Yesterday, curious about why a child is not testing well, I had a chance to work one-to-one with her. I learned so much about how this child thinks and attacks assessments and assignments. The child learns well, but can really profit from some one-to-one support.
I believe that too often our efforts in school are not targeted enough. I think we need to build in more time for dynamic tutoring models especially for students who struggle. Often a child's struggles can be easily remedied with some deep and knowing one-to-one work.
How can we do this in schools where teachers teach large numbers of students at a time?
I think we can do the following:
- Go deeper with our collegial efforts to diagnose student's needs and then to meet those needs with worthy tutoring-like efforts.
- Look at how we use time and make more time for effective support models. In this regard, I think we can re-look at how we do Response to Intervention to buy some time here.
- Give assistant teachers more tools, support and time to provide this kind of tutoring support.
- Re-look at special educator models to see how that time is spent in classrooms and with students to potentially create deeper, more tailored support. This doesn't mean a return to a pull-out model, but instead a richer model of choosing well when to push-in, when to pull-out and how to work with assignments to build the best possible learning from and with every child.
- Re-look at how core teaching times are used and how differentiation is led in those core, homogeneous teaching/learning times.
- Re-look at roles in schools to assess how many roles actually spend time with students, and how many roles are simply coaching/leadership roles that have little contact with students. I think that we need to make sure that most educators in schools are working regularly with students while it is important to have a few roles that may be directed towards leadership only, but not too many.
To provide in-school tutoring is another way of leveling the opportunity gap. When some children receive this help and others don't, you will have an unequal playing field of learning.
I wish I had more of this tutoring time as I know I could help more students this way, but for now, I'll look for ways to increase this and advocate for more of this time across the system and within schools too.
