Pen and Paper Mama

This is post 4 in the series:  Questions About Tutoring Costs

What if you really cannot afford to hire a qualified tutor at their advertised rate, or you feel the rate is unreasonable?  Will a tutor be open to discussing their rates?  Are there other tutoring options which may be worthwhile exploring?  Here are some possibilities:

Ask the tutor if they can offer alternative rates or payment alternatives:  While some tutors have set rates, and stick to them, others may consider payment options.  For example, if a potential client knows others who also need a tutor for similar needs, group tutoring sessions might be available at a reduced rate per student.  Or a tutor might offer free sessions if a client provides recommendations that result in new clients.  Another possibility is barter: the client may have skills or products that the tutor would be willing to trade for.  Some tutors offer reduced session rates for longer-term contracts.  Some tutors will even provide a “scholarship” for a special student from time to time.

Ask the tutor to teach you to help your child:  If you can only afford a few lessons, consider asking a tutor to teach you to teach your child.  If you already have a reasonable basic education, and if you are willing to work hard with your child, the tutor may be willing to teach you skills and recommend materials that will allow you to tutor your child yourself.  Investing in a few lessons yourself, may well provide you with the ability to help all your children in the long term.  And if, from time to time, you need a little extra help, the tutor may be willing to provide individual sessions on the occasions they are needed, instead of a long-term tutoring contract.

Hire a student or a less-qualified tutor:  If your child (or you, yourself) only need a little help with some basic skills, or a bit of extra practice, it may be fine to hire, for a lower rate, an older student or a neighbour with a bit more experience than you have, or even a friend of your child’s who is doing very well in the subject. If you have a reliable babysitter who you feel might be qualified for the needs you have, ask if they would be willing to do some tutoring for a little extra pay. Try a few lessons, and see how it goes.  If you are satisfied with the progress made, great.  If the progress is not what you would wish, you may then want to consider a more qualified tutor.

Decide not to hire a (paid) tutor:  You may decide, of course, that you will not hire a tutor, after all.  You may decide to help your child yourself, or perhaps you have relatives (like grandparents) or friends who are willing to help.  There are also other alternatives:  the child’s teacher may be willing to offer extra help before or after school or at lunch time; the school may have a peer-tutoring program; a community center or a local church may offer a free or very low-cost homework assistance program; and of course there are now many computer-based learning programs.  Some of them are free on-line; others you can borrow from your public or school library; or you can purchase a program.  You will certainly want to check out reviews of the various programs available before choosing. 

But do realize that sometimes a student really does have serious learning needs that require the expertise and experience of a well-qualified tutor.  If at all possible, in those cases, you will want to find a way to engage the services of a tutor who can provide the help the student needs before the problem grows even more serious. 

There are usually several tutors in any community; so check around.  You will most likely be able to find one who can help you with your learning needs, at a rate you can afford, or with a option you can handle.

Be sure to check out the other posts in this series!

Penticton tutor: If you live in the Penticton area, and are looking for a tutor, be sure to check out my Penticton tutor information page!

This is part 3 in the series: Questions About Tutoring Costs

Why would you want to hire a qualified tutor at a higher hourly rate, when you know you can hire a less qualified teacher for less?  Here are some reasons:

Expertise:  A qualified tutor can likely provide as much or more help in a couple sessions, as a less qualified tutor might provide in several sessions.  The tutor will know of special ways to help out with special needs of an individual student.  The qualified tutor has invested a great deal of personal time, and money, into preparing for tutoring; and your cost of tutoring, as well as the positive results of the tutoring, reflects that.

Planning, follow-up, and interaction with learning team:  A tutor is not being paid simply for the half-hour or hour of the tutoring session.  The tutor also will often spend significant amounts of time planning for the special, individualized needs of the particular student, doing extra research, finding or creating individualized tutoring materials, and often contacting other members of the student’s learning team to insure that a coordinated over-all learning plan is in place.  The tutor, after each lesson, will spend time reflecting on the session, to determine exactly what help is needed in future lessons, and in what areas the student has succeeded.  The tutor will also report to you on the student’s progress.  You may, in fact, be paying for at least 2 or 3 hours of the tutor’s time with your one-hour fee!

