When I began working with Tayo, he was getting many detentions in School and his parents were fed up of getting phone calls from home. He had already been excluded many times. I remember that at my very first meeting with the head of year, I was informed that he was on the very last warning, meaning that if he as much as got one more exclusion, that would be final. As expected, he was also doing very poorly in class –obviously missing many, lessons due to been sent out of the lesson and days exclusions meant that gaps, several gaps were being created in his learning. With each detention, the gaps got wider, he became more frustrated with lessons and as such his behaviour only worsened.
Assessment: at the initial assessment Tayo scored a 10% on a year 6 Science paper (he was in year 9) and scored a 40% on a year 6 Maths paper and 85% in the English paper. His spelling was very good too. As it turned out Tayo was an ardent reader, so his English was quite good. When I asked why he was also getting sent out of his English lessons despite being so good at it, he said that they didn’t have a regular teacher and as such the supply teachers were always annoying and picking on him!*
Tayo began to come to me for tutoring and mentoring three days a week. The first thing that I noticed was that he would gladly do any Maths and English work I set for him, so I set him a lot of that kind of work. I also noticed from his report that only his drama teacher gave him glowing report and he had never been sent out of his drama lesson – he was very good at acting. I then asked him if he would like to direct our Christmas play for that year, his face lit up immediately! He did a brilliant job of it and played King Herod (the best I have ever seen in my life). From that moment on, Tayo began to relaxed with me, he talked to me more, and then I began to tell him that if he could only just give the teachers in School the same respect and trust them like he has come to trust me, he would be happier and do belter at School. He didn’t say anything but he did take my advice on board because from that week -3rd week of working with him, he had no more detentions from school, he was not getting sent out anymore and he was participating more in class discussions –the activities and work I was doing with him, were gradually filling up the gaps in his learning. He was beginning to put concepts together and thus his understanding was getting better.
At the end of that term -6 weeks later, Tayo had been moved to the higher set in Maths & English. By the end of the following term, he was moved up in Science as well. With the level of respect that he was getting from his teachers, Tayo became determined not to misbehave in lessons again and he did it- obtaining the grades he needed at GCSEs to go unto his A-level course.