To Provide Students with Sufficient Support

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As much as what I observed and experienced, there is a great shift in teachers' role in this century. Triggered by many factors including the unique Z-gen behaviors, advancement of technology and globalization, educators now are viewed more as facilitators than informants. Although in one sense they should not worry too much regarding the content knowledge since it is on the fingertip of each learner, to facilitate or support learning is not a walk in the park. It takes time to orient students in the initial stage of problem-based or inquiry-based learning that if not done properly, they might face confusion for the rest of the process. In addition, every student is unique. A class is comprised of various individuals with different cultures, characteristics and capabilities. Unlike lesson objectives, learning support is not a one-size-fits-all matter.

Considering the right way to provide support for students has been an increasing concern in today's field of education that a lot of research was carried out regarding it. One of the recent investigations was conducted by Takala, et al. (2018) with aims to look into Finnish and Swedish teachers' perspectives about the best way to aid their students. Some of the participants were elementary school educators while the rest worked in middle school. Despite being a high school teacher in the last three years, I cannot say the findings in this exploration are irrelevant to me as I was once a middle school teacher in my first working years. Besides, the results surprisingly imply that language as well as math are two of the most commonly mentioned support needs in both nations and I would say in the country where I teach students face those challenges not only in their primary and middle school years but also in their high school year. As someone who got the privilege to be a teacher of the two most challenging subjects, I shall share my experience when I attempted to help students who struggle in each area while also comparing the viewpoints, of Northern European teachers based on what the research yielded.

Compared to mathematics, I have spent more years in teaching language. Even though English is not either my or my students' native language, honestly I enjoy helping them acquire the skills to comprehend and use the world's number 1 language. Reflecting on the half-decade experience, I cannot agree more with the finding that reading and writing are the two problems mostly occurred with speaking fluency being the third as for my class. Unlike the Finnish and Swedish teachers, however, I did not give much attention to device-related support for the technology I utilized in my lesson was not as sophisticated as theirs. The kind of help that my students similarly need is differentiation, or "individualization" as the term used in the research. Just like the teachers, I also often provided necessary scaffolding for students who needed more reading or practice time because the classes were heterogeneous in terms of language skills. This includes preparing for extra activities for good English user students, who most of the time finished their exercise far earlier than the rest.

For the second subject, I would say what I had to deal with is quite different from the teachers in Finland nor Sweden. The support I had to give is more fundamental than the surface-emerging issues like practice time or learning tools. Mathematics has always been considered the hardest subject in my country and students are still incapable, at least in my school, to learn it with collaborative method, let alone inquiry-based approach. Thus for me, to be a facilitator in the math lesson simply means to be a motivator for my students. From explaining the prospect of concept application in daily life to introducing simple, useful riddles, I had to ensure that the students could see why they should learn and understand what I was about to instruct them.

As previously mentioned, not everyone fits the mold when it comes to giving classroom support. Students are just distinct human beings with their own forte and struggles. The comparison of my experience and the research findings also shows that schools in different places have their own common challenges. However I hope this should not put us down but on the contrary, ignite our passion to help each of the students entrusted to us that they too later will be thoughtful of their surroundings either in their college, work or family life.

Reference

Takala, M.; Silfver, E.; Karlsson, Y. & Saarinen, M. 2018. Supporting Pupils in Finnish and Swedish Schools – Teachers’ Views. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research   http://jultika.oulu.fi/Record/nbnfi-fe2018121050341