On-on-one learning: In an average classroom, the teacher is dealing with 20 to 30 or more students, all at once.  Often without a teacher-aide, the teacher must not only teach all the students at once, but must deal with all manner of adminstrative items during class time such as taking attendance, keeping track of students who leave the classroom for various reasons, and of course, dealing with a variety of behavioural problems.  In many cases, there are children at all levels of academic success, or difficulties, and often a number with special needs.  The teacher must deal with all of them. 

Unfortunately, in an average classroom hour, there may be only a few minutes of really fruitful learning time, shared by the students together, and even then, children who are ahead of, or behind, the other students, often end up “falling through the cracks.”  One cannot usually blame the teacher for these situations; they are simply the nature of dealing with large numbers of students at one time. 

A tutor, on the other hand, works intensively, focused one-on-one with a student and his or her particular needs.  In an hour of tutoring, a child may learn as much or more than in a full day or even a week or more at school.  If the child has indeed been “falling through the cracks” at school, the tutoring time is that much more valuable.

In the home-school situation, similar issues may arise as in the classroom, especially if there are several children in the family, a certain child has particular needs, and perhaps the parent does not have the necessary background to help with those needs.  An hour with a tutor once or twice a week could make a tremendous difference to a child, not to mention that the parent can use that time to focus on one or more of the other children in the family – and/or the parent might decide to get some tutoring him/herself, in order to more effectively teach the child.

Learn basic/needed skills now; use them over and over down the line: Another great value of a qualified tutor is to help a student fill in gaps in their learning, or to understand a concept with which they have been having difficulty.  By waiting, the problem could soon “snowball,” and the problem become much more complex, take longer to solve – and cost much more than if a qualified tutor had been engaged to help the student with the difficulty while it was still reasonably simple to solve.

Be sure to check out the other posts in this series!

Penticton tutor: If you live in the Penticton area, and are looking for a tutor, be sure to check out my Penticton tutor information page!

This is part 2 in the series:  Questions About Tutoring Costs. 

So why do qualified tutors charge as much as they do?  Here are some important reasons you may not be aware of:

Education and experience:  Qualified tutors often have many years of experience, as well as years of University education in the particular subject(s) they tutor.

Time investment:  A quality tutor will spend a significant amount of time outside the actual session time preparing for the sessions, and gathering and preparing materials.  (More on this in the next post).

Inexpensive compared to what teachers earn per hour:  If you consider the average pay of a comparably educated and experienced public or private school teacher, you will discover that the tutor’s hourly rate is actually considerably less, in many circumstances. Again, just like the school teacher, the tutor’s pay includes the preparation and reporting that a school teacher does.

Business overhead: Potential tutoring clients are often unaware that a tutor is running a business.  The tutor has overhead – costs of materials (books, computers, student materials, worksheets, etc), ongoing training (most tutors continue to upgrade their skills), and the costs of maintaining a quality tutoring environment in their home or office, or of alternatively traveling to the student’s home or other agreed-upon location.  Naturally, the costs of a business are reflected to some degree in the cost of the service or product.  The tutor is also paying for insurance, accounting services at tax time, and other business costs.

Some tutors, it is true, work for a tutoring company, and do not personally have overhead costs, other than going to and from work, and other minor costs.  However, the company certainly has costs, and the hourly rate the client pays goes to cover those costs, as well as the tutor’s hourly pay, and that of the company manager, secretary and other personnel.  Often, it costs considerably more to hire a tutor through a tutoring company, as the company is out to make a profit, too! 

Be sure to check out the other posts in this series.

Penticton tutor: If you live in the Penticton area, and are looking for a tutor, be sure to check out my Penticton tutor information page!

Why do tutors charge so much?  Lately I have had some inquiries about my tutoring services, and in some cases, my rate (which is actually very reasonable compared to many tutors) has put the potential clients off. 

While I understand that many folks really are in a financial pinch, especially in the current economy, and while I have made alternative offers (group rate, barter, teach the parent in a few lessons how to tutor their own child longer-term, even a more affordable rate due to their situation), I sense that there are those who simply feel that tutors should not charge more than minimum wage. 

