It starts with a study hall, one like certainly so many throughout the country today. For our purpose, we'll call this study hall The Math Learning Center, but name your subject. It is well-appointed with the usual hardware: tables - some round for group work - chairs, white boards, scratch paper, books, calculators and computers. It is staffed with subject-expert volunteers, all also being retired professionals. These happen to be the go-to subject experts available to those using the study hall. I happen to be one of them. Our education and long experience assures that we also know our stuff, and most of us use the opportunity to teach ourselves more. We will, if asked, tell you that being part of this is a joy and are very willing to help, but, yes, it is also about being valued for what we know and very much still want to share.
As you might expect, the subjects covered in our own study hall span Pre-Algebra, Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, multiple levels of Calculus, but also Statistics, Physics, and Computer Science and most computer-based tools and software. Every book used by the kids is available to us and we've gone through most of them. Still, that's us, for our students. Name your school and classes taught there, and it is effectively the same.
The students also come from very diverse backgrounds, both culturally and skill-wise. We have students ranging from those wanting just a warm-fuzzy that they will likely be getting an "A" all the way to those needing the help necessary to allow them to merely pass. Help is freely given to all, in whatever way(s) or for however long they need us. We do not grade and certainly do not judge. A lot of it is about just plain minimizing the normal frustration, of allowing success to breed success. Along with the assistance and/or tutoring, we offer simple encouragement. Occasionally, upon parting, we might add with a smile "You didn't really need me did you?" I will add that occasionally we just chat with the students, often, though, with a purpose.
In the room, each table and each workstation includes two cups, one red, the other green, one upon the other. If the green cup is up, the student(s) there are also saying “I/we are doing fine here”. A red cup tells the volunteers that the student(s) need some assistance. A volunteer normally reacts immediately, often simply because we hear the cups flip. (We even tend to compete to be the one hearing it first.) A quick outline of the question or problem, typically followed by a quick determination of what the student knows and/or doesn't, is followed by some form of situation-appropriate assistance. The assistance might be as little as a quick review of the student's work, ensuring it is right and providing suggestions, or as much as a white-board tutorial of the underlying concepts, another point of view on the subject. If they want their hand held while they are doing the work to build confidence along the way, we do that as well. Whatever it takes. And with respect.
The key point to observe here is that the student(s) is not stuck in their studies for long if at all. There is no waiting, certainly not for office hours or for the instructor to become available. Frustration remains/becomes minimal. Progress continues. This produces real self-esteem which breeds more success. More students succeed, see the benefit of the time (and, in college, money) they are spending, and so stay in school. Of course, the school sees the economic benefit of this last, but it is clear that so does society. We, the volunteers, are there for the students – each and every individual that we help – but we are also well aware of the broader implications of what we are doing. We have, again, lived a life and want to leave it having made it better.
Aside from describing here a nice, successful study hall, what is this really all about? It's about having a need and the means of filling it, of seeing an educational need – that of students needing assistance, and in a timely manner – and having an experienced resource available. It is also about motivating and enabling that resource to fill that need. It's about realizing that, no matter how competent our education professionals – our professional teachers – may or may not be, they are not always available when needed to ensure students are making unfettered progress. It's about expanding this meeting of a need with a resource throughout education.
The resource? Our society's retired skilled professional and technical experts. We have a lot of them throughout our communities, many wanting to do a lot more than just “be retired”. Many have used what we have learned, well over and above what is being taught, for a lot of years. A significant potential pool of available truly skilled people exists. Stating the obvious question, is our society using this resource or in any way enabling it for purposes like this? More on this fact shortly. This little study hall is a microcosm of something potentially much bigger, a change in the way that we educate, enabling a fuller use of such a resource. It is an education resource waiting to be matched with a real need throughout our countries educational systems. Said differently, picturing yourself as a school administrator, a school board, or a teacher wanting help, if an army of such people came knocking on your door, if you could start all over, how would you reoranize education to use them? And, having pictured your ideal way of educating using this army, what would you need to motivate that army to actually be motivated for show up?
Observe first, though, that clearly the student's teachers – the professional full-time educators – exist and have been teaching well for, well, forever. This "army" has no desire or intent to change that. Many of us have dear memories of some of them from our own past. Clearly, the institutions and the entire teaching institution exists to serve these same students. Similarly, for many of us, being an alumnus of our own institutions remains a big deal for us. They have served us well. Still, I for one – and I suspect most of us – would have wanted to do better and even more successfully learned more.
So, in the following sections, I am going to attempt to outline some thoughts on enabling this meeting of subject professionals – mentors/tutors if you like, people quite distinct from our also needed education professionals – with the students who need them.
Before going on, allow me to again clarify a few points.
I am going to use the term teaching professional. These are your trained professional instructors. In a university environment, these would also include professors, some not trained in the same way as other public-school professionals for actually teaching. In any case, these are the people who define what needs to be taught, who do the actual teaching, and define assignments - as practice and feedback - and tests, to determine what each kid knows and hopefully to address where it is lacking. They are our education professionals. These are people who run the formal class rooms and are formally responsible for the success of their students. These are also people for which education is a full-time – and often extra-time – career.
I am going to also use the term subject expert. Subject experts are the experienced assistants/tutors/mentors. They are not teaching professionals. They do what I had outlined above for the study hall, but perhaps more. Strictly speaking, they are also not necessarily substitute teachers. They, though, have used professionally for many years what they had learned both in school, in their professional career, and in just living. They know their stuff, and want to share it, and are willing to learn more. (I will add that they should also be able/required to prove that they are indeed subject experts.) They effectively work for the teaching professionals, who set the expectations and content being taught for these subject experts.
