peer tutoring and the Gifted

When our district started its full day kindergarten program I went to the public sessions. My daughter was not going to eligible for the program for another year yet, but would ultimately attend kindergarten so I was interested. I asked about how they were going to keep my daughter learning all day- I was resigned to her being bored and developing her coloring skills for half a day, but an entire day seemed too much. I was informed of the options the teachers could use for advanced students:

• More challenging work could be sent home- my five year old did not need her learning after school but in school. If I wanted to be her teacher, I am perfectly capable of homeschooling if that is the goal.
• She could help the other students when she finished, after all the best way to learn something is to teach it- who trained her in teaching? Didn’t she deserve to learn new things, too?
• There would be plenty of learning for her to do. Kindergarten is far more advanced than it used to be- true, but she had mastered even these raised standards before kindergarten started.

There was no mention of sending high achieving students to higher level classes or differentiating to individualize her instruction. For a decent school district, their answers seemed woefully lacking.

Catherine Little addresses the concern about peer tutoring or having fast finishers help slow-goers in her article, “PeerTutoring and Gifted Learners- Applying a Critical Thinking Lens.”  She poses three questions for peer tutoring:

• What is the intended purpose of peer tutoring- not just for the tutee, but for the tutor?
• How will you assess progress toward that goal?
• How do we guide students to achieve them?

As Ms. Little and my district superintendent pointed out there is an adage that teaching others is the best way to learn something well. Unfortunately, this is an unproven adage. Helping out others after you finished or being the recipient of “ask 3 then me” all class will slow down progress so the child is not sitting with nothing to do. There might be empathy goals to achieve. If one of these three purposes is the goal then how do you assess it? My daughter would get increasing frustrated with being asked to help others to pass or being constantly interrupted in her work by others. While she shows tremendous empathy for her brother whose ASD presents huge struggles in the social realm, she wanted her school time to be about, well, her. Never was there any measure of her success in any of these areas. Admittedly how would you measure it? She showed kindness during the interaction- she did before, that's why her teachers were so eager to suggest it. She refrained from empathy lacking comments- she did, in school, but when she came home, I would hear about it.

I know the success of Peer Tutoring as an instructional tool. The problem, as Ms. Little points out, is that successful peer tutoring programs involve training of the tutor and clear expectations for both parts of the dyad. Further, they work best with participants who choose to be involved- not those mandated to participate.

If we want to have our schools meet our children’s potential- a goal for many schools and teachers- we need to figure out how to deal with these fast finishers. Merely asking them to help out cannot be the sole answer. Perhaps give them more challenging assignments- not more work, different work. Perhaps have them work on an independent project of interest when they finish.  Perhaps they could read. If they want to help out, let them, but don't demand it of them.