28th February 2014 9:00
By Blue Tutors
Government advisors have released a report urging schools to make building character and self-esteem an explicit part of the curriculum. They have also said that these aspects should be assessed by schools inspectors as a critical part of Ofsted assessments, which got me thinking. If teachers can explicitly teach character and self-esteem through their everyday teaching of the curriculum, is this something that private tutors can work into their own teaching of their students? Most tutors do a good job of supporting their students’ self-development, but can we do more?
When tutors take on a new student, their primary goal is to help that student with the subject they have been asked to work on, perhaps building general skills or preparing for an exam. But most tutors will agree that a crucial part of improving performance is confidence building, and if schools can address this more explicitly, then so can tutors. Very often tutors find that students have struggled with a subject for a while, have fallen behind at school and as a result, their confidence in their ability to succeed in the subject is low. Sometimes this confidence knock can spread to their general faith in their own abilities, and lead to low self-esteem.
The most important message tutors can convey to their students is that there is nothing wrong with them, and that it is fine to ask for help. Now, no-one is saying that tutors should spend half the lesson time on affirmations and confidence-boosting mantras. However, we can make confidence and self-esteem boosting a central part of our approach by ensuring we give positive feedback, and providing regular opportunities for the student to succeed. This means ensuring that we praise students for responding during the sessions, and set small and manageable tasks which will help the student get used to doing well and succeeding in the subject. Whatever methods we use, tutors as well as schools should be taking forward the self-esteem agenda.