If you’re on the fence about hiring a tutor for your child, this article is for you! Hiring a tutor can be a time-consuming, stressful, and costly process for both you and your child. The process can involve finding the right tutor, vetting the tutor, figuring out the best learning style for your child and establishing a good working rhythm. While it is an effortful process, the below article outlines why the investment is worthwhile and how it can pay dividends in terms of your child’s development and academic achievements.
1) Close attention and one-on-one time with tutor
While teachers within a classroom are invaluable and represent a wealth of experience and knowledge, classrooms can still not be ideal for knowledge transfer and student focus. Classrooms can often be abundant with distractions and teacher to student ratios can often be less than ideal. A tutoring environment is a place that minimizes distractions and maximizes attention and focus.
Having a tutor’s personal attention for a given span of time presents your child the opportunity to closely go over any part of the curriculum that they’re struggling with. It also gives them a chance to bring up a particular sum or concept that’s part of their homework or assignment that they’re struggling with and resolve it at their own pace.
2) Mentoring leading to increased confidence
Contrary to popular belief, tutoring is not purely about academics and homework. Having a trusted tutor can give your child the chance to develop and grow their learning styles and methods and adapt better study habits through their tutor. Furthermore, your child can discuss and receive mentoring on their choice of subjects, university or TAFE courses and even extra-curricular activities such as sports, volunteering, and part time work. This all contributes to a holistic development of your child and will bolster their confidence, both in the classroom and outside.
3) Working through the curriculum at your child’s pace
One of the biggest challenges for a student can be not being able to keep up with the pace of their peers and their teacher. This can be extremely discouraging to a student and can lead to them missing fundamental concept that are essential for their progress. Often, students give up on concepts altogether if they find they’re unable to keep up with the pace of the classroom. Having time with a tutor gives your child the chance to go through vital concepts at their own pace and ask and resolve any pressing questions. This will ensure that your child understands the concepts and are able to build on it and complete any assessments that build on that concept rather than missing it altogether.
4) Help maintain momentum during holidays and time-off
Students often report that they have trouble adjusting back to school life once they return from holidays. It’s common for students to have trouble adapting to the rhythm of assessments, deadlines, early starts and homework once they return from long holidays where they often don’t have any exposure to their curriculum for months at end. It can be an immense help to have a weekly/bi-weekly session with a tutor to ensure they are keeping up-to-date with homework and are keeping their curriculum fresh in their minds. This helps students not forget essential concepts and having to relearn them once they are back at school.
5) Teaching and communication styles customized for your child
Having difficult concepts communicated to you in a style that is appealing to you can be the difference between you understanding it and retaining it and not grasping the concept at all. The close relationship between a student and a tutor allows them to work out a communication style that works best for both of them and allows the tutor to understand how the student learns best. Some students enjoy learning visually, or via gameplay or activities. Others like to learn through numbers, videos, or reward systems. Having a tutor to source learning material in your child’s preferred learning style and teaching them in a style personalized to them is imperative to their effective learning.
6) Better results and more exam success
This may be stating the obvious, but a culmination of all the above factors and more will often lead to better academic results and improved exam success. This would contribute towards making your child more confident and more successful. This would also open a myriad of opportunities for them as they continue their academic journeys. What better return could you get for your investment in your child’s future