Teacher shares her success story with stubborn student who used to deliberately perform bad in class

It is not easy being a teacher. They are overworked, stressed and have a huge responsibility to create the country's future. Besides that, they have to identify the weaknesses in each child and work on them. But the frustrating part begins when a child is proficient or brilliant but holds them back for silly reasons. u/Present-Camel7199 has one such student in their class. They know how talented the student is, but no matter how hard they try, the student does not perform at her full potential. The teacher came to Reddit to share what tactics she employed to garner positive outcomes from the student and learn other similar stories from fellow teachers.

The teacher begins the post by stating that, at present, they teach 5th grade students. One peculiar student they came across "has been testing the limits of the rules and my patience all year." The teacher describes how the student is the smartest but, at the same time, the laziest in the class. Despite the student's intellect, she has been gaining "average to slightly below average" scores. At first, the teacher thought that this must be a particular issue that the student had with them by not being able to cope with the style of their teaching. But after talking to the student's mother, they realized it was a behavior pattern.

The student's mother shared that "she has done this with every teacher she's had, but it had gotten especially bad towards the end of last school year." The teacher understood that the student was chasing comfort. She began to formulate a plan to make the student believe that the only way she can gain comfort is by studying and scoring to the best of her abilities. It was evident that the student wanted people to let her be, so the teacher began to crib her until she gave the right answer or tried her hardest to perform well.

The teacher started with Math. At first, the student was on her usual pattern, giving wrong answers to the simplest questions. However, the teacher persisted and kept throwing questions and equations at her. After days of annoyance, she finally gave in and one day completed her work with all the right answers. In her recent Math quiz, she scored a 100.

Now, the teacher is hoping that she begins to enjoy the process and likes being on the other side of things. In the post, she shares that progress has also started to happen as "she was really proud of herself." They are soon going to start work on other subjects, but so far, she has been performing way better than in the past but continues to remain a character. The teacher might seem irritating to the student now, but in reality, her perseverance is creating a better future for the girl.

The comment section undoubtedly applauded the teacher's efforts to bring the best out of the student. u/IdeaPrimer loved how the teacher did not give up and wrote, "It sounds like you showed her you wouldn't give up on her. Nice work!"