Ludo: Have you found good ways to deal with increasing the confidence of a student?
Daniel Sunshine:
I really feel it’s to try and let the pupil take as much responsibility for their own learning as possible.
Often, as teachers, and I’ve fallen into this trap plenty of times myself, you think that it’s all about you and that you need to be in the centre of things, throwing out pearls of wisdom that the student will catch on.
Actually, it’s not.
It’s really about putting the student right in the very centre of things.
You’ll find yourself talking too much, for example, little things like when you realise “I’m dominating, I’m taking over. I should really just relax a little bit more or have those awkward silences”.
They’re great and they give the chance to create the environment where the student can ask their own questions.
They can start thinking out loud because it can be quite intimidating.