10 to 15 minutes of class, like a closing activity. Tell us how it works. A kid who says, "I really understood this lesson," they go to the Help Desk. And first I model what the Help Desk
Is like for a student, and usually there are resources that I provide with information about the lesson, which would be key vocabulary, key parts, examples. That way, they have it on like ready to go. And if I have a student who hasn't gone to the Help Desk 'cause they need more time, I try to still give them that opportunity by front-loading content to some of the struggling learners the day before.
So they have a chance to reach mastery so that they can be in the Help Desk too. You know, we heard from an elementary-level teacher in our community who uses your help desk strategy in his classroom. His name is John Thomas, and he told us about a first-grade student who struggled with reading but wasn't comfortable getting help until he became the help desk expert for math.
I chose a strength of his, so math. So throughout the year, I made sure to focus on him helping others with their math. Later in the year, when he needed reading help, he actually asked for it. And I'll tell you what, two years later, he left my room the strongest reader that year. So John had his students help others, and then that made it easier for the student to ask for help when he needed it.
Does that surprise you? There's been a lot of research on pro-social behaviors, and so when you help someone else, you feel good. And so what he's saying goes with all the neuro research, and I'm not surprised because I've seen when people take the job as Help Desk, they see the value in the questions
And answering, and they can see how it makes their learning deeper. You know, I love that I was a middle school teacher and I just really believe that all students, if given the opportunity to help each other and to be in a place of really being able to say, you know, "I have expertise to share too," that they are truly enthusiastic to do so.
Yeah. Because it shows them they can be the leader in the room and that also gives them ownership because when they lead, they also say, "Well, I'm owning the learning." Now we have talked a lot about how asking for help is an expectation in your class, and what underlies that is that students are naturally building their awareness of where they're struggling and when they're doing well, which is metacognition.
So I'm curious, what other ways do you build this crucial self-awareness, so that they know when they need help? There are different ways that I approach that. The first thing is, "What are you thinking? What do you wonder?" And I like using the term "wonder" instead of just, "Do you have a question?" Because wondering is associated with positive things.
So as they go through and they read something, I was like, "What are you thinking? And what do you wonder?" So first they have to actually pay attention to their thinking. That's when the questions arise. It creates that metacognitive moment where they're like, "Oh, I have a piece I don't understand. How do I do this?"
I really like this distinction that you're making here between "What are your questions?" and "What do you wonder?" Now, before we wrap up, I have to ask: Are there any downsides to encouraging students to ask for help more often? Yes. Here is the downside. You're gonna have to say, "I don't know" more often as a teacher, and a lot of teachers are afraid to say that. And there are times where I say, "This is an amazing question
I'm gonna have to research this and get back to you." But it also allows students to see that I'm learning too. You know, I feel like we live in this culture where if you don't know something, the first response is to make something up or to change the subject. And I think it's actually a very, very powerful lesson just to model for students that it is okay to admit when you don't know something, and then to pursue that answer.
Yeah, it is. And I also show them where I got my information from because that's important too, because it shows them how they can proceed to answer their own questions sometimes when they get stuck.
Here are three things I'm taking away from this conversation. One, there are so many reasons why kids struggle to ask for help when they need it. Research from 2021 shows embarrassment is a huge factor. Researchers at the University of Toronto and Stanford also found that teachers tend to underestimate the role that embarrassment plays in keeping kids from asking for help.
And then that can lead to teachers assuming that a lack of questions in class equals student understanding that might not be there. Two, it is possible to make help-seeking and question-asking easier for students. The key is to build that expectation into your classroom routines and offer a range of options.
In addition to the three strategies from Cathleen that we just discussed, you could also use classic strategies like exit tickets or KWL charts, as long as it's a habit. And finally, be prepared to admit when you just don't know something. The upside is you can turn those moments into opportunities to learn right alongside your students.
Special thanks to our guest, Cathleen Beachboard. She's a high school English teacher in Virginia. Cathleen also contributes articles to Edutopia, and she's the author of a book, The School of Hope: Tthe Journey From Trauma and Anxiety to Achievement, Happiness and Resilience. Edutopia's video team made a very cool video about Cathleen's Problem-Solving Speed Dating strategy.
We'll link to that in the show notes, so you can see it in action. And if you need more details about these help-seeking strategies or the research we mentioned, we've got you covered. We'll drop links to Cathleen's Edutopia article and those research papers in the notes, as well. We love hearing from our community.
Send us your stories, ideas, and questions, and let us know what you'd like us to cover in future episodes. Our email is podcasts@edutopia.org. And if you liked this episode, follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So you never miss an episode. And please tell a colleague about the show.
This episode was produced by Anne Noyes Saini and edited by me. Our engineer is Doug Keely, and our supervising editors are Sarah Gonser and Steve Merrill. Special thanks to educator John Thomas, who shared his Help Desk strategy. I'm Kristin LeonG. We'll see you again soon.