Tutor-Private Teaching and Learning

People like to joke about procrastination: “ I`ve been meaning to read a book on procrastination, but I never seem to get around to it”. Some people consider procrastination to be a positive process, because some things should be left until later. And some people work faster under pressure. Procrastinators can become even lucky, because the unmet problem solves itself: the tasks you cannot solve are no longer important, the information you cannot find is no longer needed, the report you cannot prepare is no longer actual. But a person cannot be always lucky.

Is procrastination a problem?
The psychologists consider procrastination to be a serious problem, because it`s not only an irrational delay or postponement of a relevant activity. There is nothing humorous about it as some people think. Procrastination can produce stress, anxiety, embarrassment and even conflict, leading to depression, guilt or illness. At school procrastination can result into low points, poor knowledge and can lead to loss of friends. We all put off things from time to time without serious consequences, that`s why procrastination is found in every profession and in every classroom at school.

The reasons and the solutions.
A main cause of procrastination is perfectionism. It is caused by unrealistic attitudes. Every teacher knows that there are many pupils who expect more of themselves than they are able to do. In such a situation a good teacher should help a child and pay a special attention to him and his problem. If a pupil is a perfectionist a teacher should help him set a schedule and write the appointment and keep the date with him. It`s also important to break big jobs into little ones. If a pupil is to write a repot, he shouldn`t think of writing a 400-page manuscript and get frightened of it. It`s better for a child to write several pages a day and observe the progress together with a teacher. If a child has a lot of work to do, he is to do the worst first. Then the rest of the work will seem easy. A teacher can also organize with a pupil a game of winning against procrastination and give him points not for the end results but for each success along the way.

Nowadays teenagers are better educated and healthier than any others in history. But there is a dark side. Teachers are worried: too many parents are not doing their job.

Who are modern teenagers? Jocks, punks, geeks, Goths. They may sit at separate tables in the café, but they all belong to the same generation. There are 31 million kids in the 12-to-19 age group. Demographers predict that there will be 35 million by 2010. In many ways teenagers are uniquely privileged. The matter is that they have grown up in a period of sustained prosperity. The Internet has given them access to an almost infinite amount of information. Most expect to go to college, they dream of careers in sports and politics. But this positive image of American adolescence is a little like yearbook photos that depict every kid as happy and blemish-free. In most surveys teenagers say that they feel increasingly alone and alienated. Teachers are worried that teenagers are unable to connect with their parents and sometimes even with their classmates. Teenagers are desperate for guidance. They don`t get what they need at home and in school. They cling to cliques or immerse themselves in a universe out of their parents` reach, a world defined by computer games, TV and movies, where brutality is so common, that it has become mundane.

What are the teenagers` problems nowadays?
Many teenagers feel overwhelmed by pressure and responsibilities. They are juggling part-time jobs and hours of homework every night. As a result they are nearly asleep in their classes. 63 percent are in households where both parents work outside the home and many teenagers look after younger siblings. Others are at home by themselves after school and this solitude extends into the evening. Loneliness troubles teenagers most of all. Loneliness creates an emotional vacuum that is filled by an intense peer culture, a buffer against kids` fear of isolation. Nowadays teenagers are becoming more vulnerable to serious emotional problems. By the end of high school many teens have tried to kill themselves. Often neither parents nor teachers realize that it was a suicide.

What can parents do?
Even the best, most caring parents cannot protect their children from all these problems. But involved parents can make an enormous difference. Children can listen. Parents need to share what they really believe in, what they really think is important. The basic moral values are more important than Math skill or Scholastic Aptitude Test. Parents should work harder to get their points across. The kids cannot wait.

How to apply a methodology of the international project work to develop the intellectual potential of a pupil.

Nowadays it is the time of the radical changes and thoroughgoing reforms in the sphere of education and all of them have one main reason: transition of the mankind to the living in the global information-oriented society. Thus, a new teaching methodology should be implemented to help teachers in the upbringing of the pupils who would have the global international knowledge. This could be attained by means of an interchange of the knowledge and experience between the pupils from different countries. There is a number of projects which can compose the new methodology.

Solving of the commonly encountered problem
In such a project pupils from different countries try to find a way out of the problem which each participant meets. Typical subjects could be such as recycling, environmental protection, school life, etc. The main objectives are the development of the communication skills, research skills and abilities to work in a team.

Joint observations
By means of projects like this pupils are taught to build models of behaviour, to observe various phenomena, to analyse and interpret the results. For instance, they can observe the weather from different corners of the globe and then forecast each other’s weather, analysing the information received.

Study of something common and special
The conduction of this project can be a difficult thing to do because the pupils who would take part in it should have a developed analytical mind and a number of the participants has to be large enough. Technically it could be simple, though.

Issuing of the joint publications
In this project pupils have an experience of public performances in the school mass media, they also train the skill of the creative writing. Students from different countries join the efforts to write something like a ‘Poem of the World’ of ‘Mankind Fairy-tale’ sharing their opinions and national peculiarities to enrich the mind of each other with knowledge.

