For Parents of School Children...

A conversation with an old friend who has a daughter in 9th grade, and a similar conversation with a teacher and parent has given birth to this monologue.

First, I will attempt to limit the educational jargon that is part of this discussion. I will not, however, apologize for educational jargon, though I have often made great fun of it. All jargons, regardless of the field or discipline that has coazed them into existence, are viable things. Medical professionals, for example, discuss a greater range of things with more clarity when they use appropriate jargon. The problem begins when the audience cannot possibly find the jargon clear or useful. In fact, the outsider is inhibited from understanding when he is ignorant of the jargon, and especially when he understands the jargon inaccurately.

The friend and parent complained about his daughter's geometry teacher. She has historically been an A student, they say, but now she is really struggling with geometry. Correspondence with the teacher has been non-productive. The teacher's primary - indeed, only - response to the parent's request for help has been to advise the student to attend a tutoring session that takes place after school. This session has been somewhat effective, but it has not helped the student to do any better at learning the material when it is initially taught.

The parents have also told me that the teacher explicitly told them that s/he doesn't teach. Instead, s/he described an inquiry-based (I will clarify later) approach that works as follows. Students are organized into groups and presented with a problem, which they are charged with solving. Relying on prior knowledge and creative thinking skills, the groups achieve consensus on a workable solution which is then presented to the whole class. [I am assuming that discussions/corrections which ensue during the presentation period provide a mechanism by which the teacher can remediate stragglers, clarify strategies, and identify critical concepts that are 'discovered' by the group problem solvers.]

Inquiry based learning is a great way to structure a lesson, but, like all strategies, it falls short when implemented poorly. Essentially, inquiry based learning presents the students with an issue or problem, provides access to resources by which the issue or problem can be attacked, then allows the teacher to define, identify, explain, and clarify the principles that students have used to achieve their solution. Done well, inquiry based learning is very efficient; done poorly, it almost guarantees that less learning is taking place.

How can parents know whether the situation is good or bad? This account isn't really meant to choose any presentational or instructional strategy over another. What parents need to know, in my opinion, is rather simple.

Every lesson should have a few major components, and parents can determine whether things are being done well regardless of the teacher's approach.

First, every lesson should have a clear objective that the instructor should clarify at some point in the lesson. That objective can be introduced at the beginning of the lesson, and the teacher can explain how the students are going to tackle the objective. In the inquiry approach mentioned at the beginning of this piece, the lesson objective may be revealed as late as the last few minutes of class.

Second, every lesson should have an activity that forces the student to employ the skill (practice problems?) or evaluate the information (discussion, lab report, written statement) that is at the center of the day's objective.

Third, every lesson must have a mechanism by which the teacher can monitor student progress and adjust instruction if necessary to provide remediation or enrichment. The translation for the last statement is simple: the teacher should have a way to respond to the discovery that the students haven't learned or have learned very well. If they haven't acquired what they ought, the teacher must have a way to try again. If they have grasped the material well, the teacher needs to have a way to challenge them further.

Unfortunately for parents, the means by which teachers can create lessons that meet these requirements are almost limitless. Gurus have written books that try to provide a manageable spectrum of possibilities, but the variability of clientele and teacher skill make it almost impossible to provide a range of approaches that really, truly covers all the possibilities.

In the case of the teacher mentioned at the beginning of this piece, I hypothesize two possibilities. The teacher is doing a competent to excellent job of using inquiry based learning but the student is not being responsible about asking for help in class, or isn't doing the work necessary to acquire the objective. The other possibility is that the teacher is doing a less than adequate job, and the parents need to find out why their daughter isn't learning the material in class.

I don't like the answer from the teacher, if it's true, that the student must attend a daily or regular tutoring session in order to function in the class. I certainly don't like the teacher saying, even in jest, that s/he doesn't teach. As a parent, I want to know how the teacher is monitoring the student's progress during the lesson. I want to know why, as reported by the teacher on conference night, students are not regularly asking questions during the lesson? If material is challenging and appropriate, students are going to have questions. If they are not comfortable asking questions, for whatever reason, the teacher needs to find out why.

The parents with whom I was talking need to be certain that their respective children are doing what they are supposed to be doing in the class. If the children are being responsible, and are still not learning, the parents need to urge school leaders to facilitate the necessary adjustments. Learning needs to take place every day, and teachers should have a good idea of individual student progress at all times. Of course, some students are going to learn at a faster pace than others, but none of the students who aren't learning at an appropriate pace should be allowed to coast on through.