Help! My mentee has too much homework!

• Find out how much work they get given each day – are they saving it all for you, or is this set just on the day you go?
• If they are saving up the work for you, ask them to have a go at everything before you go so that you can use the time in your sessions for the bits they find hard.
• If they have that much homework on that day, maybe change the day you go.
• If it is due in the next day, decide at the start which are the hard bits you need to look over together, and which parts can they do themselves or with help from family members.
• Ask L2L and the family if you or a project worker and the parents can meet the teacher to discuss the problem.
• Suggest that you will not always focus on homework – but give them notice about this and always discuss this with the parents.
• To stop your mentee relying on you too much, use different resources and model the skills they need for the homework so that you show them HOW to do a task rather than doing the homework with them. This might also help if the homework set is boring or quite irrelevant!
• Do a trip to change the focus of your work with them.