Now, picture today's typical class room. After the teaching professional's “teach”, the students take time to work on associated assignments. When needed, the teaching professional typically spends time – often one-on-one – with the students in their class. Typically, there is one such teacher, so one student helped at a time. The intent of the in-class assignment is to ensure that the students grasp the concept. More on this shortly.
Clearly, we all desire our students to succeed given today's requirements. We also want our students to learn more, to be more successful at what they should learn. But we all know that the finances for doing so are – let us just say – constrained. In business, some would refer cynically to this as insisting that we do more with less. In short, though, we want our educational environment to be more productive, to be more successful. In teaching, that might mean having our students learning more – and assuring that it was learned – in less time and, too often, with more students per teacher.
So how do we increase whatever is perceived as productivity? Most teachers will argue that they could teach more if they had fewer students to teach. True. But why is that said? It is partly because of where they are now required to spend their time. They are required to spend their time in ways that can not be scaled up as the number of students increase. (Well, they could, but most would agree that educational results would degrade.) They are required to spend time one-on-one with their students. Given no further assistance, this is exactly where they should be spending their time. But practically every teacher would tell you that they could use help with this task. There may well be value to that, but such in-room assistance does not scale up well either. Such personal assistance becomes useful only during those periods when students are working on assignments.
At practically every school, some notion of a study hall is generally available and staffed, potentially occasionally with our teacher professionals themselves attending. Indeed, "study hall" is considered a class period in its own right. Changing focus a tad, given the typical college experience, students take classes throughout the day. The professors teach, only occasionally providing in-class study time with assistance. Additionally, these classes occur whenever the classes they need just happen to be available. In between, and, of course, before and after such classes, students use the study halls or any private study area, individually or in team groups, at their discretion. When the something on the order of The Math Learning Center exists, these students are motivated to also use that resource. Assistance exists, for use as necessary. It is worth noting that this study hall get used because, at those times which students have available for studying, their preferred teaching professional might not be available to assist. But the need for assistance then exists nonetheless.
Of course, this notion of available time for studying is not limited to the college levell. At the university level, it is clear enough that each college would or could have its own subject's study halls, being staffed with subject professionals. For universities with graduate schools, graduate students are often motivated financially via teaching assistantships to help staff such facilities. Even at smaller institutions, advanced students, also then considered subject experts, can often be similarly motivated. But, notice that The Math Learning Center, et.al., still considers it important to include subject professionals with significant life-long experience as well.
So, what of high schools and middle schools? There are study halls, certainly, but here with less flexibility for the students. "Study Hall" is managed as a class like any other. It is a limited-time resource for the students, time during which to maximize the completion of their assignments while in school. Assistance to break past frustrating concepts and into success may or may not be available in a timely fashion or even available.
But now picture a study hall, or multiple of such, equipped as needed for a class of study, but also now staffed with multiple subject experts. How would/should the school day be altered to make this often one-on-one assistance available to the students?
This notion was first introduced as being associated with various levels of mathematics. Some may expand this to being appropriate for all of the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) subjects. Picture mentored assistance with programming in computer science or the opportunity to discuss concepts previously seen in physics, chemistry, or biology labs. These subject experts are available nominally in those student halls. Picture cross-subject teams of subject experts available for hands-on robotics or name your teaching vehicle needing a few more hands all as part of normal science classes as requested.
There is, however, no real reason to stop there. Even students desiring a STEM-like background are best served if they can also write clearly, collect their thoughts, and present well. Skill in the softer or related subjects is every bit as important. Consider the importance of understanding financial, social, and historical issues as well, and having mentors available for discussing and succeeding with such. All of these, too, have a need for scalable sets of subject experts to provide the assistance when needed.
In my own case, having worked for a high technology company for decades, that company would sponsor a day where we would volunteer to put on a fixed demonstration in the science classes of various regional schools. All great, all intended to excite students, but our corporation was in a way intruding into the teacher's curriculum of those days. Isn't it better to have the teacher's dictate and present on the experience and have such local and available subject experts do the handywork and assist?
The point is, the experienced subject professionals being sought here clearly include those from the STEM backgrounds, but skilled people from practically every other background could be used as well.
I happen to be a fan of on-line education resources and am a frequent user. I especially like the opportunity to repeatedly review some concept until I've got it. I find, though, that it can take me hours of searching to find the kernel of knowledge, that underlying concept that finally clearly explains just what it is that I am missing. Partly due to my maturity and professionalism, I am motivated to do so. But sometimes you just need to know something in order to even ask the question about it. You want someone available to help find the missing context to allow a student to break through to understanding.
Or picture a student having been provided an on-line application as an exercise assignment. Often these include some additional assistance to further explain the concept. Good start. Even so, the student finds that they are failing in producing the correct answer, even after multiple attempts. Frustration ensues, when in fact the problem causing the failures is separate from that of the concept being taught. The on-line help was occasionally misdirected as it did not address the student's mental block. Again, a quick one-on-one review of the students thought process leads to the needed success. The otherwise wasted time is now converted into periods making additional progress understanding the concepts previously taught. (And the subject expert can feed back the general difficulty to the teaching professional.) Success breeds success.
But why has this not occurred already, or at least not occurred systemically? As few thoughts on that matter:
The key is the infrastructure. Certainly, we skilled volunteers are out there, each of us wanting the best for our students, but even our little study hall would not exist without the vision of what is necessary for the students and a more than welcoming attitude toward the volunteers, subject expects, mentors, tutors (i.e., call us what you like). We offered and the administration there had the means of efficiently making the connection to those needing our assistance. We all win. Our entire country's educational processes and hundreds of thousands of skilled volunteers throughout our country can as well.