In my career as a tutor, I’ve had the privilege of working with a lot of interesting, curious, funny, creative, bright kids. I’ve tutored students who’ve needed remedial help, who have wanted to be challenged, and students with ADHD and/or autism, from pre-K all the way through college. I coach a lot of kids through study skills, learning styles and problem-solving because, for one reason or another, they have recognizable challenges to their executive functioning skills or mismatched teaching and learning styles.
But I think one overlooked cause of learning difficulties is trauma. I know, because I’ve spent a lot of my adulthood reflecting on how my own trauma made it difficult to get started on things without prompting; keep track of time when I was super engrossed in something I found interesting; and struggle to organize my room, locker and schoolwork.
For that reason, as a tutor and academic coach, I really try to encourage my students to learn in ways that suit them. I completely respect their reluctance to do busy work that involves primarily regurgitating boring facts and descriptions repetitively. Does any adult really want to do that for a living? I want my students to ask why they’re doing anything they’re asked to do in life and make decisions thoughtfully and mindfully. I encourage them to accept no one’s distractions from or distortions of their purpose and to let no one fool them into decisions that create greater harm than help.
I also try to encourage my students to get creative with their learning processes. My dad always encouraged my curiosity, so learning is typically a fun process for me. That said, I understand anyone’s reluctance to pay attention to things that seem uninspired, boring and/or required for no sensible reason. I never tried to zone out in precalculus class, but almost every day, everything my teacher said sounded like a Peanuts adult. It wasn’t until I had to start teaching precal that I began to understand it. (Tutor hint: teaching someone else is a great way to review stuff for a test!)
Young humans seem inclined towards things that are fun, and learning can be that way, too, if presented in such a way. I have a lot of fun teaching, and while I can’t confidently assert that all my students find my sense of humor just as much fun, I try to incorporate puzzles, games, jokes and personal interests to at least make the tutoring session interesting and memorable. (Tutor tip 1: Confident assertions are usually some variety of logical fallacy and are usually wrong answers on SAT/ACT reading comprehension questions. Tutor tip 2: We tend to remember things that either make us angry or make us laugh. Use this fact to help you remember boring details.)
Another tutoring principle I cleave to: avoid shame-based or punishment-based feedback.
I feel so strongly about this, in fact, that I use it as part of my SAT reading strategies. Cults, advertisers, the military, abusers and conmen all exploit various flaws in human thinking to manipulate the information we receive and on which we base our decisions. Shame can be a powerful emotional driving force, because it’s probably the one feeling we’d all like to avoid more than any other. But it’s a terrible motivator for critical thinking or problem-solving. I don’t want my students to learn because they’re trying to avoid feelings of shame; I want them to learn because learning it’s an enjoyable and positive experience and because it’s just plain fundamental to recognizing and dealing with problems we encounter in life or in society.
How wild would it be if we created a world where people weren’t afraid of learning or having fun?
I still struggle with some of the symptoms of trauma and depression. It can still be hard for me to get started on tasks, even ones I want to do, because I’m frequently worried that ‘doing what I want’ is shameful and what the world expects of me is ‘doing what I’m supposed to.’ It can be hard to give myself credit for the effort I put in, because I grew up in a culture that elevated suffering and sacrifice as noble and conflated self-care with selfishness.
But when there’s laughter during a session, when a student exclaims, ‘Ohhhhh, that makes sense!’, when a student realizes that they can create any kind of tool or system that helps them thrive – and affect the world around them – it reminds me of the best reasons I enjoy teaching in the first place. (Side tutor note: Another reason is that I learn a lot from my students. Because one of my students was really into geography, I recognized Bamako as the capital of Mali in a recent social exchange!)
I think every student learns better when fun and personal relevance are incorporated. We’re all traumatized in various ways (including some considered socially acceptable). It seems like a pretty human thing to have a harder time taking in new information and think critically about it when being in crisis mode is just how we live. So, what if we collectively started building safe spaces to just wonder about stuff? What could happen?
I think that allowing ourselves to occupy the space that children occupy – without shame – could help us create more mental space and free up more emotional resources to work on actual issues. All shame is trauma, and I think a lot of us have experienced trauma in some form or other in this world. If we recognize the effects trauma has on our ability to take in new information and revise the decisions we make accordingly, then we can overcome those challenges and become more effective at thriving as humans in a healthy world.
So where can we eliminate, reduce or mitigate culturally embedded, socially accepted, normalized shame-based practices?