Following up students

Situation:

- My Tutor group

- One boy is late all the time and has a flippant attitude towards this lateness

- One girl is a little sad and is missing alot of deadlines in her classes

Actions:

- I have a meeting with the boy. I say to him that his 4x lates in a week is not good enough. I say that if he is going to continue this patter with lateness in the coming week, I am going to call home. He promises me that he will try harder.

- I do a roundup on the young lady. I email all of her teachers and ask them for feedback on her learning and find that the missing deadlines trend is common in all of her classes and that most of her teachers are noticing the same patterns. I tell her in Tutor what I am doing, and tell her that I am going to organise a meeting with her parents just to get some more support for her learning. She understands but looks a little gutted. I tell her she is not in trouble, we are just trying to prevent her from falling behind in her learning and credits for Level One NCEA.

- I end up calling mum becuase the boy is late the following week. She tells me that her son is finding the school system too strict and not enjoying the lack of flexibility in the system and thinks we are not allowing him much leeway. I tell her that this continual lateness and his casual attitude towards this are a concern for me, and if they could have a chat to him it would be much appreciated. She tells me (in a nice way) that I need to pick my battles with him, and show him some respect so that I get returned respect.

- The girl and her parents came into school and discussed her tendancy to work slowly, and how this is effecting her learning. The parents responded well, and bought into the idea of helping her from home by encouraging her to do work from home. The parents also supported the idea that she may go to after school study groups in the library.

Outcomes:

- For the boy, I will monitor his lateness, and probably increase the punishments for his lates. I do not think I will get support from home for this action, but I believe that he needs to learn that his lates are not okay and this approach has been endorsed by the dean.

- For the girl, I am going to do a monthly roundup on her from all of her teachers and send this info home to her parents (as they have requested). This will hopefully help her stay up to date with her work and keep her focussed.

Reflection:

It is very difficult to maintain this level of monitoring of students. It takes alot of time and effort and contact to get these programmes in place. It is not that point of effort that is negative, it is the time it takes. For a teacher, not much time is spent on organising lessons, and with responsibilities like this, even less time can be dedicated to the point of being a teacher: the teaching. I want to care for my students as much as possible, but I wonder, how much time can a person dedicate to this type of Pastoral Care when they are trying to create meaningful lessons?

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