Empower Students to Lead – Students as Station Facilitators
Students make great Family Math Night Station Facilitators. As much as I can, I use students in grades 5 and up to run my stations. Here’s why:
- It’s a great leadership opportunity.
- It helps develop inter-personal skills with both peers and adults.
- Their own learning and understanding is underscored when they explain something to others.
- They feel they can be trusted with an important role.
- The younger students really look up to them.
In my September newsletter I shared an activity that I did at a recent event – ABCs and 123s. I absolutely loved watching how engaged the families were.
But my favorite part of this activity was Paisley, my fifth grade station facilitator. I happened to capture her on video as she helped two students do the activity. I’m sharing it with you because it underscores the bullet points I listed above.
Paisley went above-and-beyond in her duties. Station facilitators are not required to complete the activities with the students. But she was doing such a great job explaining the activity that the girls’ mom let her take over.
Training Students to be Station Facilitators
If you’ve purchased our Family Math Night event kits or are thinking about purchasing them, this next section goes over how I train my student station facilitators using our kits. How I train students has evolved. This is that story.
A few years ago I had the pleasure of hosting 16 local Family Math Night events in one school year. Each event energized me for the next one. But even with all that energy, it was not possible for me to personally train the student station facilitators in advance of the events like I had always done in the past. I just didn’t have the time to get around to all the schools.
The good news is, making training easy is the reason we put together the station videos for each of our event kits. Each video goes over the activities at that station so the facilitators know exactly what the participants will be doing.
Because our event kits come with an Online Assistant where the Family Math Night Coordinator has access to each of the station videos, the Coordinators at each one of the 16 schools were able to easily email or print out the video QR code and get it to each of the station facilitators in advance of the event. Some of the schools decided to have the students watch the videos together during the school day while others sent the QR code home as a homework assignment.
I’ll admit I was a little nervous about how this was going to work. I’m used to meeting and training the students in advance of the event. But this time I was relying on the videos to do the training. Was watching the videos going to be enough? Would the students really understand what to do? Would the students even watch the videos?
When I met the first group of students for my first event I asked if they had watched their station video. This is where the support of the school’s Family Math Night Coordinators was greatly appreciated as I had to rely on them to make sure the students got the job done. And they did. This group of students had watched the videos during their Student Council Meeting.
After answering a few questions that students had (what happens if we run out of space at our station…), I sent them off to check out their station and go over the activities just to be familiar with the actual materials. Again, some students had questions but I was able to have them all answered by the time we opened the doors. And that’s when I held my breath. It was go time. They seemed ready but it’s hard to really know until those doors open.
As I wandered around the event throughout the evening not only was I thrilled with how the facilitators were handling their station duties, I was flat-out impressed. They were passing out materials, answering questions, showing participants how to do the activities and having fun. I actually got a little misty watching them “perform”.
But that was one school. I had 15 other schools to get through.
So, with bated breath I did the second school. Then the third. By the fourth I was breathing easy. It was working.
In reflecting back on why it was working, watching the videos in advance was definitely important as it gave students an understanding of what was happening at their station. But it wasn’t just about watching the videos. It was also about being given responsibility. It’s an honor to be trusted to do an important job. As a result, students want to do well. And they did. It was fun to watch.
