Strategies for Helping "Committed Underachievers"
Students classified as "committed underachievers" set low goals and resist accepting responsibility for their successes because they do not want to be expected to maintain higher levels of performance. Teachers can help encourage these student by:
- Collaborating daily or weekly with the parents a report of the student's efforts or accomplishments. The parents can withhold or dispense privileges or other rewards contingent on the child's achievement of previously negotiated academic or behavioral goals (Brophy 118-119)
- Implement Mandel and Marcus' (1988) confrontational strategy (Brophy 119)
- Use peer and cross-age tutoring (Brophy 120)
- Use counseling sessions designed to allow underachievers to vent their concerns while also pressuring them to accept responsibility for their performance and commit themselves to realistic goals (Brophy 120)
- Require the student to make up missed homework assignments during recess or after school (Brophy 120)
- Require the student to redo unacceptable work and complete unfinished work (Brophy 120)
- Utilize small-group cooperative learning methods in which each individual has a unique function to perform, thus putting peer pressure on underachievers to do their part (Brophy 120)
- Use the class period effectively and monitor these students closely and checking back with them frequently to make sure they stay on task during work times (Brophy 120)
- Teach them study habits and self-regulation skills (Brophy 120)
- Make their work as interesting as possible and help them see its current or future application potential, but make it clear that they are responsible for applying themselves to accomplishing all curricular goals (Brophy 120)
- Let them do extra credit work in areas of interest (Brophy 120)
- Discuss their occupational plans and help them see how academic skills are required for those occupations (Brophy 120)
- Solicit their suggestions about how you might be helpful to them and follow through on those suggestions that are feasible (Brophy 120)
- Increase work production gradually through escalating contracts and use descriptive praise when students accomplish their goals (Brophy 120)
- Avoid lecturing, nagging, or threatening, but communicate high expectations (Brophy 120)
- Reinforce and build on current accomplishments rather than emphasizing past faults and failures (Brophy 120)
- Structure the students' work by providing clear instructions and identifying specific goals (Brophy 120)
- Teach students to see benefit in school work and take pride in their efforts and successes (Brophy 120-121)
- Use tests to create a positive mindset by making tests at the beginning of the year "impossible to fail," and gradually increasing the difficulty of the assessments
- Call on underachievers (make sure they have a positive experience “That's a good start. Who can add to it?")