Perhaps they feel that a tutor must be someone who “can’t get a real job.” Or perhaps they feel that tutoring is an “easy job,” similar to “baby sitting” (as though that is an easy job, itself ).  Perhaps they work hard at a low-paying job, and feel a tutor should not be charging more per hour than they earn themselves.  Perhaps they feel they can get a teenager or less-qualified tutor for a much more reasonable rate.  Whatever the reason, they decide to look elsewhere, or to forego tutoring.

So in the following posts in this series I will discuss some of the reasons qualified tutors charge the rates they do (generally between $20 to $40 – and as much as $60 to $70) per hour; and the benefits of choosing a more qualified tutor over a less-qualified one.  I will also discuss options in tutoring rates, other tutoring solutions, as well as touching upon the consequences of deciding not to hire a tutor when the student’s need is obvious. 

Be sure to read the next three posts:
Why do qualified tutors charge as much as they do?
Why is it worth while to hire a qualified tutor?
Alteratives to hiring a tutor at the usual rate

Penticton tutor: If you live in the Penticton area, and are looking for a tutor, be sure to check out my Penticton tutor information page!

This is post #3 in the series: Tutoring adult learners

Tutoring sessions with adult students:

The tutor is your collaborator, mentor, and guide: Adults do not want to be treated like children.  They have had many life experiences in which they have been respected,  responsible, independent, self-motivated decision makers.  A tutor must relate to them as the adult peers they are.  Adults learners often do better in job/career style settings that make them feel like they are working together, rather than being “taught.”  the tutor is a collaborator, mentor, and manager/guide for the adult student’s learning.  The tutor wants to assist the student to take on an increasingly personal active role in developing their own skills, solving their own problems, and furthering their own learning.

Small group tutoring may work well:  As adults are often accustomed to working as part of a team, a tutor may who has 2 or more students with a particular need/goal may suggest that they do group tutoring sessions, at least part of the time.  As adult learners often learn better through discussion and a team approach, the students may in some cases actually learn better in a group, with the tutor as facilitator, than in one-to-one tutoring.

Identifying needs:  If the adult learner is taking a class related to the tutoring, the tutor will ask how the course is going – tests, new concepts, assignments.  They will ask the learner what he/she specifically wants to cover in this session – a particular concept, certain knowledge, test preparation, help with a particular assignment, and so on.  While the tutor will have material prepared, there will be opportunity for the adult student to identify particular needs.  The tutor will help the student with those needs, and try to discern if there are underlying concepts or skills which first/also need to be worked on in order to succeed with the needs the student identifies.  The tutor may also do a quick review with the student to reinforce what the student already knows before going on to the new material.

Breaking big ideas into steps:  Often, a student is overwhelmed with “big ideas,” especially in college level courses.  The tutor will help the student break complex ideas into understandable and manageable steps in a process, or into inter-related parts of an idea.

Working through a problem:  If the student is having great difficulty with a particular process, for example, an algebra problem, the tutor may do one or two examples first, explaining each step.  Then the tutor may present two similar problems, and tutor and student will work through them side-by-side, step-by-step.  The the student will attempt a similar problem on his own.  Finally, the tutor may ask the student to verbally explain the completed problem to the tutor (back-teaching).

Help student personally solve the problem:  In working with adult students, tutors will focus more on asking questions that help the students think through the problem themselves, than on simply presenting information.  If the tutor is working with a small group of students, he/she will encourage them to work out the problem together, with the tutor acting as a reference and facilitator as needed.

Thinking and analysis skills:  The tutor will often sit back and quietly wait while the student works through a concept.  Thinking and analysis is a very important learning skill/habit, and tutors will model and encourage the development of this skill. 

Learning styles, approaches, methods:  The tutor will try a variety of learning approaches and methods  to find what will best help a student with a particular learning problem.  The tutor will be watching to see what the student’s favored learning styles are, and use them to help the student, while also helping the student develop other learning styles as well. 

