Be yourself, not somebody else!

Tutor Lucienne Sharpe offers some advice to bring out the best in your child’s learning...

When I am tutoring I am always struck by how students want to copy the teacher.

My message is always “Be yourself, not somebody else!”

Yes, as a student you need to listen and learn key skills and enhance your understanding, but not your own personality. This is your key and it’s yours alone. So be bold and keep it safe!

When guiding students I am always influenced by their own interests and how they approach learning. If they just can’t get excited about poetry show them that it isn’t just words. It’s about feelings and emotions and can be very relevant to today and the key influences on the world stage. Talk about this as though it’s a film. Watch relevant films and discuss. Think about imagery.

• How do people feel when they become lost in another country?
• What kind of experiences was Shakespeare wanting to show us?

Forgetting the language and the difficulties that arise from that, can we see the music and the beat in that expression? Can we see the pictures as a moving film?

Talking to students is the best thing we can do. Not about the work and not about the targets but about what is the message in the writing and the message and the themes. I strongly believe we should not pay so much attention on terminology. I had a student who couldn’t understand the meaning of grammatical functions but could understand grammatical devices!

Are we so hung up on accuracy that we forget the essence? I know we need to understand them but let us start the other way round.

Creative response is a luxury that as a tutor you can ask for. How does creative learning impact on our writing?

Its not about the word ‘imagery’, it’s about the words you can choose that convey your ideas. Creative writing is based on all kinds of language – even just two words can convey joy or sadness!

I encourage all my students to research the world stage before they even begin to analyse. How can you possibly understand the writer if you do not know the world as it was when the writer took pen to paper?

Then there is latent talent that is often ignored or lost just because of the demands of teaching and targets.

Let us think creatively. Creative thinking is about inspiration. It’s like a little angel or goblin that taps you on the shoulder and says ‘Hey you! Are you listening?’ If you ignore it will go somewhere else. We need to take that angel seriously. It may be that you will become the next William Shakespeare!

Confidence is another key skill. How do we achieve that? So often I see my students become stressed because exams are fast approaching. Just help them to know they have the answers. After all they have been working hard. Now just go and enjoy the exam experience. It will embrace you!

If a student says to me ‘Oh I hate this poetry’, I always say, ‘just learn to love it!’

Help the student when going for school interviews; tell them to take a good book that interests them and a hobby to speak about as well as a well prepared folder of all their successes. Certificates. Maybe a video. The school will be inspired by this, especially if the book is very topical. Look the interviewer in the eye and be confident!

The author Ken Robinson delivered a famous TED talk about the power of creativity.

Who would have guessed that this industry of the creative spirit, when you consider fashion and music, would change the world economy.

Preparing for the exams

Be clear and use a template for a strategy.

It is worth the time. I always ask my students to put large A3 paper in a place at home and keep adding notes up on it as it occurs. To keep looking at this paper and adding. Keep reminding the brain!

The strategy should be just pointers:

• What is the message?
• Who is the audience?
• Why was this written, what is the purpose and where is the evidence?
• Who can argue against proven evidence in the answers.

Most of all, each and everyone of us can achieve beyond our imagination. We just need to be really encouraged. It is about two-way learning. Tutor and student. It is not one-way learning.

For more information, see www.amazing-tutor.co.uk

This article first appeared in Which London School? & the South-East 2019/20, which can be read below: