Unmotivated Students

                 Every once in a while, I encounter in my tutoring a student who has absolutely no interest in the process. He or she is there by their parent’s volition alone. The majority of these students are energetic and intelligent outside of our sessions, so, overconfident, they immediately attempt to negotiate or bargain with me during the first class. Tactics usually involve wasting time on vapid conversation or guilt trips about homework amounts. When I was new to tutoring, these tactics were not ineffective; now, I smile and think to myself, “I just haggled price with your parents! Do you think I’m afraid of you?!”

                I have found honesty is the best policy with the rebelliously unmotivated student. For the most part, they have never experienced an adult speaking to them as though expecting adult discourse in return. This simultaneously works two adolescent weaknesses: first, they desire, unpleasant though it may be, to continue speaking as adults; second, they are suddenly in unfamiliar territory emotionally. However, it is important to maintain a level of amused mastery internally. You cannot enter a heated debate with a student without instantaneously having lost.

                In an SAT session with a rebellious student recently, the student was determined to use an essay method supposedly “taught” to them in school. It was deplorable. At first, I wielded authority gently and encouraged him to attempt my methods as a test. When he refused, I finally point-blank asked him if he thought I did not know what I was talking about. A dumb-founded “What?” was the only reply. I asked again, calmly, “Do you think I don’t know what I’m talking about? I see only two options for why you would ignore my advice: you think your method is better than mine, thus I am wrong, or you don’t care about improving your score and just want to get through this with the minimal effort.”

                He was speechless. I further asserted that a firm belief in either of those reasons was sufficient for us to stop working together, but that I would have to inform his parents of why we were incompatible. Though he seemed willing to jest at adulthood briefly in a feigned attempt to stand up to me, when confronted with the very adult task of defending himself against his parents he immediately folded. As he should to their judgment in this situation.

                It was not the end of our struggles but it did put an end to any actual threats of disobedience. He had made his choice, and later on when he again resisted a suggested process because it was “too much work”, I simply asked him the same question again and quickly received an, albeit begrudging, acquiescence. 

                But the rebellious student is not the only type of unmotivated student. The second is the frustrated student—a student who finds the material so challenging that they find nothing but agitation in the work. Standardized Test Prep is usually the source of this student. The problem here is not that they cannot learn to eventually love the work. Rather, it is that the work they are being forced to learn is too difficult and the pace they are learning too quick. I doubt I could ever exhaust my stream of analogies for any topic, but these are useless when what a student really needs is a reformation of the last 10 grades of grammar curriculum. It is my job to clean up the mess, but too often I find myself confronting the issue sideways through standardized testing and haphazardly due to time constraints.

The most interesting and fatiguing aspect of tutoring is playing the role of psychologist. Trying to enter the brain of a student—including adults!—and discovering what is the best means of opening intellectual doors in their mind.