Whilst supporting an NLP course this weekend I was asked what book I would recommend regarding dealing with children and behaviour issues. There is one I would suggest all parents begin with, and to be honest if your child is small it is a good manual for interacting with them right the way through their growing up. It is called "Respectful Parents, Respectful Kids" and is written by Sura Hart and Victoria Kindle Hodson.
There is a great deal of information in this book written in a way which allows you to challenge yourself in 7 steps.
I use many of these methods myself when working with children and it does as it says, create a non-conflict but resolution conscious atmosphere which the children own and thrive in.
Some of you may find some of the steps challenging, and perhaps surprising, but have a look on Amazon, I think you will be very pleasantly surprised by its usefulness.

The summer is here and it is time to get creative! How many different games, outings and plans have you ready to occupy the children this summer? And if its going to be a wet one, what are you planning on doing when they cannot go outside and play football, or go out and skateboard or whatever?

One of the best ideas I can suggest is to find a hobby they would like to take up and let them experiment with it this summer. There are so many different courses being run by the local authorities now it seems silly not to take up the opportunity of perhaps sailing, canoing, rock climbing or absailing. Let them stretch their bodies and their imaginations and they will return to school in the autumn refreshed and stimulated ready to take on the next level of learning.
If we allow them to sit in front of the 'box' all day, whether that be a gamming maching or the TV, they will vegetate and their brains stop. They will return to school having regressed rather than progressed, a soul destrying state to be in as they will find they are repeating so much of the work they had succeeded at before the summer.
Whilst you are entertaining your children I will be getting ready for the new intake of students, preparing units of work which are designed to stimulate, enhance and enrich their learning. This year there will be many things on offer - MP3 files on various skills, PowerPoints where topics are explained and methodology explored, pdf files of work books and supporting audio files, games, projects and so much more......
So watch this space and I will let you know what is happening here in Tonbridge, and if you are interested, you too could explore some of the teaching materials with you own children as they come on line?
Have a great holiday and I hope you manage to avoid the rain.

That time of year again

Its that time of year when children are lost in books and examinations and parents can do nothing but sit back an hope everything has been done and they perform to the best of their ability.
Did they revise hard enough? Did they understand those bits of math they struggled with? Will the hay fever be good and not give them streaming eyes in the examination hall?
Meanwhile the teachers are running around hoping their students have learnt it all and have sent the time revising. The stand with hope in their hearts that the students will perform to the best of their ability and show the world just how good they are.
And in the middle of all of this there are the children themselves, trying hard to do their best and not let anyone down especially their teachers and their parents. Scared they haven't done enough and cramming in the last few facts they can.
So what next?
This holiday, unless you are the parent of year 5 student who is taking their 11+ in the September, let them have that well earned rest away from everything educational and be total rebels for just those few weeks before it all starts again.
Once upon a time being a child was fun filled days of playing and having fun with friends and family; now it seems we have moved into a world of high pressure, where anorexia is becoming a tell tale sign of stress and anxiety amongst our very young. This level of stress was once the province of the Japanese children as they fought for those few chosen places at the very top schools, now it has spread and the need for degrees and masters is taking on the sensation of necessity rather than vocation.

Choosing your secondary school

This is the time of year when the tours around schools have either happened or are happening. The schools put their best shows on and they spend money and time making themselves as appealing as possible. It's all show and most of it goes back into the cupboard at the end of the evening; I know, I did it for nearly 30 years.

So how do you really know what is going to be the best place for your child to go, and how do you know whether they will fit in, settle, learn and succeed? How do you use the Open Evenings to inform you rather than flatter you with the glamour and panache?

To be able to make decisions you really need to sort out what you are deciding upon; what are the criteria you are looking for. Think about it, no child is the same and you are looking for a placement where they will be able to maximise their potential; if they are in a place where the style of teaching and routine does not suit them, will they make it?

So here are a few categories to think about;