While an adult is not a child, adults still often learn well with methods that are sometimes “playful” (learning games, for example), or are entertaining or otherwise appealing to the student.  Visuals, graphs, analogies and anecdotes, mnemonic devices, hands-on/kinesthetic, listening and verbally responding, and many other learning activities work well for adults just as they do for children.  While university classes often focus on the “lecture” approach, it certainly isn’t optimal for all adults; it is not a matter of “maturity” but much more of learning styles and life experiences.

Challenged and moving forward:  If the adult student shows they have understood a concept, the tutor will move them on to a higher level.  The tutor does not want to waste the student’s time, and also wants to keep the student challenged and moving forward.

Re-teaching and summarizing:  At the end of a session, a tutor will ask the student to summarize (and/or quickly re-teach) what he/she has just learned.  This helps the student review and remember, shows the tutor what may need to be covered in more detail next time, and instills a sense of accomplishment in the student. 

Goal setting and planning:  Then the tutor will talk with the adult student about the next session, setting some goals and plans; and the tutor and student will also agree together on some learning activities (preferably including practical, real-life applications) the student can engage in between sessions to reinforce and apply the learning.

The tutor will also give the student an opportunity to share their reactions and feelings about the tutoring session, what worked for them and what didn’t, and what they’d like to see in coming sessions.  Again, the situation is two (or more) adults working together as a team, rather than a top-down process.

Series: We hope you will enjoy this series, “Tutoring adult learners.” Be sure to check out the rest of the series.

Penticton tutor: If you live in the Penticton area, and are looking for a tutor, be sure to check out my Penticton tutor information page!

This is post #2 in the series: Tutoring adult learners

How tutors prepare to help adult learners:

Getting to know the adult learner:  In order to plan well, to make the adult student comfortable in the tutoring situation, and to reach out to the adult student as adults learning together, the tutor will often spend some time getting to know the adult student.  The tutor will ask about the student’s current life (job, family, interests) and educational background.  If the student is currently in an educational program or course, the tutor will ask about how that is going.  The student should not feel obliged to answer questions that he is uncomfortable with, but at the same time, this kind of information can help the tutor narrow in on the student’s specific needs, and how the tutor can best help.

The tutor may also share some of his/her own relevant life and educational experiences, especially if both tutor and student have had common career experiences or perhaps have attended the same schools/colleges, taken the same courses, or know people in common. 

Find out about the course the learner is taking:  If the adult learner is currently taking a course of studies, is having difficulty, and is therefore seeking tutoring, the tutor will likely ask questions like why the student is taking the course, why they chose it instead of another course, what their goals are with the course itself and with the program in general, what it is about the course that is giving the student difficulty (for example, lack of background knowledge, lack of skills such as computer skills, difficulty with tests or writing term papers, lack of personal language skills in the language of the course presentation,  or even personality conflict with the professor, or inability to understand the teacher’s accent or the technical language they use).

Find out about the learner’s past learning experiences:  The tutor will try to find out about the student’s learning strengths and weaknesses, learning styles, and aspects of their life that affect their ability to learn.  They will ask about what learning activities and methods worked best for them in their past schooling, and what kind of problem-solving and decision-making methods they most often use on the job and in their other life activities.

Identify obstacles to learning development:  The tutor will also try to identify the obstacles to the student’s learning development in the area which the tutoring seeks to address.  The obstacles may be, for example, a lack of basic concepts or skills related to that particular subject.  But the obstacles may also be difficulties that are affecting all areas of the student’s learning, and even other areas of life.  The tutor will ask questions, review samples of the student’s school/college work (or examples from the job/career), and may even (with the adult student’s permission, of course) interview a professor, employer, family member or other adult who knows the student well. 

Recommend help from another professional:  The tutor will of course try to help the student fill in gaps in their past learning, or develop new learning styles and skills, but the tutor may also recommend that the student get help from another professional who can provide more help than the tutor can offer – perhaps an LD (learning disability) specialist, a psychologist or religious counselor, an ESL specialist, a subject area expert, a medical professional, or whatever the need might be.

