A guide through the process

It may seem lonely and desolate, but someone was there to take the picture. (Image by jusuf111)

You may remember study hall as social hour—I know I do.

With minimal supervision, my friends and I wrote notes to each other, passed around headphones to listen to music, chatted, and flirted.

But that was in high school, when our study habits (or lack thereof) were firmly established and socializing was our priority. When we went home, some of us did the work and some of us did not. Where did we learn these habits? In middle school. And that’s where educators have a unique opportunity to teach students not only the material under study, but how to study, setting them up for successful careers in high school and beyond.

Instead of study hall, which is an invitation to goof off, The Little Middle School has discretionary time. Essentially, this is a chance for students to choose which subject they want to work on instead of participating in a structured class. However, the students aren’t left to their own devices during discretionary time. The teachers are constantly observing student behavior. Whenever someone gets bored, distracted, frustrated, overwhelmed, or stuck, the teachers are ready to swoop in and offer support.

In a sense, the students are doing their homework at school. This allows the teachers to directly guide them through the process. We teach them how to get over their fear of getting started, how to estimate how long things will take and organize their time, and how to pace themselves and take breaks. We also walk them through the mechanics of the work: How to read for comprehension, how to take notes, how to format their assignments, how to think through a problem, and so on. They also learn how to ask for and receive help, which is an underdeveloped skill for many people.

In leading discretionary time, the teachers often learn as much as the students. For instance, they might discover that obstinate behavior is the result of a lack of understanding of the task at hand. They encounter obstacles that they wouldn’t have anticipated, like a student listening to stand-up comedy on their ear buds while trying to read a history book (“But music helps me concentrate!” “That’s not music.” “Oh yeah...”). They might uncover gaps in a student’s ability to execute a given assignment (for instance, they’re making a million spaces in a document instead of pressing enter). And they might find that students are stumbling over a concept that needs to be further elucidated or getting stuck on a poorly-worded question. All of these things are evident in the classroom and can only be guessed at when the student goes home to do the work.

Instead of just sharing a lesson and then collecting completed assignments, my teaching team supports students through the process of engaging with the material, which is a solitary experience they don’t necessarily know how to manage already. In this way, we help them to learn the material and also set them up for success on their own with future material. They’re learning how to learn.

In my view, the process is even more important than the outcome. In fact, as a teacher, my influence over the outcome is through the process. For instance, if a music student plays a few wrong notes, I don’t care that much about fixing the wrong notes; I want to know what weakness in the process led to the wrong notes. The more I can support a student in improving their process, the less I’ll have to correct their mistakes. They will be able to correct their own.

I’ve taken a similar approach to coaching. Sure, weekly conversations are great, but it’s more valuable to have day-to-day support as you’re making your way through unfamiliar territory. It’s nice to hear that the frustration, second-guessing, confusion, and fatigue you’re experiencing is normal, and even better to have someone to help you navigate all of that. When we know what to expect, it’s less demoralizing; when we have a companion to bear witness to our experience, they can help us to see how far we’ve come.

Though we all have work to do on our own, it doesn’t have to be done in grim isolation. Maybe it’s not going to be as loose and relaxed as high school study hall, but the work itself can be collaborative, satisfying, and even festive. Having a guide through the process of doing something new makes it a lot less lonely and scary, and we get more done, with more confidence in ourselves, as a result.