How to help a student?

February 05, 2023

Article last edited on April 30, 2018 by Admin

How to help a person, a student facing difficulties? Here are 5 recommendations to help you.

You are certainly familiar with this situation: you want to help one or more students to overcome their difficulties. But you are not sure how to go about it; you are not an accompaniment professional.

But it is not because you are neither a (school) coach nor a therapist that you cannot help, accompany a pupil or a young person if you are an educator. Quite the contrary.

But, it is easy to make mistakes, to have the wrong approach, such as the most classic: that of wanting to give advice. In other words, your action will be little or even not at all effective. You will be wasting your time.

Here are 5 recommendations from the Narrative Practice (Australian origin method for solving problems) that you can follow. Without making you a professional, you will have the right approach to accompany a student.

1. The person is not the problem!

“The person is the person, the problem is the problem, the person is not the problem!” This is one of the basic principles of Narrative Practices.

After having listened to the “complaints” – in the narrative sense of the term – that in particular of being in a section or a school with a bad reputation, for example, with the effects on the image they have of themselves, we arrive very quickly to name the problem. The fact of naming the problem makes it possible to materialize it, to externalize it. Therefore, we can speak of him as a person outside of the one who suffers from it.Viewing the problem as separate from the person helps the person better mobilize their resources.

The fact of externalizing makes it possible to create a context where the young person is situated outside the problem and where it is no longer the problem that dictates who he really is. And, finally, outsourcing reduces the tendency to label people and things and equate them with pathology.

2. Listen to complaints and avoid advising

The aim is to get the person(s) who has/need help, such as students, to express themselves on all that poses a problem. About the effects these problems have on them and on their life at school. Do not hesitate to ask them to illustrate their remarks with stories experienced as problematic at school.

3. Honor their words

Address them by taking their words well and validating and reformulating regularly. Write down everything they say carefully and have them read it over regularly. Doing something with their words, a first step in addressing their complaints.

4. Outsource the problem

Investigate what is bothering them and name it. Consider the problem as separate from the young person. This will help the young person to mobilize more in the face of his problem. The fact of externalizing makes it possible to create a context where the young person is situated outside the problem and where it is no longer the problem that dictates who he really is. Once the person no longer talks about themselves as something that is problematic but as someone who is affected by a problem, new options appear for them. It becomes easier to think about “how to protect yourself from the effects of the problem”.

5. Weave a new story with them by honoring resistance

People always react to the difficulties they encounter. Otherwise, they would succumb. This ability to react is made up of skills, knowledge and understandings they have of their lives. These skills, knowledge and understandings have a history.

To help these students who have difficulties, weaving with them a new story that is no longer the problem story means making visible all these skills that they have built up without seeing them. It’s going to look with them for all the exceptions – all the times when the “problem” hasn’t caught up with them, suffocated, paralyzed them – and linking them like the episodes of a new story.

The more this new story is fleshed out, the more the problem story loses its influence on the person, on his behavior. And, by losing its influence, it allows the person to become the author of his life again.

Student exercise

“What helps you get out of difficult situations? »“Describe one thing (a quality) that you have within you or that you have developed that helps you in difficult times. »“Share a story where that special quality really helped you. »“Who would not be surprised, around and near you, that you have this quality? »“Where does it come from? How did you acquire it or who taught it to you? »“Is it linked in any way to a group, to your family, perhaps to a community, or a culture to which you belong? »

At the end of the exercise, everyone wrote the quality they had found on a post-it and stuck it on the board, and they had to say to the group:

“its quality”“how he had experienced this interview”,“what he had learned about himself”,“what it said about him”.

How to involve a person: some key points

1. Seize the opportunity to bring in a person who has had the same educational background as them and who has nevertheless succeeded in life. A person who will embody that it is possible for them to get there.

2. Make them meet a person from the professional world, a business manager in this case who will be able to answer their questions and inform them about what a boss can expect from an employee, to inform them about the world of work, on the trade of restaurateur.

3. Create a context where an outside witness speaks about the image he has of these young people and what these young people open up as new possibilities in his life. This will contribute to fleshing out the favorite story of the young people and the witness. This will also contribute to giving young people the feeling of “power”, of being able to bring something to the other, to help others.

How to deal with students in difficulty who have not asked for anything? 

Seemingly nothing very easy. Here are some principles

Creating the alliance meant remaining vigilant on three points.

AT. Being in front of them without a priori. I arrived in front of young people who, at the same time, undergo the school system and are not valued there, quite the contrary. Young people who are constantly told “that they have problems”. So, to create the alliance, my posture in front of them was essential. I had to be careful not to let myself be influenced by everything I could hear about them: they are violent, they don’t know how to express themselves well, they have learning problems, concentration problems… It’s not always easy.

When, for example, I was annoyed by one of them, it was a good barometer to let me know that I was no longer in the right position. I had slipped from the welcome posture to the waiting posture. However, the key is not to expect anything, it is to welcome what comes. This is, in my opinion, the right posture: to be welcoming and without preconceptions.

B. Let them feel that I’m there for them

They must feel that they are my clients. I am with them, on their side, whatever happens. We will form a community, based on rules that we will establish together. We were going on a trip. I will be their guide, but it is up to them to decide the destination. This requires doing nothing about them without telling them, and having them agree. If, for example, a teacher wants to attend a session, I ask them beforehand if they agree. And, if they agree, the teacher will have to respect our rules.

vs. Play on the reciprocity of Y interaction

The last point is played out in the reciprocity of the interaction. I didn’t come to tell them what to believe or do. They must feel that what they say or show me helps me too. In contact with them, I learn and I also progress. Which is obviously true and which allows them, at the same time, to want to talk, to share, and then reassures them about their ability to bring something to the other.

Raise a demand

For there to be real coaching, there must be a demand from the person being coached. The first difficulty with my young clients is that they didn’t ask for anything. We wanted coaching for them.

So my job is firstly to make them aware of the interest of such an approach for them, and then to make them submit requests. For this mission, I had no less than 65 requests to bring out. Requests that have continued to evolve as we work together. To succeed in carrying out this step, I had to explain what coaching is and the interest it could have for them. I also had to value the process by telling them that, when we go to see a coach, that we have not a problem but a project, an objective, and that the coach is there to accompany us towards this objective.

 Make them experience expert status

I will say that, it is again a question of posture. The narrative coach is an “ignorant”. he must constantly remember. Ignorant insofar as it is the other who knows. It is the other who knows what is best for him.

Text and dossier: Dina Scherrer

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