Setting positive limits in the classroom 3 (when students rely heavily on our help)

This is the third in a series of three blogs I've written about setting positive limits in the classroom.


Have you ever felt upset because you couldn’t say “no” to a student’s request for help with their English outside the classroom?

That’s a very common scenario in adult, Business and ESP classes, so what should we do?

You’re fond of your students and you want to give them a hand with their abstracts and business correspondence. It’s just that you’ve started to feel they take your help for granted.

Do they know you have a house, a family, free-time activities and other classes to plan for besides their class?

You always experience sheer joy when you can provide students with extra help. But what about those who rely heavily on your help after class?

I always try to build rapport with my learners and there’s always a lingering feeling of tolerance, cooperation and trust in my classes. As a result, students know they can rely on me to help them with their English at work. That’s fine with me.

What I’ve started to question is the recurrent S.O.S signals some of my students usually send to me.

Some time ago, I discovered I was feeling angry at myself because I had to run some errands, do the cooking, go to my dance lessons, plan my classes and I just couldn’t because I was stuck in my study trying to figure out an extremely technical paper a student had asked me to check.

I was highly aware of the fact that I was responsible for doing something I didn’t want to do just because I couldn’t draw the line between my private life and my work. I had a pile of tasks to carry out and I knew I was going to miss my treasured hobby. Yet, I found it easier to bellyache at home than face the possibility of being misjudged by my student.

Having to say “no” to a student that we like at the expense of being misunderstood is challenging. “More often than not we allow other people’s expectations to determine what we should do … If we have frequently adapted to what the rest expects from us, we won’t know what we want” (Anselm Grün, Healing Limits)

Drawing clear boundaries is absolutely necessary. Some of us, however, find it difficult to put the concept to the test.

How can we be assertive and polite at the same time? How can we make it clear to students we want to help (at least most of the time) but we aren’t available 100% of the time ?

Who knows? We can try to have an adult talk with our students and let them know we have allocated some free time (days and hours) for that type of extra help. We may even want to charge that work depending on the time invested in it.

Whatever we decide to do, it’s a good idea to have a good relationship with our learners “in need”. Feeling in peace with our decisions is the first step to make up our minds about what we want to do, if we want to do it, and when and to communicate our decision properly.

What do you think? Cheers!

Georgina