Pupil putting all the responsibility on me to gain good grades

[Whendothingsstarttoimprove]

Can anyone offer me any perspective/help with this?

I do part time tutoring and help a 12 year old girl with her maths. She very poor and really struggles. She’s told me that her teacher at school is a good teacher, but even though she asks for help a lot, he tends to ignore her hand up and go to others. She always asks to stay after the lesson for help, but told me she still doesn’t understand it.
When we go through things slowly together, she does end up understanding, but it feels like I’m teaching every concept from scratch.
She has tests at the end of each term and there are often up to twelve topics to cover within a few weeks -5-6 hours.
She did manage to get a C last time, but in the most recent test, she got an E. Comments she’s made feel like she’s expecting to get an A and it’s all my responsibility to get her to that, is this fair? When she showed me the E, she seemed angry at me
I can see without my help, she basically wouldn’t understand anything and these few lessons do make a big difference, however it’s very hard to teach her completely from scratch.
Should all the responsibility be on me?
With the other subjects we focus on, she now gets A’s & B’s in her tests.

she said we didn’t cover X, we didn’t go over it again as it was a very simple concept and with so much to cover, I focused on the more challenging work

I think this is the crux of it.

Maths is iterative.

If you're not secure on the basic, simply concepts, then you will get unstuck with more challenging work.

She might need a separate maths tutor, who is fully familiar with secondary maths curriculum, and who will go right through from the basic concepts, spotting and fixing the gaps in the simple concepts first.

I'd say for going in yr 8 she is going to need a specific maths tutor, going by my yr 8 and yr 10 DC maths work. I have a degree in science and understand scientific maths (although by no means my strong point) and even I'm a bit frazzled with some of the things they cover now.

I agree with the poster who suggested pre-teaching concepts ready for her to feel confident when she’s learning it in the classroom.

See if there’s a way you can speak to her maths teacher, I’m sure the teacher would appreciate it too.

@MoggyP Yes we always do that, she’d covered that particular area so much in the past and had to focus on other areas as we have limited time and a lot to learn as she basically doesn’t understand or retain anything from school.

Could it be that she feels inadequate at Maths due to her being ignored by her teacher? Which then undermines her confidence and then results in poor performance?

A word with her in parents' presence, as PP suggested above sounds like a good plan.

@Summerose Possibly, she said she likes the teacher, but that she always puts her hand up and he’s sees her but goes to someone else. She also said she stays back most days to have it explained to her and still doesn’t understand and that she thinks he tries not to get angry at her as she never understands. I’m wondering why he hasn’t mentioned it to the parents or suggested assessment too

It sounds like you are in a weird place with this. Gone down a rabbit hole perhaps. A 12 year old has an opinion about your teaching and your response is to come onto MN and ask a load of adults if the child is blaming you unfairly.

I think you really need to take a big step back, stick your teacher hat more firmly on your head and move it firmly from the personal to the professional. How would you react if one of your primary class said it was your fault they'd got a low mark? Take it in the same spirit, with much thicker skin and stronger boundaries.

I get the impression that her parents and maths teacher should be talking to each other more on this, and leading it more.

During lockdown I gave free maths lessons every day over WhatsApp App to a weak 16year old, don't ask.
I am a mathematician and a retired academic.
We started from first principles and built up with tons of reviews. I set him daily homework for reinforcement. He was fine until I left a topic for a few days when it all disappeared. I finally pointed out to him that there were two things going on. I was teaching but he was also responsible for learning.
I stopped doing it in mid March 21when I ended up in hospital with Covid and my lovely son took it on. The lad got his maths and went to college.

Can you replace the hours with another tutoring pupil? sounds like more trouble than it’s worth. The parents should be making it clear to her that her results are hers and hers alone. If she wants better results she should put in more practice.

@CheeseyOnionPie Ive been thinking this tbh

Given everything else you’ve said about this girl, that seems like quite an unfair thing for you to say about a fellow teacher.

I can imagine that she isn’t too polite about your professionalism to other people too.

You need a thicker skin - why are you letting a child (who doesn’t bother to even do all the lessons) make you feel it’s your fault?!
If you want the money, I’d repeat one line to her - I can support you, and you will find it helps, but it doesn’t mean you’ll get 100%, we don’t cover everything, and we definitely won’t cover everything if you don’t do all the sessions.

Tbh you lost me at her being rude about the cleaner.

@Testina I defended the teacher to her

Probably because she’s playing you.
The teacher can’t go to her instead of others every time she has her hand up.
Just like it’s your fault, it’s also his fault.
You know that he’ll be saying things to her just the same as you do, that she’s ignoring.
She’s got tutoring laid on with you, but picks and chooses if she can be bothered. How do you know what efforts and supports he’s given her than she hasn’t bothered with?

But you haven’t just repeated what she says here - you’ve given that as your own opinion, that the teacher is avoiding her.
Of course there are plenty of poor teachers out there… but if you took what she no doubt says about you as the truth, you’d be one of them!

Sorry, but I think the biggest issue here is you OP. I say this from the perspective of a teacher trainer. Before anyone starts teaching they need to develop a realistic attitude and a set of boundaries. Asking a group of strangers on a forum if we think you are responsible for this pupil’s situation suggests you need to work on how you see yourself and how you position yourself in relation to your pupils. And that is actually the core of teacher professionalism.

