Tutoring has become more commonplace and more accessible in recent years, with local students, online companies and nationwide franchises all offering tutoring services. In fact, it is estimated that the global tutoring market will be worth more than $200 billion by 2026. All these options mean it’s more confusing than ever to understand what to look for in a tutor and how to choose the best tutor for your child. Let’s talk about the characteristics of an effective tutor and the important signs that can help identify whether your child needs academic tutoring, and whether it is working.
REASONS TO HIRE A TUTOR
Important considerations when determining whether to hire a tutor for your child include:
Your relationship with your child.
Trying to tutor your child can be frustrating and that frustration can negatively affect your relationship with your child. If you are already working on behaviors, organization or other challenges with your child, adding academic challenges to the list can leave little time for just being a family together. It is important to have some “agenda free” time with your child. Times when you are not focused on fixing, teaching or discussing one important issue or another and just be together sharing an activity. Don’t underestimate the way a professional tutor can help save your relationship with your child.
A Neutral Professional
Trying to parent your child and be their academic tutor is no small feat. Frustrations from other parts of your family life can bleed over into homework help session and derail your tutoring efforts quickly. If you’re still mad about those chores they didn’t complete over the weekend you may find yourself lumping that together with their struggles to finish homework and before you know it you’ve gone from trying to explain subtraction to lecturing them on why they need to clean their rooms. While a tutor can notice and try to address organizational issues that impact academics, their sessions have a specific focus that helps them remain a more neutral space for your child to get help with their school work, and we all learn better without the added stress of conflict.
Expertise
Intensive academic intervention and support, with your child’s unique learning profile in mind, can enhance your student’s learning exponentially over the course of repeated sessions. An experienced tutor can call upon experience with a wide range of learners to select the approaches, techniques, and ways of explaining concepts that are most likely to work for your student. Rather than reinvent the wheel trying to research, learn and implement these strategies yourself, let an expert step in and offer their skills.
Individualized Attention and Assessment
A skilled tutor can not only assess your student’s math or reading levels, but can also pinpoint gaps in their learning and target these weak spots. processes and teach your student to overcome these gaps, even begin to recognize new gaps in learning when they arise. Skilled tutors involve students and help them build confidence, set goals, and teach students to check their own understanding of the skills they master.
The individualized approach taken in tutoring helps students, who may struggle in a crowded classroom. A classroom full of active peers confronts students with distractions that can make it hard for them to attend to the teacher. Students may also hesitate to ask questions in front of peers, falling behind in their understanding rather than getting the support they need. The one-on-one setting of a tutoring session can help these students make progress in a shorter amount of time, with fewer distractions. This boosts their confidence and builds endurance for sticking with challenging material that they may encounter during their regular class times.
A skilled tutor who is proficient in prescriptive reading and math programs, and interventions can also assist your student in identifying their own unique learning profile. When a student can answer the question- How do I learn best when faced with new or challenging concepts? – they can help themselves, a truly priceless skill that will serve them long after their tutoring sessions end.
At Evolve, individualized attention and knowledgeable experts are at the center of every service we offer. Our staff understands neurodiversity and has developed specific roles based on their various areas of expertise and professional strengths. We put this expertise to work for you and your family to support your students and by extension, you as their parents We know, sometimes from personal experiences with our own family members, how hard it can be to be parent and tutor and we have quite literally made it our business to help you avoid the burnout and stress that can create.
WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN A TUTORING PROGRAM
Experts agree that the most effective tutoring is personalized, strengths-based, closely related to classroom instruction, and delivered within the context of relationships.
Personalized and Strengths-Based
Personalizing instruction means your tutor must take the time to get to know your child. Knowing your child’s interests, hobbies and passions can help a tutor connect learning to those subjects that are most likely to interest your child. Making learning more engaging in this way helps your child focus, increases the chances they will see a purpose or reason for their learning, and aids in retention. Personalization also means using your child’s strengths to tailor instruction to build on those strengths and help counter the impact of weaknesses while working to improve these areas.
Relationship to child and to classroom instruction
Tutoring that is closely linked to classroom instruction is more likely to help your child understand concepts when they encounter them again in their classroom and helps make the transition between classroom learning and tutoring practice a seamless one. The easiest way to achieve this is to have a classroom teacher provide additional tutoring. When that is not possible, ensure your tutor has access to the same textbooks, workbooks or websites used in classroom learning as possible.
At Evolve, our tutors are part of our program team and often the classroom teacher is the tutor. This allows our tutoring sessions to ensure an instructor that can build a relationship with your child, and use this knowledge of your child to personalize instruction that flows naturally from what they are being taught during class.