everyone who said they underperformed on the other thread.....

[Blandmum]

.....What would have helped you to reach your full potential?

I know that simply telling children they are underperforming often does not work.

I know that making them , by di=giving them catch up sessions at break, lunvh , after school etc are ofetn seen as punishments, cause resentment and fail

I know that hounding kids to finish work, do homework etc is often seen as 'nagging' , often deeply resented by the child and often the parents as well.

This is an honest question. What would have helped you get back on track? It may be late to help you but it would be invaluable for this years year 11!

Ta for the help

Err, thats quite a hard one for me.

I'd say peer pressure, but I was pressured so muck about IYKWIM.
Stricter teachers would ahve helped but then they weren't at home "nagging" me to do my homework better.

TBH the only thing that would have made me work harder would have been a time machine that could have shown me my life 5, 10, 15 years later so that I could see how much I regretted not knuckling down at school.
At 15 my exams just didn't seem important to me, I jsut didn't think that they would affect the rest of my life.

same here, left school at 15 , now haven't much to fall back on.......

In hindsight, I never made the connection that what you did in school = what you could do later on = earning potential = ability to do what you want.

So, maybe a session fitting together qualifications with future earnings? Get them to write about what they want to be, do, typical day of their choice when they're adult - and then tell them how to get there?

Get some people in for q and a sessions so that they see whether they want to be a builder or nursery nurse, they still need maths and English, say.

Having someone actually point out to me just how much potential I had.

I was at a grammar school, and you took the 11 plus to get in there, but after that it was forgotten. If you were average, then you just felt average - no-one ever bothered to point out that you were average out of the top people. Does that make sense?? I might have valued what I had slightly more, and made more of an effort.

It was when I got to college and realised that I had very good grades compared to most people, without trying... I suddenly realised what I could have got if I had worked.

Worked my little bottom off for the first year of college... it all went downhill a bit after that when I discovered clubs

Project management!

Honestly, that is something that I'm only just learning about and had I learnt those skills at school and used them at university it might have made a difference.

For me, thinking about my life in a project way is a help, because it encourages me to set ambitious and detailed objectives and I then have the skills necessary to work out what I have to do, day by day, to get there. It builds your confidence, encourages you to dream, and encourages you to work consistently.

Instead, at school/university I was bright and understood that there was a connection between working hard and results. So sometimes I worked hard, but I was never sure what the big goal was, and consequently my ability to apply myself was sporadic.

Lord alone knows how you translate that into motivating teenagers. In all honesty, it's probably too early for many of them to set their life goals - I know I didn't know enough about myself to set realistic targets at 16, and I'm still not quite sure what I want at 35!

Teachers who taught in a more unorthodox way...that made you want to sit up and listen. We had a nun like that at our school (honest!)

An unorthodox nun, Feistybird?

Did she have a moustache?

More one-to-one attention or even some sort of mentoring would have helped a lot

less academic pressure and more positive social interaction in earlier childhood

Gizmo, she did and chin hairs too, but that aside, I dunno, she just taught English in a way that made you look forward to her lessons - hard to explain.

Positive, positive, positive reinforcement and encouragement. Lots of carrot.

Giving me an idea of what I was good at and where that would get me might have helped.

my parents NOT continually asking if I was "top of the class" when I was 15 and struggling to keep my head above water.

being allowed out, ever, would have helped, as then I wouldn't have gone out all the time to piss them off.

The teachers noticing how much I was trying. They didn't, until I stopped trying, and by then I had a social life and didn't want to complete six page essays on the Suffragettes, and defend Fanny Price's life choices (the wet hen!)

Being allowed to take psychology gcse at 14. I was fascinated by the subject, wasn't allowed to take it, and never did. I think I would have built my life round it, given the chance.

Positive reinforcement, recognition of effort, and somehow a little direction would all have helped.

Agree with Tinker- one of the pivotal moments of my time at university was after I had done abysmally in a biochemistry exam and the head of our course told me to pull my socks up and get on with it (I had been really ill for over a year by that time). I just thought oh well that's it, I'll scrape a bare pass in my finals if I'm lucky, might as well have a good social life. I then saw one of the other senior staff and he said "you do know you're perfectly capable of getting a 2i don't you?". It sounds really weird but it was the first time that had ever occurred to me, and it made the most massive difference to my attitude. I've got him to thank basically, so Ian Tiffin if you're out there- thank you.