As a teacher you need to do what you can to make sure a pupil learns and it goes without saying that you should care. But often things won’t work out according to expectations. You need to have realistic expectations and it’s up to you to make sure that your pupils and parents do too. Some people don’t get there, or at least not in the time you have. This is not your fault. You need to develop a much more robust understanding of this. Not just for your own protection but to protect your pupils from frustration and disappointment.

Not liking things noved could be adhd or asd.
She doesnt seem to have a good short term memory so its surprising she does so well on other subjects. But perhaps she just struggles to recognise the topic.
Im effectively tutoring my y7 for maths
They do cover a lot quickly so by the time of the next test shes forgotten some of it.
But some things like recognising she needs to convert cm3 to m3 where is doesnt actually ask you she misses.
Im convinced mine knows enough to get 95%+ but her last test was only 60%.

Have you put your student under exam conditions - could she work really slowly?

My youngest has an awful memory, it affects her spellings so we practice and the night before she gets 10/10 and yet by the test its 8/9. It does seem to affect her maths too, still cant do all times tables. And whilst actually pretty good at maths isnt retaining from one week to the next.
I think overall the curriculum doesnt revisit things enough. Coming back to things at the same time of year in primary isnr enough.

I think you're taking this much too personally, you have to remember she's only 12, possibly neurodiverse and she's come a long way. If she's a perfectionist then she's probably pretty angry and frustrated with herself - and projecting that onto you. You give her a lot more than just the ability to get a high grade in a test, you've given her the confidence, self esteem and self belief to be able to be in school (by the sounds of it) and that is priceless.

Some kids just are dim unfortunately.
In some ways tutoring just masks those problems. What did she get for her KS2 SATs?

It sounds as if she may have dyslexia or a related specific learning difficulty, I have tutored pupils previously who had issues with moving learning from short term to long term memory and with working memory because of dyslexia. The pupil I'm thinking of also had issues with cognitive capacity when it came to tests. If she was fresh to it her result was very different compared to if a test was at the end of a long day with lots of mentally demanding lessons before for instance.
The girl I was teaching was very polite and easy to get on with though, if your pupil is being this rude I would quietly drop and pick up another pupil, there is plenty of work out there and if she's got a bad attitude I would be out.

When you say she understands the concepts and gets it correct, is that at the point at which you are teaching that concept? So you go through it with her and then she can understand it and get it right.

Does she still understand it and get it right at the next lesson without you going back over it? What about 1 week or 2 weeks later?

If she appears to understand and then gets things wrong in a test at a later date, I would suggest this would be more of a medium-term memory problem.

Whatever though, it is not your responsibility to get her the marks.

Doesn’t sound worth it OP, especially if parents not onboard with assessments which could possibly get her exemptions and extra help at school. She’s 12 getting 4 hours a week tutoring on top of her normal school hours - imagine how much tutoring she’s going to need when she’s 16/17!

I probably wouldn’t sign up to continue tutoring her, you really dont seem to enjoy it and it will only get harder.

Hi OP,
I also tutor informally in the evenings. For the sake of an hour a week, her performance in school isn't really your concern, and there's not THAT much you can do in that time.

Back at Christmas I dropped a Year 6 pupil who I was tutoring for maths. I saw her an hour a week (that was all her parents could afford, and I don't do discounts), and she was WAY behind age-related expectations. I'd say that she was working at end of Year 2 level.
Parents were getting pushier and pushier about her achieving particular grades in her SATs. It just wasn't going to happen. No chance. I tried every which way to explain to them that looking at past SATs papers wasn't going to help her when she was still adding to 10 on her fingers, and doesn't even know her 2x tables.

One of the benefits of being a self-employed private tutor I found was that I could drop a pupil if not working out. I didn't really have any rude pupils since mine were a bit younger, however I did have a policy of not continuing with families who cancelled late repeatedly. I had one mum who cancelled 30 minutes before a lesson because they fancied going to the park instead.

I suspect she is neurodivergent, likely autism based on what you've explained so far - difficulty or slowness picking up certain processes unless explained in particular ways, perfectionist , anxiety, highly sensitive and an injustice about the teacher's attitude towards her even if it isn't personal. I would speak to her parents and recommend they do some research. I would also encourage you to research working with girls with autism. Many girls go undiagnosed because their autism doesn't present in the same way as boys but this sounds very like typical female symptoms.

Not your fault she’s thick (yeah that’s mean!) 🤣.

I get that it’s good money but couldn’t you find another pupil rather than this spoiled brat. She’d be best with someone specialised in maths too.

For what it’s worth I was at private school for 3 years, hated and wasn’t good at maths but got better gradually and with the help of a private tutor. Only ended up with a D in maths. I just really didn’t see much of it making sense. If I’d known years later re interest rates, mortgage calculations, loan calculations and been taught that way re maths I’d have learnt better but Pythagoras theorem was never going to be much use to me!

My DM used to tutor primary school students for entry into private secondary schools. It’s true, it’s hard but both parents and students have to have realistic expectations as there is only so much you can do, if they don’t want to learn or put the hard work in then they don’t, but they can improve.