Friday 9 December 2011

Confidence

What is the biggest concern of parents who ask Step UpLearning for help with private tuition for their children? 

An easy question to answer:  it’s confidence.

I want my child to have more confidence”

“He lacks confidence”

“She needs a little more confidence

Some children seem to have buckets of confidence-sometimes it can be interpreted as cockiness- but usually in certain areas. A boy might be super-confident on the football pitch but feels so inadequate in the classroom he resorts to the age old male fall-back of playing class clown. In that way he is appreciated even hero-worshipped by his peers but he is covering up a multitude of failings.

So where do we start? 



There is no magic wand to wave, it is a long term effort which starts by establishing what the child is good at and then building on this with small steps of success. 

Confidence grows from the little successes which build up to that point when a question is asked by the teacher in the classroom and she puts her hand up and gets the right answer.

This week one of our students proudly told me how she was able to answer a question none of her classmates could answer. 

A magic moment!



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