To tell them I can’t help her?

[Annamakingnotes]

Bit of a moral dilemma.

I tutor a y11 student for GCSE English. She is very keen, but she doesn’t listen to any advice or suggestions, which is unbelievably frustrating.

At the moment, we are revising Romeo and Juliet. As soon as I arrive, she starts firing questions about Jekyll and Hyde. No matter how much I try to get her back on track, it’s as if she can’t. So she will say she wants to do Shakespeare but then starts asking about / wanting to do something else.

I don’t think I can help her and I feel guilty taking £40 every week.

Should I just nicely relay this to her mum?

It would be your best bet, her parents are just wasting money.

Unbelievably frustrating for you.

Definitely let her mum know. There's every chance that her flitting between subjects is one of the reasons she needs a tutor...

You just have to have an honest discussion - we had a tutor for our DS (Maths) & he told us, very nicely, that our DS wasn't engaging with the tuition, it was obviously a difficult conversation but the tutor probably felt he couldn't continue taking our money, we parted company amicably and found a different tutor.

I would talk to her mum. Perhaps give her feedback email or text each week.

Perhsps treat her like you would an adhd pupil and think outside the box.Would it be worth giving her a plan the week before the lesson of what you are going to cover even breaking it down into timed segments and using a visual clock timer? Or getting her to complete work during the week and physically going over it in the lesson.

Could it be about learning styles instead ??

Maybe try getting her to watch a film or recording of the play, then you could expand on that ??

Definitely explain the situation to the parents, as diplomatically as possible. Don’t forget it’s your own reputation as a tutor on the line too. If your sessions don’t yield positive results, this could potentially impact future your chance of getting future work. For example, if you get negative reviews, or rely on word of mouth to find new customers.

Talk to the parents with the daughter present, does she realise she is doing it? ( I know that sounds stupid but my, admittedly younger son, almost needs to take about what is on his mind before he can focus on the actual work he should be doing).

She sounds like me, I have ADHD

If I was the parents, I"d be very cross if you didn't tell me what was happening. It may be that they will see you as incompetent and want a different tutor, but at the end of the day, for whatever reason, you are unable to help their daughter. So either they find someone new or they work with you to find solutions to the fact that their daughter is behaving this way. Whether it's a behaviourial/development issue or just general naughtiness, they should be working with you to fix this.

And I speak as someone whose child's tutors have needed close engagement with us to make it work.