How to tell a teacher you’re not learning?
Dear fellow student,
This is such a good question, and honestly it’s one that I don’t hear asked often––but I don’t know why. We, as students, tend to hate teachers teaching styles and constantly complain how we aren’t learning but we should ask ourselves what we are doing to fix it. This a great step.
After thinking about this question, I came up with just being honest. Obviously you don’t want to be rude or anything, but maybe by identifying that you haven’t been successful recently and asking if they have any suggestions. I wouldn’t ask her/him to change everything they are doing. Their job is to teach––if whatever they’re doing isn’t helping you, they’ll be happy that you’re taking the initiative to ask, especially because it shows that you actually care.
I wanted to make sure that I could give you the best response, so I asked a few teachers too. They said that before even talking to the teacher to make sure you’re doing everything you can: doing your homework, studying, paying attention, listening, and taking notes. Now this isn’t me questioning whether or not you are––it’s just making sure you are because that will be the first thing they ask you. Other than that, they said that you should isolate your problem and narrow down exactly what is causing you so much trouble. Whether you think you need more classwork, or one on one time, maybe you don’t like how they take notes, or it could even be the pace of the class that may be too quick and you need them to slow down. If you can do that, it will make the entire conversation easier.
Good luck, and I hope everything goes well!
Sincerely yours,
- ❤
P.S. Don’t forget that NHS offers tutoring so you can experiment with someone else’s teaching.
The Scroll 