Recommend help from a tutor who specializes in a particular area:  While children’s tutors can often be educational generalists (unless the young student has learning obstacles such as learning disabilities, or physical/ mental/ emotional health issues), at the adult level students often need to seek out tutors who have specialized knowledge, education, and experience in the particular subject area.  They should have training and experience in the subject area itself, as well as knowledge of learning processes (training as teacher/tutors, not just subject specialists), and of course knowledge of particular learning obstacles, if those are involved.   If the tutor feels he/she is not able to help the adult learner adequately, a referral to a specialist tutor may be made.

Series: We hope you will enjoy this series, “Tutoring adult learners.” Be sure to check out the rest of the series.

Penticton tutor: If you live in the Penticton area, and are looking for a tutor, be sure to check out my Penticton tutor information page!

This is post #1 in the series:  Tutoring adult learners

This series includes the following three posts:

1. Characteristics of adult learners (this post)
2. How tutors prepare to help adult learners
3. Tutoring sessions with adult learners

Characteristics of adult learners:

There are no “typical” adult learners.  Being human, they carry all the complexity of the human condition.  Each individual is a unique combination of age, and of cultural, religious, economic and educational backgrounds.  Some will have had more difficult upbringings and/or adult life than others, but all have had both positive and negative experiences.  Every adult has some area of their life in which they want to improve – and sometimes they will turn to a tutor to get the help they need.  Just as children need individualized tutoring, so do adults.

Learning styles, educational backgrounds, and learning behaviours: Just as children have different learning styles, backgrounds, and behaviours, so do adults.  If they have missed out on educational assistance when they were younger, because of lack of access to suitable help, or learning disabilities, or other situations, adults may need even more focused help than children.  Over time, they may have become discouraged, or have developed coping behaviours that make academic learning even more difficult.  The tutor will seek to understand where the adult learner is coming from, and to integrate that understanding into the tutoring.

Habituated learning, yet complex reasoning:  Over time, our personalities, interests, attitudes and habits tend to solidify, and we find it harder to change.  For older adults, it simply takes longer, and more effort, to do certain learning activities such as memorization.  On the other hand, adults have a rich background of life experiences, and can easily make all kinds of connections and reason in more complex ways than children, who tend to think in more concrete ways.  Younger people often think of issues in more “black and white” terms, while older people often see many “shades of grey” in issues.  This may result in adult tutoring including more questioning and discussion, besides the straight acquisition of skills and knowledge.

Integrating old skills and new, and loving learning:  Adults who are struggling academically or with a variety of literacy issues often are very intelligent.  They may have found ways to “work around” their lack of traditional learning skills, and be very successful in business, home life, and community life.   But at some point they may realize a need to pick up learning skills, or literacy basics, that they missed out on previously.  The tutor will seek to integrate the adult learner’s present learning skills into the tutoring program, and at the same time help the adult learner to acquire useful new skills they can use in their learning, both presently and in the future.  An over-arching goal of a good tutor, for learners of all ages, is to help learners be able to learn in many ways, and to love learning in all aspects of life.

Focused purpose and motivation: While children tend to love to learn generally, and are excited to learn whatever they can, many adults feel that once they “completed their education” (or had to “drop out”) that their learning days were over.  Then something happens in their life where they find they have to start learning again. They may actually feel resentful – or they may be excited to have the chance to “learn again.”  Either way, they often come “back to learning” with a much more focused purpose in mind – perhaps to get a particular job, or take a certain post-secondary course, or to pursue a personal interest.  While this provides adults with strong motivation to learn a particular skill or topic, they often need to be encouraged to see a “return to learning” as an opportunity, to be assured that they really have been learning all along in a variety of ways, and to embrace learning as a lifestyle.

Failures and successes:  Because of their longer lifetimes, adults will often have experienced more failures that children.  But at the same time they will have also experienced successes in various parts of their lives.  If an adult is very discouraged and sees little hope in pursuing learning at this point in life, it is helpful to guide that person to look back and see where they have had success and the areas in which they are talented.  Although their successes and talents may seem far removed from their educational goals, our lives are actually very integrated, and adult students can be encouraged to use the motivation, creativity, flexibility, work ethic, and other skills in their areas of success, to gain proficiency in the area in which they are seeking tutoring.

