What to Look for in a Tutor – A Guide

What to Look for in a Tutor - A Guide

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Do you need to find a tutor for your child? Well if you do check out this guide. It looks at a lot of the different variables and issues that parents face when choosing.

Assesses the Learner’s Beginning Point

You can’t help what you don’t understand!

You can’t begin to help your learner if you don’t understand them!

Each tutoring session should begin with a comprehensive review of each student. Academic and non-academic standards should be analyzed. Academically, you should try to learn your learner’s scholastic strengths and where they may need more work. You shouldn’t simply say, “Sara is horrible at multiplication.” Instead, try to understand why the multiplication process is difficult for Sara to understand.

Non-academically speaking, it is important to get to know each student and their attitudes and behaviors. Children tend to fall behind academically because they have certain behavioral issues. Not necessarily because they don’t understand the content. These instances need to be addressed. A formal tutoring session can be a great way to help.

Questions to ask: How do you administer initial assessments? How do you feel this is helpful?

Honesty Is the Best Feedback

A good tutoring company will be able to give truthful review on how each student is doing. The initial assessment will give a good place to start and you will build off of that. A good tutor will not be afraid to tell parents what their children truly need in terms of tutoring. This can even mean suggesting a student needs other extra-curricular activities because academic tutoring is not necessary.

I have had to have such conversations with parents. I have informed them, that in my opinion, academic tutoring is not the appropriate fit for their children. Sometimes this is because a child does not want to be there and therefore will not get anything out of the service.

Questions to ask: Specifically, where does my child excel? Where does my child need extra help? Where does my child need my attention most?

Instruction Should Be Tailored to the Individual

Obviously, student need very different things. One student’s strength may be another student’s weakness. Student’s also learn in different ways. This is why it is necessary that tutoring be specific to the student. A good tutor knows this and adapts their teaching style to the student.

It is very important to tutor each child individually. It is important to prepare your lessons with the student in mind. A one-size-all approach does not benefit anyone, especially your student.

Question to ask: How can I adapt my teaching to fit my student?  You can also try Oxbridge History tutor.

Cares About the Student’s Strengths and Weaknesses

In order to have long lasting success as a tutor it is important to focus on the student as a whole. Sometimes, other tutors just do academic drill after drill. While this may seem effective at the time, it does not have last success according to maths tutor provider MyTutor. A good tutor looks at the whole picture. They ask themselves what the students need academically, socially, and behaviorally.

Questions to ask: Why do you tutor the way you do? What skills are you looking at? What is your teaching philosophy?

Researches and Uses Data to Improve Teaching

It seems that anyone who has graduated school believes they can be a tutor. Unfortunately, just because you have done well in a class does not mean you can automatically be a good teacher. It is important to set yourself apart from the tutors who do not do the research, look at the whole student, and assess the student’s needs.

The parent’s of students need to demand and expect more from their tutors. They should expect a tutor to demonstrate clearly how effective they are. Parents should be able to see some improvement in a mere few weeks.