My boss thought it would be a good idea to convince a parent of an existing student to get her to come to extra lessons on Tuesdays 8-9pm where she prepare for the Eiken test. The girl already has a normal conversation class on Fridays for 8-9pm.
She’s always been quiet and often shows up tired but she can usually give me something. But we’ve had 6 Eiken prep lessons so far and since the first lesson she has not been quite the same – she is just not there mentally. No one’s home. Anytime I turn my back she closes her eyes. I ask her questions I know she understands but there’s just a silence for ages. I feed her answers and she just blinks. I make very easy versions of the questions and all I get is silence. She’s even fallen asleep a few times and she’s pretending to write with the own not meeting the paper..
I try to be more animated and loud to keep her awake sometimes with super easy questions, or even just a repeating new vocabulary exercise, but she still gives me nothing.
I talked to my boss and she said spoke to the mum and said that the girl also has lots of cram school everyday and Saturday because she is “falling behind a lot”. She goes to cram school after school then comes to us then finally at 9:25 she has dinner, then studies for a couple hours and goes to sleep then to be up for 6. This is not healthy and I am deeply concerned for her.
But whilst I am worried for her health, realistically like this she actually won’t pass the exam. She has got too much on her plate. Maybe it’s not my place to have such concerns but this girl needs to sleep more as her brain isn’t getting any breaks. She’s actually getting worse it seems.
Shall I just continue to do my job or shall I voice my concerns once more?… any advice?
Thanks. The student has just turned 15 btw.
10 comments
Well, there is an EIKEN this Sunday – so maybe they will let up on her for a bit after this week-end.
Sadly, you are dealing with a boss and a parent who logically should know they are piling too much on a child’s schedule but they don’t seem concerned. There is little you can do in regards to making them allow her rest.
Assuming you are not micro-managed during your lesson, maybe just make the lesson you have with her as low-key as possible.
It’s just to do with the culture itself, especially in East Asia. My Korean cousins would always complain that they hate the study culture of finishing school at 4-5 and going to 2-3 cram schools after school, on top of all the homework from school and cram schools + studying. Asian parents have too much expectations and think that overwhelming kids with 5+ cram schools is a benefit when they weren’t straight A students themselves. Some kids are just naturally more gifted and some are more dedicated to studying. Simply sending your kid to as many cram schools isn’t gonna magically turn them into geniuses.
Sucks but there’s not much you can do here. Just hope by some miracle she passes the Eiken test and her parents let up on her a bit.
But your boss has already tasted the extra money (which is all he/she sees her as) so don’t be surprised if they’re like “hey I think it’d be a good idea to make headways on the next eiken level” to her parents.
If she’s sitting this season it should be almost over. Can you push to turn it into an online lesson next time? Saves her a bit of time, she probably has time for dinner etc. Easier to focus on the screen.
Not gonna lie, my first thought was to just let her sleep. Is this a 1-on-1 tutoring session or a class? Either way, if your boss just wants money and this girl just wants to sleep, might as well let her.
It’s nuts what the parents force on their kids
Ahh yes the age old “my child is doing poorly in school because she’s exhausted, so let’s give her more school to improve her grades” negative feedback loop.
Unfortunately there’s nothing you can do during your lessons to improve her situation or help her, being interesting and engaging and the world’s best teacher won’t help someone burnt out and exhausted. She needs sleep and time for her brain to recover and absorb any of the information she’s “taking in”. Without adequate sleep, her brain is just throwing everything away as soon as it hits her ears.
I was in this exact same situation a few years back, the parents were insane, adding more and more activities and classes onto the child. The more she got tired, the more she fell behind, the more they got angry at her and forced her to study more. I refused to work with the student anymore, dropped the parents from my schedule, after they wouldn’t listen to my reasoning that she needs less hours of study, not more.
Last I heard from a friend of a friend of a friend who lives nearby, the girl made an attempt on her life and went to live with her grandparents in the countryside.
I would never be complicit in something like that ever again. The second I get a hint of those kinds of parents I’m dropping out.
If I was in this situation I was confront the boss on how unethical this is and for the mother, provide well researched papers on how sleep is crucial, not only to literal survival, but to learning. And how taking breaks is how our brains turn all this information into useful long term memory. These people are on par with a factory boss, no humanity
If you can’t do anything about the situation outside the classroom, at least you can make the classroom a pleasure, and considering that despite your diligence she’s not learning much in the current situation, (except maybe learning to dislike learning,) maybe any change would be good. So, like, just let her watch anime, YouTube, or movies, etc. depending on her taste. (Works in the public domain of course 😬)
What I’d suggest is something like this: find out what kind of videos she likes, what she’s already seen, and show it to her in English. If it’s something she’s already seen, especially something more kinetic rather than talky, she will be able to follow it pretty well even if she doesn’t understand every word. It would take some prep time, but pick out some key sentences from the script and put a blank in place of a word. E.g., “He needs to ___ the medicine right now!”
If you can find scripts online that you can copy and paste from, that’ll save you a lot of time making a fill in the blank sheet. Later on, you could add a few simple review questions at the bottom after a few times if she becomes more engaged.
This is just an example of the kind of lesson/activity that can bring someone back to life in the classroom. Comics pages with blanks or even fully empty word balloons. Similar uses of pop songs, or just watching the videos. Heck, I’ve even taught students how I make basic recipes from start to finish using English and pantomime and I taught one kid Pi to the fiftieth decimal place. 😄
Every classroom and every student is different, but I hope this is helpful in some way.
Unfortunately, this is a typical schedule for Japanese students, especially if one has gone through Juken (受験) which is a term for the process of applying to an entrance exam (preschool, elementary school, middle school, high school and college).
Kids who are 11~12 go to cram school 5 days a week (Math, Japanese, English, Science, History), study until 1 am and wake up at 6 am just to pass entrance exams, This hectic schedule normally starts from over a year before the entrance exams.
Kids break down. Kids who used to have life in their eyes slowly burn out. One of my friends who used to be the bubbliest kid now can’t look me in the eyes. He entered Kaisei (開成) and worked his butt over it. But the moment he got in, it turned into college exam prep. (The moment you enter middle school, it’s all about college in Japan). He broke down. He skipped cram school and when his mom found out and berated him, he screamed back “Then when can I have any free time? All I’ve done is study, study, study! I’ve sacrificed so much and just when I thought I finally met your expectations, you’re telling me I have to do that another 6 years?” He’s now the shell of the person I know.
I hate it. I hate this lifestyle that has been ingrained into our society. The only reason why I’m not going through that despite doing Juken is because my mom and dad (who both went through hell) have both lived abroad and know how insane this lifestyle is.
Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s too much you can do for this girl. If you let her sleep in class, you might get fired. If you voice your concerns again, you might get fired because 1. your boss is profiting off of the girl getting extra lessons and 2. this is seen as normal. Truly sad and despicable, yet unavoidable.