Today’s academic environments for middle and high schoolers only seem to be getting more intense. Today’s students are faced with expectations from their school, sports teams, other extracurriculars, and especially themselves! All of this starts to add up in pressure with more and more students facing challenges like anxiety, ADHD, and burnout. While each one of these issues raise concern, each approach to navigating them are extremely different. Additionally, it can be difficult to tell the signs apart from one another due to each issue resulting in a similar outcome: a student disengaging from school.
Being a parent and watching your child unravel academically can be difficult. It also begs the question: “Where do I begin?” Before we can answer this question we need to first define burnout, anxiety, and ADHD:
What is Student Burnout and How Can You Recognize It?
The signs of burnout can be hard to see at first. Everyone has a bad day, week, or even year sometimes and just because one is experiencing this, doesn’t necessarily mean they’re experiencing burnout. Burnout is often characterized by a long-term state of emotional, physical, or even academic exhaustion. We all can experience it! So let’s discuss some of the more ‘tell-tale’ signs of burnout:
- Loss of motivation in subjects or classes they used to enjoy
- Experience constant fatigue, even when getting plenty of sleep
- Chronic procrastination and consistently misses assignments
- Frequent emotional outburst and is irritable
- Withdrawal from friends and friendly
Students who already experience ADHD or anxiety may be more susceptible to burnout and it’s symptoms. This is due to them already needing to work harder than their peers to stay on top of assignments and maintain focus during school work.
Why Burnout Often Gets Missed or Misdiagnosed
When parents see their children struggling in school, often they attribute it to them being “lazy” or “unmotivated”. The truth is burnout is not a flaw in a person’s character, it’s a signal that there’s a deeper issue taking root for the person.
The fact of the matter is, burnout is often overlooked entirely as a diagnosis for students. Beginning in middle school, students are exposed to the pressure of their peers, academics, and undergo hormonal changes which when combined, take a big toll on ones motivation. This issue is further compounded for students with undiagnosed anxiety or ADHD. This is why it’s important to look under the surface and really consider why your student seems so disengaged. Are they refusing to do school work because they are too tired to try?
How Tutoring Can Reverse Burnout
While medical diagnosis, therapy, and medication are all important aspects to getting the help needed for these students; tutoring often plays a helpful starting point.
So how exactly does it help?
1. Builds Back Confidence
Burnout leaves students feeling defeated. It only gets worse as late assignments begin to pile up and test grades come back with poor marks. A personalized tutoring environment gives these students the space and time to ask questions without the pressure of being in a classroom or being around their peers. This leads to small wins, which helps in rebuilding a student’s confidence and in turn, motivation.
2. Creates Predictable Routines
Feeling mentally ‘scattered’ is one of the many experiences of a student with burnout. Having standard tutoring appointments (either weekly or every other week) helps provide these students with an anchor. It provides a consistent, manageable routine while still being goal-orientated.
Additionally, tutoring can help students develop and hone their executive functioning skills. These are lifelong skills that help with:
- Organizing assignments
- Breaking down large projects
- Creating and managing study schedules
- Managing distractions
These tools aren’t just useful for school either! Students with a strong executive functioning foundation are setup for success after school, whether that’s college or jumping right into a career!
3. Offers Encouragement
We briefly touched on the importance of a supportive tutor already, but I wanted to reinforce how much of a gamechanger this is for students experiencing burnout. Having a neutral adult gives students the space to improve without dealing with external pressures or influences. Let’s face it, a student with burnout can quickly turn into homework battles at home. These battles often just make things worse, so having someone outside both the classroom and home environment can do wonders for helping your child.
Over time, a student forms a bond with a tutor that isn’t reached in a large classroom setting with a teacher. The tutor begins to understand the student fully and can plan a path to realize that student’s true potential.
Why TenneyTutors is a Smart First Step
While we already broke down the benefits of tutoring for students with burnout, TenneyTutors can accelerate your child’s rebound. The reason why we’re so confident this can happen is due to who our tutors are. Each one of our tutors are professional, private school teachers at our one-on-one school: The Tenney School. What this means is that our teachers have years of classroom experience as well as teaching in a one-on-one setting. They can break down complex concepts in a way that many other tutors can’t! I highly recommend checking out our full list of tutors if this sounds like the right fit for you. Your child deserves a rebound from their burnout and we’d love to be that first step!