How do I help students who are afraid to ask questions?
Raising a hand in class is hard. Here鈥檚 what you can do to make it easier鈥擨 wrote a piece about the topic for as a :
鈥淟ook at the results. What should our alpha level be to correct for multiple comparisons?鈥�
I stared at the statistics problem on the whiteboard and saw a cornucopia of symbols and numbers but nothing that looked remotely like an 鈥渁,鈥� let alone an 鈥渁lpha.鈥� All around me, pencils scratched out calculations as my classmates got to work. I pretended to start my own calculations as my heart thudded and my face flushed hot.
鈥淚f I don鈥檛 know the answer to this question,鈥� I thought, 鈥淚 don鈥檛 belong in this class.鈥�
It turns out I鈥檓 not alone. In a of over 1,000 high school students recruited by , about 40 percent said they regularly hesitated to admit if they didn鈥檛 know something or were confused in class. The struggles were especially strong among girls and were most common in math.
Why? We tend to believe that you can鈥檛 be good at math unless you鈥檙e really, really smart. The more we think we need to be 鈥渂rilliant鈥� to succeed (or at least look successful), the harder it is to reveal what we don鈥檛 know to others.
But if students don鈥檛 feel comfortable voicing their questions in school, they will miss opportunities to learn from peers and teachers鈥攖he very opportunities that can make them brilliant. As they begin to equate not knowing with incompetence, they may stop asking questions altogether.
To help teens overcome this resistance, you can validate their feelings by sharing times you have felt reluctant to ask鈥攍ike my story about statistics class.
I wound up sticking it out in stats鈥攚ith a little help from my classmate Liz. Still in a panic, I glanced up from my paper and saw a hand shoot into the air. 鈥淲hat do you mean by alpha level?鈥� Liz asked.
鈥淕ood question,鈥� the teacher said. Now the learning could begin.
顿辞苍鈥檛 hide what you don鈥檛 know. The more you conceal your questions, the scarier it becomes to ask for help.
Do be brave and share your questions with the world. Try this experiment with your students for a week: When someone uses a word or makes an unfamiliar reference, admit it instead of pretending to know. Then talk about your experiences with one another at the end of each class. You may be surprised at how much you learn and how much braver you become.
