If you care about your child’s development, sooner or later you’ll face the challenge of finding and choosing a good tutor. Whether it’s to improve math skills, understand chemistry, or deepen knowledge of a foreign language, the list of reasons for needing a tutor is extensive.
You might start by calling friends, acquaintances, or colleagues. After hearing stories about how great Mr. Jack or Mrs. Smith is as a tutor, you’re likely to choose the one recommended by your friends. But this could be a mistake for various reasons. So, how do you find the right tutor for your child? AdmiGram.com shares the advice below.
How to find and choose a good tutor
What parents need to understand about their child’s tutoring
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Many educators caution parents that tutoring isn’t suitable for every child. Individual lessons with a child involve much more than just solving problems or reviewing class material. Simply choosing a tutor because “everyone else does it” is a waste of time and money.
Also, don’t harbor illusions that a good tutor can accomplish impossible tasks — such as preparing a student with no prior knowledge for an exam or college entrance in just a few weeks.
To find a good tutor for your child, you need to clearly understand what you hope to achieve. The tutor, after hearing your expectations, should be able to clearly explain how those goals can be reached.
Clearly define the purpose of your child’s tutoring
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To find a good tutor, you need to clearly define what you want to achieve. “We just want to improve their knowledge” is something you often hear from parents, but it’s fundamentally wrong. Improving knowledge is an abstract, secondary result that doesn’t lead to any concrete outcome.
“We want to improve physics grades from a C to a B” is another example of an abstract intermediate result of tutoring. School grades are merely one way to assess your child’s knowledge and are far from the most objective. So, how do you set the right goals? For instance, if you want your child to get into a specific university program with a government scholarship, the goal is clear: your child needs to score at least 85 out of 100 on the entrance exams.
Therefore, your goal is admission to that program, and the means of achieving it is preparing for those exams to score above 85. Consequently, you need to find a tutor who can help with this specific goal.
How to properly choose a tutor
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In the internet age, the easiest way to search for a tutor is online. There are even specialized agencies that help match tutors with students. If you submit a request, they will quickly contact you to start finding a suitable tutor. While convenient, this approach doesn’t guarantee that you’ll find the right tutor for your needs.
Before posting an ad online or submitting a request to an agency, you should research the market in your area. Talk to parents who have already hired tutors or to teachers you know well. They might recommend someone who has proven themselves. Review the offerings in the tutoring market.
Read tutors’ profiles and resumes. It’s a big plus if the tutor provides a sample of their teaching program. On forums, blogs, and social media communities, learn how others have interacted with tutors and what results they achieved. Only after doing this homework should you submit a request for a tutor.
Thoroughly examine recommendations and reviews of the tutor
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If you’ve reached the interview stage with a potential tutor, ask them for recommendations and reviews. Try to find reviews from other sources (social media, recommendation letters, parent feedback, etc.).
Avoid tutors with overwhelmingly negative reviews. Any teacher may have a couple of cases where things didn’t work out with a student or their parents, but this should be limited to just two or three instances.
Reviews on specialized sites or tutoring agency websites are usually genuine. However, if a tutor has their own website or social media account, you should be cautious about the objectivity of the reviews posted there.
Choose the tutor who fits your specific goal
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When reviewing recommendations and reviews, pay attention to what the tutor has prepared students for. Ask detailed questions about the tutor’s specialization, what they teach, and what their students achieve afterward.
Do this before telling the tutor about your goals. Ideally, you should find a tutor who has successfully prepared students for the same goals you have.
For example, if your goal is to win a school chemistry competition, the right tutor might be a relevant student or recent graduate who has won similar competitions. You don’t necessarily need a renowned professor for this purpose.
Always monitor the learning process
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If you’ve started lessons with a tutor, always monitor the learning process. For example, you might hire a distinguished math professor who simply works through typical problems with your child and explains their mistakes. The effectiveness of such lessons is often close to zero.
Don’t rely solely on the experience of well-known tutors. If you need to pass an exam with a score of 70-80 out of 100, you don’t need to spend money on a Ph.D. in mathematics. A good high school teacher or a senior college student with experience preparing children for exams can handle this task just fine.
Always take an interest in and personally monitor the methodology used during individual lessons. You should see results within a month. For example, if it’s math, ask your child to solve a few problems from an old math textbook. If they struggle, and their grades haven’t improved, it’s time to draw conclusions.
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