I always feel under pressure with one student – they are too rushed in everything, it feels like she’s putting all the pressure onto me. Tips on how to deal with students who try to unload their pressure onto me would help. The student doesn’t seem to want regular lessons either.
You need to speak with the student and understand why she is “putting all the pressure onto you”? Once you understand why she is behaving this way you can address the problem. Students often want to rush through ALL their questions, not realising that the real benefit of tuition is to have someone help you answer the questions for yourself so that they can become a more successful and independent learner.
Another possibility is that the parents have put a time limit on the tuition and told the student that they can only have X lessons. Parents sometimes take this approach to motivate the student to utilize the tuition time effectively. This kind of limitation would obviously not serve the tutoring process and is likely to make the student nervous and rushed to have you answer all their questions while you are there.
The point is that the student obviously feels justified in their approach to the tutoring – there must be a reason for this. If the student believed that this approach would do little to help boost their grades then they would behave otherwise. There must be some lack of understanding about how tutoring works on the part of the student and/or parents. Tuition is only successful when it is consistent, systematic and reflective. Only when the focus is on helping the student learn to think for themselves. No matter how many questions you explain to them – you cannot do their thinking for them in an exam. You need to explain to the student, and perhaps the parents, what makes tutoring effective. This would also be a good opportunity to clarify for yourself what exactly they hope to achieve as a result of the tutoring and inform the client what you expect of them, especially in regard to homework, tutorial consistency and having non-tense tutorials.
Of course, there is a possibility that they really want a “question answerer” and not an educator/tutor. Whatever it is they do want, it is your responsibility to provide a service tailored to their needs, however, at the very least you should try to understand their intentions and educate them about “successful tutoring”.
