"Help for Struggling Readers" Chapter 11

Create Supportive Relationships 

This section of the reading really caught my attention. Trust is crucial in all relationships; however, I feel like this is something that has skipped my mind in relationship to my students. I obviously care deeply for students and that’s why I want to teach, but when I think about them trusting me I think more of issues outside the classroom and not directly related to my teaching. This reading took me deeper in my understanding of the importance of gaining their trust. Glasser was quoted “people who have repeatedly failed at something usually cope by focusing their lives elsewhere to avoid still more failure.” I have seen this time and time again with the student that I tutor. My student would try to guess the answer or read the problem and if he didn’t know it right away he would ask for my help. He’s been told he isn’t good at school and so when he feels like he might fail he reaches out for help before he can fail. My strategy has developed, when we first began he would quickly say an answer, hoping I wouldn’t ask anything else. We now are in a rhythm where I have him read the question out loud and then we talk about what the question is asking and then he can answer. This process has improved his thinking greatly. He knows my routine and expects that we have to read it out loud before he starts. He knows that I expect him to think and not guess. We have developed a supportive relationship in which he knows what I except and hope for him and he reaches to meet those goals. As my student succeeds through this process he is improving his views about himself as a student. 

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