Hesitancy and fear:  The older people are, the more likely they are to be embarrassed by what they perceive as their “short-comings.”  They may be hesitant to admit their need for tutoring, in case other people find out.  A successful business person, for example, who actually has minimal reading skills, may fear that if she takes a literacy course, she will be scorned by the business community and her clients, and may even lose her position, or that her business may fail.  The tutor wants to encourage the student and help them see their learning as a positive experience and opportunity for all concerned.

Complex lives and responsibilities:  Adults often have complicated lives, with many varied responsibilities and experiences – careers (or very often, career/job losses), involvement in organizations and religious groups, family responsibilities (many mid-age adults today are part of the “sandwich generation,” caring for both children and aging parents; other adults are single parents, or are trying to hold together “blended families,” for example), health issues (their own, and those of family members), economic issues, cultural issues arising from our very multi-cultural society, and many more issues, negative and positive both. 
     Being so busy, with so many issues, adults can become distracted, and may even have difficulty attending tutoring lessons on a regular basis. Also, because of their complex lives, adults may be anxious to get the learning done quickly, and may feel impatient when the tutor requires them to spend time on things that seem “childish” to them – even when they are assured that they need certain basic skills and knowledge.

Cultural and other issues:  Many adults who come for tutoring have grown up in other nations and/or other cultures.  Our western educational system and world-view can be very strange and even disturbing for them.  Many immigrants have come from war-torn countries where they had no opportunity for formal education, and may have experienced things that most of us cannot imagine.  Others may have grown up here in our own country, and still have faced great cultural differences, as well as having had very traumatic life experiences.  Other adults may have severe learning disabilities that were either never recognized, or else did not receive the help they should have.  Whatever the situation, tutors may sometimes have to refer their students to professionals who can help them with issues in their lives which may well be obstructing their ability to learn successfully in the area of skills or knowledge they wish to pursue.

Adult learners have often been out of school for some time, even decades.  They may have had difficulties in school when they -were young, but even if they did well, may wonder if they can still successfully deal with formal tests, or if they can learn well enough to succeed.   They may have complex issues and responsibilities in their lives.  Adult learners also learn in some different ways than children.  A tutor seeks to be aware of the experiences, expectations, and concerns of the adult student, and take those into account when planning and tutoring.

Series:  We hope you will enjoy this series, “Tutoring adult learners.”  Be sure to come back for the rest of the series; the rest of the posts are listed and linked to at the start of this post.

Penticton tutor: If you live in the Penticton area, and are looking for a tutor, be sure to check out my Penticton tutor information page!

This is part 5 of the five-part series: How tutors plan individualized programs for their students

Part 5:  Student progress and learning support

Monitoring student progress:

Tutors monitor student progress, and communicate it frequently.  They take notes and keep records of the tutoring sessions, and many tutors also make contact with the student’s classroom teacher, or at least ask the student to bring along samples of school work to the tutoring sessions.  They also talk to the student and his/her parents about their learning problems and successes, and together  set goals.  This gives the tutor an overview of all the student’s learning needs, so the tutor can plan wisely.

The tutor will likely give small evaluations during the tutoring sessions.  Often these will be enjoyable activities that the student does not see as “tests” but that give the tutor much useful information and ideas for future planning.  This might include reading aloud, discussions on a topic, worksheets, drawings, use of a computer or table game, and many other activities.  The tutor may also give short quizzes, assign short essay questions, or have the student take practice tests similar to the tests he/she will face in the classroom.  Then the tutor will go over the evaluations with the student, praise the student for successful responses, and help them with problem areas.

The tutor will provide or recommend resources that could be helpful to the student outside of tutoring session times.  These could be activities, books and other written materials, videos, worksheets, suggested family activities that will support the student’s learning, or many other things.  The tutor may also assign homework assignments, or practice activities directly related to the subject under study.  The student will of course bring the completed work to the next session, and the tutor and student will go over it together, discussing the student’s learning experiences and doing further study on areas of difficulty.

