Adventures in Tutoring Daily Challenge – Day 10

Degrees of Maternity riddle of the day . . . 

Can you guess what children going to a brick-and-mortar public school, children going to a brick-and-mortar private school, children attending a virtual public school, and children attending a virtual private school all have in common?

I’ll give you a few seconds to think on it.

Think on it . . . 

Think on it . . . 

Okay, time’s up. What did you come up with?

Wish I could hear your response right now, but I can’t, so I’m just gonna give you the answer to the riddle of sorts.

Answer: They have all been distracted from time to time while in a tutoring session with me.

Now, I’ve managed to tutor children in all four settings that I mentioned in my question at the very beginning. However, I haven’t actually tutored any children in a homeschool setting, but you might as well include them in the group of students who have been distracted while receiving educational instruction.

Any child being taught has. And sometimes, it can be a real challenge to keep a child on track when you’re not able to be in that child’s presence. Hey, even if you’re in the presence of that child, he or she still gets distracted. So, there’s no escaping it! 

Inevitably, distraction meets every child at some point while he or she is receiving instruction. No matter the educational setup. But, I’ll stick to the environment in which I’ve served children as of late, and that is the virtual tutoring environment.

Since there’s no way to avoid the fact that distractions will come to a child that you’re working with when conducting a tutoring session, I’ve learned to pivot when it happens.

Yes, there’s a bit of a disruption to the flow of a session when you have to stop to address the distraction that is enticing your student. But, being prepared for the challenge ahead of time (knowing it can happen at any time) will help you be more successful at quickly redirecting a distracted child and getting him or her back in alignment with the instruction taking place.

Here are some of my more common distraction foes:

1. Other children in close proximity to my student, whether they are family members, friends, other students, etc., who are trying to engage in conversation with my student, trying to play with my student, doing something that’s more interesting to my student’s attention span than what he or she is working on with me, etc.
2. Other noises (outside of the noise that my voice and my student’s voice are making) in the room. This “other” noise is not the “white noise” you might hear in the background that you can work through and doesn’t throw you off your concentration-on-the-task-at-hand game. This “other” noise is the disruptive-of-work-flow kind. Think: alarms, sirens, phones, tv, loud conversations from third parties, etc.
3. Breaks from the three main culprits of physical distraction — bathroom, snack, and water. All three breaks have made unwanted appearances. Not from my end, but from my student’s side of things. 
4. The child’s own demeanor and attitude. Sometimes, it’s a bit of a struggle to get through a tutoring session when you have a child who just isn’t feelin’ it. And, in those cases, the child him- or herself becomes the biggest distraction of all to receiving instruction for that day.
5. The types of distractions that catch you off guard and that you really can’t prepare for or do anything about. Let me give you some real-life examples, so you know what I mean. I’ve had multiple occasions where I’ve had students have to physically remove themselves from a tutoring session because a fire drill was going on at their school location, and they HAD TO go. I’ve had students travelling in cars and buses or walking outside and in stores while I’ve tried to deliver instruction. I’ve also had students who were physically ill and couldn’t concentrate on work. I even had a student at a brick-and-mortar public school who didn’t complain at all that he was sick during our tutoring session. So, I never saw this coming until I saw it coming. But, all of a sudden, young man stopped right in the middle of what we were doing and threw EVERYTHING up. And, I mean he THREW UP . . .  a few times! All over his desk area, himself, the floor. Yup! Poor child. And, I spent the rest of the session watching his teachers clean up his work area after removing him from the classroom to get him cleaned up and cared for.   

So, there you have it. The common types of distractions that my students and I see during our tutoring sessions together. Now, I already stated that there’s not too much I can do about the distractions in #5 above. But, the other 4 types have some remedies and/or workarounds.

Guess I’ll come back and reveal the strategies I’ve used to address the distractions that I can do something about. Check them out in the next blog post.