What should a teacher do when they realize a student is unlikely to achieve their goal - not because they lack potential, but because they are not addressing the real problems holding them back?
As an interpreting teacher, I believe one of the hardest parts of my job is not teaching techniques, correcting mistakes, or sharing knowledge. It is having the courage to tell a student the truth, even when it is hard to hear.
Recently, I found myself in exactly that situation. A student preparing for their interpreting exams came to me hoping to graduate soon, but after years of unsuccessful attempts, it became clear that the issue was much deeper than exam anxiety or bad luck. The challenge was not just passing an exam - it was rebuilding the foundations needed to become a successful interpreter.
In this article, I share why honest feedback is one of the most valuable gifts a teacher can give, why transparency is an act of kindness, and why sometimes the most supportive thing you can do for a student is tell them the truth.
I started working with this student some three weeks ago. Right off the bat, their goal was quite ambitious: they had written their Bachelor’s dissertation and planned to graduate in the upcoming session.
There was just one minor issue: they were two exams short. In other words, they still needed to pass their year 2 and year 3 dialogue interpreting exams from and into French, which they had attempted and failed multiple times.
Any time I am confronted with a situation like this, I ask two go-to questions:
1️⃣ How do you think you ended up here?
2️⃣ What are you doing to change that?
Despite what some people say, professors rarely fail students over trifles, especially if they are one step away from graduation.
Repeated failures show that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way a student is tackling the exam.
Are they aware of it? Or do they think they are just a few tweaks away from an excellent mark?
I need to know.
If a student tells me, “There is nothing wrong with my French. The professor is a scumbag!” or any variation on this theme, that’s a no-go for me.
When it came to this specific student, however, there were mixed signals: they acknowledged their shortcomings, but mainly blamed them on stress.
If you ask me, this is a yellow flag (stress is rarely the sole factor), but I really vibed with the student on a personal level, so I decided to take them on anyway.
Whenever I do something like this, I am always crystal clear with the student about the work we have ahead of us. If I think they will need to study French two hours a day in order to succeed, I tell them right away. I will never sugarcoat the truth just to “gain” a (resentful) client.
Back to our story: I explain all this to my student; they seem to get the point, so we draft a roadmap and I schedule them for a full evaluation the following day.
For our first official lesson, I prepare a full mock exam: dialogue interpreting + sight translation in both directions, to see for myself what the student struggles with.
Unfortunately, we can’t even get to the end of the interpreting task, because my student:
❌ doesn’t master basic grammar in the target language;
📝 lacks any sort of note-taking technique;
🧠 approaches the task with the wrong mindset, i.e. doesn’t know what it means to interpret meaning rather than merely translate words.
All of a sudden, it becomes very clear why they couldn’t pass their exams, and stress had likely very little to do with it.
With just a few months ahead of us, I inform the student that we are in a very tight spot, but I have no intention of letting them down, so I review my plan and double down on resources and guidance.
Unfortunately, just one week after our first lesson together, the student starts accumulating delays and no-shows due to legitimate family reasons, which also prevent them from consistently doing the necessary homework.
Despite how big I am on honesty, I feel really tempted to let it all slide, just because of how delicate the situation truly is.
But I don’t.
I have a serious talk with the student and tell them exactly what I think: if they continue to skip class and neglect their homework, (based on my experience) they won’t make it.
As a teacher, I hate to be the bearer of bad news like this, but I am deeply convinced that, when you’re truthful, this is often the most loving thing to do.
I see it this way: if I were driving into a pit, unaware of the danger, I would definitely want someone—anyone—to let me know, by whatever means. And if I found out one person recognized the threat but stood by and watched me drive to my doom, I certainly wouldn’t give them a pat on the back.
And before you tell me: it’s not the student’s fault that they didn’t know what was wrong with their French, and it is certainly not their fault that something serious happened in their family. Of course it’s not! But it would be mine if I didn’t tell them they were headed straight into the next pit.
Transparency is kindness. Only the truth can empower someone to do the next right thing; a comforting lie can’t.
Maybe if another teacher before me had done the dirty work of telling my student they needed to go back to the basics if they ever wanted to make a living using French, they could have acted on that advice and wouldn’t have ended up at this point. But no one did. My student was left wondering why they kept failing over and over again. I can’t imagine anything more lonely and frustrating.
So, what now?
Of course, I would never let a student down for something they cannot control. We will continue to put in as much work as we can to get as far as we can, with full disclosure on both sides. But experiences like these prove to me once again that it is not easy to be a teacher. Leading someone, taking them by the hand and showing them the way, comes with a great deal of responsibility.
If you lead them into a pit while they are blindfolded by their own lack of awareness, then you don’t fit my definition of a good teacher.
What do you think? Would you have acted any differently?