Not Helping is Often Helpful

I am writing this blog post specifically to avoid helping students.  I know that sounds horrible, but it serves a critical purpose.  When adults jump in to help students all the time, they never learn to problem solve for themselves.  This produces adults who don't know how to trouble shoot, think critically, or problem solve bigger issues.

I am experimenting with a CBL (Challenge Based Learning) assignment.  Here's the gist.  The students are supposed to imagine that we live in a place with inconsistent access to electricity and figure out what they would do at their home to keep refrigerators and small electrical appliances going.  I brought in a guest speaker who lived in Haiti for several years to discuss the problem and some of what they did to solve it.  I thought the problem was clearly presented until they started giving their solutions.  They included going to war with Cuba to steal their electricity, using an electric eel tank, and using a local volcano.  Then another teacher told me that a student had said I was trying to get them to solve the energy crises. 

We re-booted.  I presented the problem all over again.  I made it clear that we were only talking about something that we (the ten of us in this room) could do.  We have had several work days since then, and they are still having some difficulty being on the same page.  There are nine students, and there has still been so little communication that one students had potatoes, lemons, and pennies while other students were talking about lawn mower motors and solar panels.  I have had to sit here biting my tongue because it is important for them to have this conversation themselves and make a plan. 

It is a tough thing as a teacher to NOT help.  We so often want to teach them what to do.  We so often want to rescue them from themselves.  I actually had to focus on this blog post to keep myself from doing that.