7th February 2020 15:08
By Blue Tutors
One of the biggest changes with students as they get older is their reaction to difficulty. A tutor’s job is to create periods in a lesson where a student is required to think and move to a place where they understand better. However, this period could be described as “difficult” if the student has to spend time getting to that place. Difficult can have negative connotations, and that shouldn’t be the case, but it’s important to manage a student’s emotions when they encounter difficulty.
With A Level students, or older students, the reaction to difficulty can be very positive. Motivated intelligent students understand that not everything will be easy and their drive to do well and be successful means that they persevere and don’t give up if at first they don’t understand. Obviously this is amazing from a tutor’s point of view because while thinking if different ways to help the student understand, the student is trying their hardest as well.
Unfortunately not all students react to difficulty in the same way, and many younger students don’t see stumbling blocks as an inevitability. the result can be a frustrated emotional student who wants to do anything other than keep trying. The tutor then has to do their best to encourage the student to keep trying, which isn’t easy, but at least most students will continue to try for the duration of the lesson. Of course, once the lesson has finished, the same student probably won’t have the patience to do the same thing without their tutor.
A lot of students develop this maturity towards their studies as they get older. For one thing, it helps as we all realise that some things are difficult and there’s no shame in struggling with them at first. Something a tutor can do to help is to ask students to reflect on what they have done after they have taken a while to understand something. Remembering that they have encountered difficulty before and overcome it, can develop the coping mechanisms to deal with their frustrating at an early age.