As a tutor and homework specialist, it is such a joy being able to help my students progress academically, motivate and inspire them, and watch them beat learning challenges. Although students face many challenges while learning or understanding concepts, we as tutors and teachers face our challenges as well. One of the many challenges of working with school-aged children in a classroom setting is dealing with discipline and disrespect. Though it may be ideal for a tutor or teacher to have a classroom with pure silence, perfect students, quick progression, and complete obedience, unfortunately, that’s just not always the case. Many may even argue that this ideal classroom setting is not even realistic. One thing that is for sure is that having appropriate and effective behavioral procedures should always be in place just in case students get a bit unruly.

Usually, I am pretty tolerable with poor student behavior, and I attempt to address it before it gets out of control, but recently there was one incident that left me feeling almost defeated. One of my students would come to tutoring always ready to do her homework and tackle school projects, however, there was one huge problem that made it very difficult and challenging to help her, her bad attitude/poor behavior. I would constantly talk to the student and fuss at her about her disrespecting me when I would try to help her or give her instructions. What’s most frustrating is having a child direct you on what to do as if they are the adult, mind-boggling right? At least for me, it was. As a result, this behavior went on a little longer than I desired and in the end, her parent had to step in to end the madness. What was most shocking was that the parent never knew her child was treating me this way, but once she found out, it was a wrap. Although it was very humiliating to have dealt with this particular situation, I might add that I am very grateful my student’s parent eventually witnessed her behavior and stepped in to make sure things were correctly aligned. As much as I don’t like to inform parents of their child/children’s poor behavior, sometimes it is necessary to resolve the problem(s).

Mari

Super Tutor