To make the task easier teachers can use Internet to diversify the process of learning, extend the knowledge of the pupils and make the study more comprehensive. The Internet by itself is an educational complex which provides technical, methodical and organizational support of a single educational process for the pupils.

Anger exists everywhere and it is in all of us. Most teachers and parents find it difficult to consider anger to be normal and inevitable. Both teachers and parents want to know how to deal with anger in oneself.

Why teachers don`t want to show their anger. Most teachers are likely to control and hide their anger. Some teachers consider the anger to be a sign of incompetence and immaturity. The others think of what their pupils will tell parents if teachers get angry in class. A lot of teachers have real concern for their pupils. They don`t want a child to get frightened. Some teachers think that their pupils will get angry and rebellious and will no longer like them as teachers if they show their anger in the classroom. So, these concerns are so real, that most teachers try to hide their anger. The results of this are quite predictable. The teacher, who is trying to keep in anger, is tense, irritable and impatient. It is at best. At worst the anger slips out in sarcasm or explodes in a range of fury, that has been accumulated.

How do children react to anger? All of us as we recall our school years can remember the situations when our teachers expressed anger in the classroom. Children quite often face anger from adults and they don`t always adjust to it in ways that foster their own growth and learning. Most children react with confusion. When a teacher expresses his anger his pupils are bothered, their faces appear troubled. There are children, who are especially sensitive and hurt at a teacher`s anger, and some children may even get frightened. Certainly, children`s feelings are important. But accumulation of irritation, annoyance and stress leads to headaches, sickness of various kinds and proverbial ulcers. A teacher, who denies his own feelings, is wrapped in stress and struggle. Children are rarely fooled by the efforts of teachers to hide the emotions, that are bursting underneath. The first important criterion of acceptable anger release is that the child is not to be blamed, attacked or insulted. In such a situation anger can clear the air and remove the tension.

Teaching films have been with us for a few decades. In the process of learning teaching films are considered to be helpful, but still teachers do not seem to be on friendly terms with them.

The advantages of teaching films.
A teaching film is certainly considered to be one of the most effective visual aids that exist. If the teaching films are good, students learn faster from them and remember new foreign words and phrases longer than the same words and phrases are presented verbally. Teaching films facilitate thinking and problem solving. But a teacher shouldn`t forget that on the other hand a foreign language film is such a sort of activities that students cannot observe or become involved with. While watching a film students can identify themselves with the actors and the situations. It makes films especially valuable for image forming and language learning. The teaching films have been used with considerable success by really good foreign language teachers. They can be used in quite varied situations. When teachers and students get tired of every day classroom routine, a teaching film can work wonders. It can easily break the monotony of classroom and laboratory work. As a result the whole atmosphere in class changes for better and the students get ready to work and to think. Creative teachers use feature and science-popular films at the advanced stage of learning. A teaching film can be used as subject for class discussions and debates for evaluating their artistic value.

The reasons for not using teaching films in class.
The main stumbling block often lies in the lack of professional competence of a teacher himself. A lot of teachers prefer old blackboard to any innovation. They simply don`t want to feel embarrassed in front of the pupils, because they cannot handle audio-visual aids. Very often it is the lack of methodological competence. Some teachers take feature films and show them to pupils in the hope that it will result in learning. More often the effect is opposite. If the students are not prepared for such a procedure, they don`t make out and as a result don`t understand what the actors say. The incomprehension leads to discouragement. If a teacher wants his pupils to make progress, they should be prepared for watching teaching films and the quality of technical equipment and films should be excellent.

There is no doubt that books have played a major role in shaping the cultural life of any society. They broaden our outlook, develop our artistic taste, give us a lot of useful information. I don`t think I can get along without them.

The price of progress.
People read for different treasons. Some of them read for instruction, some for pleasure and some read from habit. What should a teacher do, if a child doesn`t read at all? He certainly can but he doesn`t want. In one of his novels I. Asimov describes the life of our planet in the future, where only mechanical teachers exist, there are no schools, there are no books with pages. The dusty old book, found by the children, seems to be something particularly wonderful. Was the story written to amuse the readers or to warn them against possible problems of the future. There is a proverb: “Choose an author as you choose a friend”. And a child does. More and more often he chooses… a computer. Sometimes I simply cannot understand why otherwise intelligent humans have gone computer-mad. It starts early: a teacher despairs of time-telling when a pupil sports his hideous digital watch that peeps, plays tunes, starts and stops, even shows firework displays but instills no sense of the hands moving majestically round a clock face. Instead of learning mental arithmetic a child grows up thinking, that a calculator is his right.

How to get children to read.
It has always been difficult to get children to read. Nowadays the situation grew worse. It`s in a teacher`s power to improve it. Teachers are always trying to come up with new ways to get kids excited about learning. They get pupils to special projects to make the process of learning more interesting. Several special programs that are to help the pupils to discover the joys of reading have been introduced in many schools. The pupils are to reach their individual reading goals within four months. The pupils not only read, but they discuss what they have read with their classmates. The winners of the program are to get the reward for the entire class. This fact makes the kids be more diligent and responsible. In one of his famous essays F. Bacon wrote: “ Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take it for granted: nor to find talk and discourse: but to weigh and consider”.