What to Ask Potential Tutors.
Finding a potential tutor for yourself or your child can be arduous. You want to make sure there’s a good fit between need and knowledge as well as between educational and teaching modalities. In order to streamline the process, we’ve compiled several suggestions that will help you choose wisely and get your first meeting off and running.
Be specific: As tutors, specificity helps us hone in on and ask direct questions regarding you and your child’s needs. Letting us know specific content or skills your child might be struggling with and/or certain skills you’d like to enhance will help us to build an initial lesson that allows us to assess where you or your child is at and proceed accordingly with our second lesson. Going in “sight-blind” simply delays the process and can make it harder to diagnose what the client actually needs.
Create a link between school and tutor: As tutors, we love seeing students’ work as a way to identify specific content as well as where they need support. Going along with the theme of specificity, knowing exactly what is being covered in class helps to strengthen performance for the tutor and student alike. Worksheets, test and/or teachers’ emails are great ways to create this connection.
Keep your first meeting: Yes, emergencies arise, however, first impressions are important. Keeping your initial meeting allows the tutor to know you’re serious about maintaining your contract and builds trust. Knowing that a client is consistently prepared often leads to a very deep and significant investment on our end.