 
Useful handouts and other materials:

Tutors often create (or locate) useful handouts and other support materials on topics their students need assistance with.  They provide these handouts to the student (and parents) as the student requires them.  These handouts may cover topics such as home study tips, arithmetic facts charts, phonics charts, how-to outlines on topics like writing an essay, and other useful reference sheets.  A tutor who has been tutoring and/or teaching for a long period of time will likely have a collection of useful materials ready to be handed out whenever needed, but will also create (or find) new materials. The tutor also keeps copies of these documents on their computer so that they can individualize them to a student’s special needs.  Good tutors are always on the lookout for, or are themselves creating, useful support materials for their students.

We hope you have enjoyed this series, “How tutors plan individualized programs for their students.“  If you have missed any of the five parts of this series, be sure to check out the entire list here.

Penticton tutor: If you live in the Penticton area, and are looking for a tutor, be sure to check out my Penticton tutor information page!

This is part 4 of the five-part series: How tutors plan individualized programs for their students

Part 4: Learning styles, behaviours and tutoring methods

Student learning styles and behaviors:

• Learning styles are the ways we take in, process, and organize information.  Each of us does these things in very individual ways.  Some learn more easily by looking (visual: reading, looking at charts, etc), some by listening and speaking (auditory), and some in hands-on ways (tactual/kinesthetic).  Some learn better in a group, while others learn better alone.  Some learn especially well in very particular ways, such as through music or art.
• Learning behaviours are the habits we have in relation to learning.  Some people have developed good self-motivation, while others are very dependent on having someone tell them what to do next.  Some are very self-organized and can plan well, while others have not developed these skills.
• As the tutor observes the student’s learning styles and behaviors, he/she will emphasize learning methods in the tutoring that best match the student’s strongest learning styles.  At the same time, the tutor will also help the student to learn in other ways, so that the student can learn successfully in a variety of situations. 
• The tutor will also model (teach, but also show through his/her own example) positive learning behaviours such as how to personally plan and monitor one’s own learning, good use of time and materials, and sticking with one’s learning until the goals are reached.
• And the tutor will encourage the student to back-teach: that is, to put to use the learning styles and learning behaviors the student has been learning by teaching others.  The student may be asked to “teach the tutor” information he or she has just learned, or to go home and teach a younger sibling perhaps, using these styles and behaviors.  The tutor will also encourage the use of the new learning and behaviors in a variety of real-life situations.

A variety of learning methods:

• A good tutor will use a wide variety of teaching methods. These methods will reflect the student’s own learning styles, but will also introduce new ways of learning to the student.  The more ways a student learns a particular lesson, and puts it into practice, the more likely the student will retain the information and be able to apply it in practical ways.  A tutor will teach through speaking to the student, listening to the student, body-language, written material, use of a variety of forms of media (books, pictures, video, computer, music, etc), student writing/ drawing/ hands-on experimentation, physical activities, and much more.
• As the tutor and student interact, the tutor will observe the student’s actions and reactions, ask if the student understands, have the student back-teach or do another feedback activity/ application that demonstrates successful learning, maintain good eye contact, and so on.  There may be times when the tutor takes the student on a “field-trip” to experience the learning in a “real” situation, or recommends a “put it into practice experience” for the student to do with family or others.
• The tutor will seek to understand the student’s perspective.  He/she will use analogies related to the student’s own life and experiences, so the topic is easier for the student to understand.  The tutor will encourage the student to be involved in his/her own goal-setting, and learning.

Be sure to read the other posts in this series: How tutors plan individualized programs for their students.

Penticton tutor: If you live in the Penticton area, and are looking for a tutor, be sure to check out my Penticton tutor information page.

This is part 3 of the five-part series:  How tutors plan individualized programs for their students.

Part 3:  Individualized tutoring sessions

Getting to know each other:

The first tutoring session may involve mostly a “get-to-know-each-other” time.  The tutor will introduce him/herself.  Then the tutor will chat with the student, listening to the responses, and observing the student’s body language and other behaviours.  The tutor may have the student do a variety of short exercises to determine learning levels and needs.   The tutor’s goal is to find out the student’s likes and dislikes, personality, learning styles, and strengths and weaknesses.  The tutor seeks to build trust, and a rapport in which the student will feel safe to give more than just “yes” or “no” answers. 

