How to Be a Great Tutor

How to Be a Great Tutor

Being a tutor comes with a lot of great benefits. Not only are on-on-one sessions rewarding, but you also get to pay full attention to each student and their learning needs. In contrast to a class setup, more students have benefited from private tutoring services. In this technological generation, one-on-one mentoring and coaching is especially needed. It’s helpful as it improves student academic performance as well as increases student self-efficiency as they learn to work on their own and at their own pace.  

There are a few key factors that set great tutors apart. A great tutor wants the absolute best for their students.

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Building Strong, Personal Relationships 

This is the foundation for great tutoring as once a relationship is formed, students are more likely to feel comfortable and connected to their tutor. This foundation allows for trust and respect to be built between student and tutor. When the tutor really pays attention to their student’s needs, it is the result of their bond. This is true as this bond allows the tutor to know their student’s interests and dislikes. So, the tutor can then personalize learning accordingly and create ways for their students to establish their own connections while learning. In addition, tutors will then be able to minimize their students’ weaknesses by ensuring students’ strengths and skills are more the focus when learning.

Content Expertise

Great tutors make learning real, relevant, and rigorous for their students. This is possible if tutors fully understand the subject they are teaching and can appropriately convey concepts, ideas, and problems to make learning attractive to their learners. By making learning attractive, tutors will allow students to experience real-life applications of whatever concept was taught. In addition, these tutors can turn school assignments into project-based activities and simple concepts into fundamental knowledge. 

Collaboration and Communication

Being able to listen and communicate early with parents and teachers, great tutors ensure that thorough planning happens. They start by focusing on goal setting, creating benchmarks, and then planning backwards from that. This is all cocreated as individual learning plans are created in collaboration with students, teachers, and parents ensuring that the students learning needs are met. 

Catering to The Student’s Learning Style

All students have a learning style whether they are reflective or practical learners. For example, reflective learners enjoy going through the work beforehand and familiarising themselves with the material while practical learners seek to experience what they are learning through practical application. Therefore, tutors should ensure that their lessons cater to their student’s learning style.

Patience Is Necessary 

Some learners grasp new concepts quicker than others. Although this is desirous for all tutors, students’ level of understanding must be taken into account. So, having patience when a concept needs to be explained more than once will help you work through your frustration. The important thing is that the student understands what they are learning. Tutors may therefore opt for different methods to retain students’ memory, such as mind maps.

Asking Students For Feedback

Students are well aware of what they need. Whether it would be to speak slower or to cut class time, they know what is needed. So, asking students for their feedback will assist you in fully reaching the goal of helping your student with their studies.