• what type of learning style does your child have? Does he like quiet, small classes or is he/she happy to be in the crowd and taught in large groups? (some schools teach lessons in groups of 80 so be aware and ask)
• is your child sporty? Ask whether there are facilities for a child who has a speciality in say cricket or tennis. What opportunities are there, what clubs are there for a sporty child to develop that side of their skills range?
• Is your child academic and after the after school clubs such as Chess or Science? Ask whether these are on offer and to what year groups - some are restricted to certain year groups so it is worth knowing.
• Does your child flourish in the Drama department? If so does the school do any drama productions year 7 pupils can get involved in? Is there a strong drama department and does it offer more than just the drama GCSE?
• Does the school have a policy of streaming or banding or what to separate the weaker ones from the quicker ones? If not does it teach in full mixtures where they are all taught at the same time and the work differentiated afterwards? If this is the case, would this style suit your child or would they respond better to a class where all the pupils are about the same skills level? If that's the case then a fully mixed school would not necessarily work for you.
• What are the results like in the various departments? How many pupils make it to the top grades and what is the most common grade they achieve? Not all departments do as well as each other, its dependant upon the staff and facilities, so ask and make sure the ones where your child is good will get the opportunity to get the good grades.
  How many of the pupils get more than the statutory 5 GCSEs at grade C or above; after all you want to aim for higher don't you?
•  What happens to those pupils who are very gifted in a subject, is there somewhere for them to excel? If so how does it work and how has it helped the pupils who have gone through it already?
• Is there an A level component to the school and if there is how many courses or on offer? If they only have a few subjects it may be worth thinking about college unless the choice is OK for your child. 
• Do they have a connection with a local college and if so how does that work? Do they have courses available for year 11 to go to study at the college? If they do what subjects are these?
• What type of GCSEs do they do? Some now do the iGCSE, this is worth checking as this is far harder in many ways and is a good course of study. Really stretches them and prepares them well for the A level courses which follow.

 So there are a few criteria to think about and look for in the school; what about the availability of food at break time and at lunch time? What about trips to go skiing or going to nature reserves, do they do trips and if so when do they do them and for which years?


Don't presume this will all be in the prospectus because it wont. Remember, that is a sales document and will have been put together to show the school in the best light it possibly can. The pupils you will see on the night will be the best they have and the staff there will have created the exciting demo's and experiments from their own battery of things that doesn't necessarily happen every day.


So armed with your ideas of what it is you want to now about, the last and perhaps most important factor is whether your child really likes the place. If they do, find out why and listen to the things they say. It is likely they will be won over by the hype, so make your judgements carefully and don't presume your 10 year old knows all the answers which, lets face it, will effect the whole of its life.

And the scores are in......

What a wonderful time for so many pupils in Kent; the scores are in and many are wandering around with big grins because they can go for the grammar they had wanted.
I have had such pride in watching the students I have taught collect their results and smile with satisfaction as they have found out they have passed, some finding they have enough get to the most selective grammars in the borough. To all of you, can I say here, just how proud of you I am and how pleased I am to say, "YES!" and sing the opening lines of the song, Congratulations.

I would also like to say well done to those who may not have passed but have improved their scores by such a large amount they are being moved up sets now they are in year 6. Even if you do not pass the 11+ the work will not have gone to waste and your overall performance in all subjects will have improved. Well done, and enjoy being one of the ones in the top sets when you go to the secondary school!
I won't have a role call of all the names of people who have passed and studied with me here at jobell tutoring, that is up in my Quiet Room, and I wont mention the names of the ones who improved their NFeR scores by over 8 points, but safe to say I am proud of you all and most of all I want to say.......

GOOD LUCK IN YOUR NEW SCHOOL!!!!!!!

What is a tutor?

When a child comes to see a tutor it is important that they do so willingly. To make a tutor time interesting therefore is the most important aspect after deciding exactly what it says the child's needs to learn. One of the easiest ways to make it pleasant children is to create an atmosphere in which they feel at home. A place where they go to study after school, which is neither home nor school, it is something halfway between the two.
The responsibility therefore, for the tutor is to make sure, that the atmosphere fits the bill.
One thing that I have always playing in the background is a radio, quietly tuned in to a local radio station which plays music. If it plays a mixture of modern and may be the last 10 years of music, then the child is attaining the sort of sounds it is most likely to hear in the home. At the same time it is different from school, which is invariably silent.
The next difference is the layout of the room. I am lucky enough to have a dedicated road but many tutor is do not have this luxury, and adapt an area of what is quite often the dining room, into an area where they work with children. So how do you make it not look like a house, not look like your home, but make it homely enough not to be a school?
I use my office. In it there are desks as you would imagine. There is also a filing cabinet and a very large storage cabinet, again as you would imagine. There are also computers, albeit laptops, and the layout of the room is such that on one side of the room there are two desks put together with their own chairs, and on the other side a much larger desk which is invariably cluttered with 'my stuff'. On the walls are postcards, all of which have been given to me by past students, showing all the different places they have travelled. So it is pretty much a classic office; simple, functional, and to the point. But, they have learned to associate this room with fun, excitement, challenges, being stretched, and new things they've never seen before.

I am often asked the question, can anyone be a tutor? And on the surface I can imagine people would think oh yes, anyone can do that, after all, all you are doing, is sitting down with one child, and showing them how to do something.

No! That is not being the tutor.

That is being somebody who does the work for them. In fact, that isn't much better than some of the not so well trained TAs I have seen in some of the school's, when I have gone round doing assessments on support and facilitation.

