Things To Consider Before You Hire A Tutor
Private tutoring is a growing business, with people spending hundreds of billions of dollars. But is it worth it? And how does a person pick among all the options?
If you would like to book a tutor, here are five tips to keep in mind.
I make these recommendations as a former high school math teacher, current Ph.D. candidate in math education and veteran private tutor in math, science and humanities for students from elementary through university level.
Decide what you want to achieve
Are you trying to pass a test or a class? Or are you actually trying to learn something?
If all you want to do is pass a test or a class or get some other short-term result and be done with it, that’s a performance goal. However, if you want to actually understand an idea and be able to transfer it to different so ituations, that’s a learning goal.
While parents may have both performance and learning goals for their children, in general, learning should be placed above performance. Learning will lead to better performance, but it will happen at its own pace.
If you decide to use tutoring to achieve a performance goal, be aware of the pitfalls. If a student needs excessive test prep to pass a class or get into a program or college, the student may be set up for failure in whatever comes next.
Look carefully at the tutor’s actions
Good tutoring is not just the tutor teaching the student. In order for tutoring to be effective, students should be actively involved in the process, not just sitting silently while the tutor talks.
