I teach a lovely, small group, and we’re not in a school so it’s pretty informal. It’s drama, so really creative, lots of focus on communication etc etc.
I have one student who has started to get into the habit of not saying what they think, about a number of things, but then moaning at a later point and I’m not sure how to handle it as it’s starting to get on my nerves.
A couple of examples... we are working on a play at the moment - performance is during the first week back after half term. When I first gave the scripts out, we all had a chat about it and there were various opinions - some like it, some not sure, some not keen. Student was non-committal, but then wrote the initial essay about it very negatively - but by then it was a bit late to make changes. Fast forward to two weeks before half term - I asked them all to make a group decision about whether or not they wanted an extra rehearsal day. They know I need to sort my kids out if I need to go in, and I made it clear that it needed to be their decision so they would have ownership. They all told me the day they wanted to come in. We discussed it again on Friday and they all agreed - there was some discussions about timings and so on. Then yesterday evening, they sent me an email saying they can’t come. The reason is that they has to look after their younger sibling in school holidays. Presumably if this was the case, they would have known two weeks ago when I first asked the group to decide about a half term rehearsal. I’m frustrated that they didn’t say anything sooner as we could have found an alternative. I’ve emailed their parents and suggested a compromise.
Any suggestions? It’s tricky with 6th formers!