So what is a tutor?
• A tutor is somebody who knows the subject well, and has at least 15 different ways of explaining the same thing, without at any time doing the work for them.
• A tutor is someone who has access to different ways of approaching a subject, being through games, the Internet, books, pen and paper, apparatus, and just general chalk and talk.
• A tutor must be someone who can listen through what the child is saying and hear exactly what the child is struggling with.


I will give you an example. A girl sat in the class that I was observing. She seemed to be struggling with the work she had been given. She looked at it and played with her pen, but at no point did I see her create an answer for any of the questions. The teacher, being a little bit twitchy because there was an official visit in the classroom observing her, bustled over and asked what the problem was. Being flustered, the teacher wasn't hearing through what the child said, “…but I can't see it!"
The teacher kept re-explaining and re-explaining in exactly the same way each time until the child with great frustration, said," you don't seem to understand I just can't see it!"
Now you have probably guessed the problem was she literally could not see the page because she had a bad headache and it was making her eyesight blurred. The teacher being flustered by my presence was unable to hear through and ask pertinent questions like why can't you see it? If she had followed through logically, she may have got to the root cause. She may not, but what the child said was misinterpreted.
Now this is a very obvious example but it gives you an idea of how children can say one thing, and as you are probably aware, can mean something totally different. This is very true in education, and a tutor must be very aware of this, because it is something that I believe tutors should be able to access; the true area of where the child is struggling. Not, ‘but it can't do algebra’, more that it may not understand the concept of replacing numbers with letters. Not, that ‘it can't do long multiplication’, but that is multiplication tables aren't sound enough for it to move on and use them in a more complex format.
That is what you employ a tutor for.

So you have a tutor.
• What is the atmosphere like at the place your child attends? Is it like a halfway house or is it something else?
• Is your child happy to go there each week?
• Does your tutor break through your child issues, quickly pinpointing exactly where the problem is and giving both you and the child methods of how to eradicate the issue?
• And most of all does your child like to tutor, because if the child doesn't like to tutor, it doesn't matter how good the tutor is, the child will never get as much as it can do from that tutor because there will always be a barrier of, “I don't like them!"

Gaining independant sight

Whilst away in Spain I watched film about a man who had lost his sight by the time he was three years old. When he was in his 30s he was given the opportunity of having an operation which would restore his sight, and after some deliberation he decided he would have a go. As his surgeon said, ‘what have you got to lose’? Interestingly enough he has a lot to lose, and it wasn't until he gained his sight he realised just how much there was he was losing.
One of the first things he realised was he was completely disorientated. He had developed a feeling world in which he could sense rain, size of buildings, position of doors, and other essential things that helped him get around the world. He had no sight and yet he had a rich imagination one that had been fuelled by all of the explanations he had been given by sighted friends and family. But the question here is whether the actual sights live up to the expectations he had inside his non-seeing brain?
When he first opened his eyes, he would have been as a newborn child, with no idea as to what was a face, a body, an apple, or any other object that was in the room at the time. Imagine seeing movement for the very first time. He had no idea of depth of field because he never had to have knowledge of it, and yet the sighted world presumed, wrongly, that now he has his sight everything was fixed. It wasn't. He had gained a sense and in many ways he had lost his others. They were still there, and he could still access them, but this new sense, sight, was interfering with his original brain processes. He was disorientated.
So we present our children with new situations and we wonder why they are disorientated. We give them new hurdles to climb such as 11+ examinations, GCSEs and so on and we wonder why some of them are drawn towards this new experience, some of them hope it will go away, and some of them just accept it and plod on through.
I looked into some early research into corneal replacement surgery and the restoration of the sight in people who had become blind. The first surgery to be recorded was in the 1950s and this was on a subject who when he first saw for the first time, felt really disillusioned and let down by the whole experience. In fact he became so overwhelmed by it all he believed it was the worst thing that ever happened. Now in those days, psychologists were few on the ground and he didn't get the support that really and truly he needed, and as a consequence he found the adjustment to this new world very, very difficult.
If we return to our children for the moment and think of how they adapt, then we can see a potential parallel. We give them new experiences to give them a wider experience base but we must also remember to give the correct psychological backup to make them feel safe secure and inquisitive. If we wrap them up in protection, when do they get to experience the full force of what they will have to live in? When will they have t adapt to a new set of senses they had been protected from. I realise this is a tenuous link but there is one here. The man in the film had been ‘protected’ from the need to understand large aspects of the seeing world and he operated very well in it. He was then thrown in and told to cope. For the first few months he didn’t and that’s a rational 30-something man. Protect our children too much from the world and we are denying them the development of their full set of senses too.