It is ok to say ‘YOU JUST HAVE TO DO IT’. The reason I say this is in my current context I have a student that is in Prep and being in a distance ed classroom she has a lot to do, but she is in a school room and has to learn the do’s and don’t of the school room as well.
For her she spends a lot of time with me working through unit lesson that are so BORING they put me to sleep, but we just have to do it. (don’t worry I skip half the stuff that she is confident in and try it make it more fun, but sometimes it is hard.) So we now have a saying ‘we just have to do it.‘ The other day in the classroom we were working through a unit session and the student says to me ‘ I just have to do it, I don’t want to and it is boring but I just have to.’
I think this is an important thing to learn and it was a big step for her (as we had been experiencing quite a few melt downs and tantrums) particularly at a young age, because there are a lot of things that we as adults don’t want to do but, maybe a boss is telling you you have to, or it is a family matter. Learning to cope with things that we don’t want to do is a big step. I know I still have little tantrums when I don’t want to do something.
Then the student had to fill in an evaluation form to send back to her teacher, (I had to laugh on the inside). I told her that she had to be truthful.
The question was How do you feel (sad/ ok /happy) when you have to do
Listening the coloured in the sad face
Reading the student coloured in the okay face
Watching the student drew her own face and said bored
Talking she coloured happy face
Using a computre she coloured happy face
Investigating she coloured the happy face.
She was completely honest and it showed me and hopefully her teacher what we have to do to encourage this student to learn, but it also shows me that the current school system and curriculum does not cater very well for her as there is not enough, ICT and investigating. I say this because as a home tutor I have to follow lesson plans that are already put in place (mind you whoever wrote them needs a reality check) these lessons plans are written from the C2C and they have been written in a generic form and seems like all children have to conform to this, but unfortunately they don’t but I said above sometimes ‘YOU JUST HAVE TO DO IT.’
My Teaching 