I feel like a supervisor for some students and not all and I want to stop doing this.
TLDR: First-gen and working-class students in my class wait for direction while students from college-educated families self-direct. I’m trying to figure out how to build curiosity and intrinsic motivation instead of just supervising.
A few years into teaching across two very different schools, I’ve noticed a pattern I can’t stop thinking about.
With first-generation and working-class students, I regularly have to walk over, prompt them to start, and tell them I’ll check back. But the work doesn’t happen without that nudge. At my previous school, with students from college-educated households, I didn’t have to do that. They complained but ultimately did the work on their own.
I recently saw a video that put language to it. Kids from working-class families are often raised to follow instructions. Kids from more educated families are raised to question, negotiate, and advocate. That difference shows up in my classroom every day.
The part that bothers me is that prompting some students while others self-direct makes me feel more like a supervisor than a teacher. I’m currently reading Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain to dig deeper into this.
How do you build genuine curiosity in students who’ve been conditioned to wait for direction? And how do you do it without making them feel like something is wrong with how they were raised?