Asking for Help
One of the most common questions I field from families new to BUA is what they can do at home to support their children as they navigate school. Perhaps the most important is encouraging students to seek out their teachers outside of class for extra help. For some students, particularly those coming from small schools or schools with robust cultures of extra help, this kind of self-advocacy comes naturally. For many of our students, though, that habit is not natural – just the opposite. They may be coming from schools where spending time with a teacher outside of class is reserved for students who are struggling or failing in some way. They may perceive a stigma associated with needing help. Or they may feel nervous to approach a teacher or hesitate to “bother” them.
I write this morning to reinforce what all our students hear from their teachers and what our older students have learned from experience: the adults are here to help. Spending one-on-one time with teachers at a school like ours is an expectation – a feature of our model. It is one of the reasons why our classes are so small and student-teacher ratios so low; why nearly every teacher has their own classroom and why teachers are typically in those rooms before school, during academic blocks, after school, and in free periods. That model requires a major investment of time and resources.
Why do we insist on it? Because a culture of high expectations works best when paired with high levels of support, and because we know that one-on-one sessions with teachers outside of class are often where the magic happens. I vividly remember a moment when, as a junior in high school, my English teacher sat with me to review a draft of an essay. He pointed out that each sentence across two paragraphs started with a subordinate clause or prepositional phrase – lending an odd lilt to my writing. I think about that all the time. It transformed my writing. Just last week, I talked to a science teacher here who described an a-ha moment a student had with her during an extra-help session. Some learning just happens better one-on-one.
But there’s a deeper reason why we insist that every student seek their teachers out, whether for help or just to chat. Those sessions are often where mentoring relationships form. So many alums tell me that they are still in touch with a handful of BUA teachers, turning to them for advice years after passing through these doors. They also talk about how their BUA experience gave them the confidence to seek out professors during office hours in college – professors who became thesis advisors, hired them as TAs or as research assistants in their labs, wrote recommendation letters for graduate school, or helped launch their careers. All of that starts with a conversation.