IB SEN Tuition Diary -- Dominic
- Ellie Reading
- Jan 28
- 3 min read
IB School Students with ADHD
Private Tutoring for Neurodiverse Students on English Language and Literature#IBSEN #ADHDTutoring #NeurodiverseEducation #IBEnglish #PrivateTutoring #SENSupport
I’m going to tell you a story where identity is intentionally anonymous.
The name, the details—altered, blurred, reshaped.
But the essence of it? That stays.
At the end of it all, Dominic didn’t get top grades. Level 7 in English Language. Level 6 in English Literature. #IBSEN #ADHDTutoring #NeurodiverseEducation #IBEnglish #PrivateTutoring #SENSupport
Not perfect, not remarkable—but enough. Enough to step forward, to take his place in A-Level, to open the door to university. And now, he’s studying at one of the best computer science universities in the UK. I won’t say which—it’s his story to tell.
But the grades weren’t the victory. The victory was that he got there at all.
And it hadn’t been easy.
Because at home, there were arguments. Endless, exhausting fights.His parents worried, frustrated, desperate for him to take things seriously.He felt cornered, angry, convinced they didn’t understand him.They saw a boy who spent too much time gaming and not enough time studying.He saw parents who never trusted him to figure things out in his own way.
They pushed. He resisted.And the more they fought, the wider the gap became.
So I had to find another way in.
Dominic didn’t believe in words—he believed in systems. He didn’t see meaning in poetry, but he saw meaning in games—in their mechanics, in the logic that held their worlds together.
So we built a bridge.
“If you were designing a game about Macbeth, what would it look like?” I asked.“How would you show his downfall? Would ambition be a playable stat? Would guilt change the difficulty?”
That got his attention. He started sketching ideas, mapping the rise and fall of a man consumed by power, understanding the structure of the play not as a story, but as a system of cause and effect.
And then Kamikaze. The war poem. A pilot, a mission, a decision to turn back.
“What if this were a game?” I asked.“It wouldn’t be a shooter,” he said immediately.“No,” I agreed. “It’s not about combat. It’s about regret.”
So he designed it in his mind—a first-person perspective, the ocean stretching below, the mission brief clear. And then, a choice. To go forward, or to turn back. And if the player turns back? The world treats them differently. The game doesn’t end—but everything changes.
And in that moment, he understood the poem.Not because he memorised it, but because he built it.
This wasn’t about memorisation or exam strategies. It was about learning in a language he understood.And once he found his way in, he didn’t just sit through the exams—he passed them.
But this didn’t happen alone.
His parents could have resisted. They could have demanded a stricter approach, forced him into rigid study routines, taken away his gaming.Instead, they did something far harder: they trusted.
And trust wasn’t easy.Because trust meant waiting. Trust meant letting go. Trust meant sitting in the uncertainty, not knowing if it would work.
They trusted me to take a risk—to teach their son not through drills, but through the very thing they worried was distracting him.And that trust? That was everything.
So now, when they thank me—when they tell me how much I helped Dominic—I feel like I owe them more than they owe me.
Because they let me prove what I believe: there are no unteachable students—only ones who haven’t been taught in the right way.
Dominic had every excuse not to succeed. ADHD, dyslexia, frustration, self-doubt.But I had no excuse not to try.
Students can have a thousand reasons not to learn.A teacher doesn’t get that luxury.
And in the end, we found the way in. Not by force, not by control, but by understanding, adapting, and speaking in the language he could listen to.
And that was enough.
