Adrian was a bright boy who had become tongue-tied and too terrified to do well at school. His father contacted Tutors from England and I was his full-time residential tutor for three months during his summer holidays because he was doing badly at school.  I discovered that the reason was because he was being bullied so much.

Adrian soon came to trust me and we got on very well together. The first thing I did was to bring him up to date with his work; this was the easy part – he was a bright boy, but his school results had been abysmal owing to his lack of confidence created by the bullying. 

After I had ensured that Adrian had caught up with his studies, I spent the rest of the three months increasing his self-confidence and preparing him to go back to school and face down the bullies. I achieved this mostly by playing sports with him, especially racquetball, with which he became almost obsessed. By playing with him every day I taught him the game and to get very good at it. This gave him the confidence to go back to school and face his peers and show them that he was not the weed that they had persuaded him he was.

Little by little Adrian’s confidence returned and he became more and more self-assured. His parents could see the change in him and were very grateful. 

I have kept in touch with Adrian and he has told me that he loves school now; he is never bullied (nor does he bully anybody else, as he knows how awful it is to be on the receiving end). His headmaster said in his last school report that Adrian was a different boy when he returned to school the next term. HW