Coaching Students from "Stuck to Unstuck"

Gaining Independence and Confidence

We have a small picture in the Learning Center of a student pondering the question, “What do you mean my learning specialist doesn’t come to college with me?” As dedicated as we learning specialists are to helping students acquire academic skill sets in their content area classes (and yes, there are times when I do like the thought of going off to college with my students), that is not the ultimate goal.

"Our true goal is not to solve problems for our students, but rather to give them the tools and the confidence they need to ultimately solve problems on their own."

In the Learning Center, Metacognition class, Academic Support class, and Homework Assistance Program, we Learning Specialists are coaching students to learn how to move themselves forward when they are “stuck” to “unstuck”. When students become “stuck” in an academic endeavor, their initial response may be to stop their work, ask for help and passively say they "don’t get it.” It is very important at this point to ask the student specific questions that will prompt their active thinking, such as “Where did you start? What strategies did you try? Where did you get stuck? Are you having difficulty with the vocabulary, the context, the procedures, etc.? If you know where you are stuck, is there a resource you can use to get 'unstuck' with this part?” I try to give students the language they will need in the future to describe more specifically what skill they are having difficulty with. I often will write the student’s process in a list of strategies, both so that the student can use it as a reference, and as validation for the learner that a lot of valuable thinking had already occurred before understanding broke down. We then explore other active thinking strategies that can further problem-solving skills, such as the use of verbalization, visualization, drawing pictures, backing up and starting a section again to see where a misunderstanding occurred, and taking a break to give their brains time to process information. 

Importance of Strategy Selection

It is important that the student selects the strategies with which to experiment, and that the teacher uses specific praise (“Your drawing was a very effective strategy that helped you visualize and solve the word problem") so that the learner is empowered to believe that they can metacognitively think their way through similar problems in the future. When students thank me for how much help I gave them with a particular assignment, I like to point out that a lot of my guidance was in prompting them to take the next step, guiding them to experiment with strategies, and encouraging them to take risks and become their own problem solvers. The students themselves did a lot of the heavy lifting.