Starting off easy:

The tutor will start the lessons at a level at which the student is comfortable and successful.  This may concern the parent who has perhaps provided a book they want the student to read with the tutor, or a math textbook at a certain level that they think the student should be able to do.  The tutor may instead start with something more basic, and then work up through the levels, helping the student to build self-confidence and motivation.  At the same time, starting at an easier level helps the tutor spot any basic concepts the student struggles with, and those missing concepts can be addressed.  It is quite amazing how one simple concept that has been missed earlier in a student’s learning can have a huge cascading effect on all further learning in that subject.  So the tutor will be looking for those “gaps” and deal with them.

Constant monitoring:

As the tutoring sessions progress, the tutor will be constantly monitoring the student’s progress and understanding of the topic and the skills necessary to learn, succeed with, and apply the subject.  Learning is not just a bunch of facts to memorize; it involves many underlying skills, and is only worthwhile if the student can see, and participate in, “real life” activities that make use of the subject matter.

The tutor may also have the student “back-teach,” demonstrating the newly learned material by teaching/demonstrating it to the tutor right in the tutoring sessions (and through homework lessons, family activities, teaching younger siblings, etc).  Again, the parent may wonder if this is a waste of time, and think the tutor should be doing all the teaching, and earning his/her pay!  But the fact is that one of the most effective and efficient ways to truly learn is to immediately teach others.  It is also an excellent way for the tutor to determine if the learning goals are actually being achieved. 

Along the same line, the tutor will likely ask the student to explain and/or demonstrate what he/she already knows about the “next step” in the tutoring plan.  If the student shows mastery, the tutor and student can move on to yet a higher level, rather than boring the student with something they already know and find easy.

Student involvement:

Good tutoring sessions involve the student as much, if not more, than the tutor.  A parent observing a tutoring session may wish the tutor would just “teach the student” – but true education is learning – and learning is behavior, that is, ACTION, on the part of the learner.  The more the student is involved in the learning activity, with the tutor there as more of a guide or facilitator or mentor (rather than a teacher/lecturer), the more likely the student’s motivation and interest in the subject will increase, and the more he/she will learn – and apply that learning.  This is one of the great advantages of one-on-one tutoring over classroom educational methods! 

A good tutor will use creative and imaginative methods, motivating and involving the student.  This also encourages the student to use his or her own creativity, imagination, reasoning, and other intellectual powers, to become a life-long self-learner, and teacher of others.  This is always the ultimate goal of true education.

A variety of learning activities:

The tutoring sessions will also almost always involve a variety of learning activities.  A lesson on arithmetic, for example, will not just include the tutor “teaching” a concept from a textbook or on the blackboard, and the child practicing it on a worksheet or in a notebook.  During the lesson, the child might use “hands-on” learning tools, like counting real objects, using numbers on a ruler to add or subtract, finger-counting, and so on.  The lesson might also include a card game or a game like snakes-and-ladders that involves using numbers; or an interesting conversation about real activities in the child’s life that involve arithmetic (shopping, baking, and so on).  If the arithmetic lesson involves geometry, the child might design and build a lego item. 

And if the lesson is a full hour or more, and especially if the child is younger, or is obviously becoming fidgety, the tutor may well call a time-out, in which the student can get a drink, take a short walk, play an active game, chat about any topic of the student’s choice, or simply sit back and relax.  Five minutes of “brain break” and “body activity” will ensure that the child will learn twice as much in the next half hour of learning time!

Other aspects of individualized tutoring sessions may include giving supportive and constructive feedback, encouraging a deeper understanding of the subject, correcting misunderstandings from previous learning, practice of weaker skills, and lighter moments of laughter and fun.

At the end of the lesson:

At the end of a session the tutor will not only give the student a homework assignment, but will ask the student what he/she has learned in this lesson, if and why they think it is important to them, any questions they still have or things they still don’t understand, and anything they’d like to focus on in upcoming sessions.

Be sure to read the other posts in this series: http://penandpapermama.com/2011/10/22/how-tutors-plan-individualized-programs-for-their-students/

Penticton tutor: If you live in the Penticton area, and are looking for a tutor, be sure to check out my Penticton tutor information page.