Tutoring can have a significant impact on a child’s education in ways that aren’t always noticeable. Noticeable benefits, such as improved grades and test scores, are well-known. Other benefits like enhanced attitude towards learning, self-confidence increase, and the forming of healthy habits aren’t as obvious. Here are five benefits your child receives when they get expert tutoring and its long-lasting impacts on their education journey.
Source: ELMENS
Contents
1. Provides One on One Learning
Becky Ward, Education Experience Specialist at Tutor Doctor, explains that in a traditional classroom, teachers are working to engage and teach multiple students simultaneously. This one to many approach makes it very difficult to individualize education and get to the heart of how each student learns. This means that students who are struggling, have special learning needs, or who would benefit from an additional educational challenge don’t always get the support they need. If you add in the fact that right now, the classroom setting looks different for every student with in-class, online, and hybrid learning models, it can be stressful to be a student right now.
One-to-one tutoring allows students to receive personalized support in specific subjects and review what is being taught over the school week to reinforce key concepts. A tutor will work with your student’s particular learning goals, needs, and style to create and deliver a tutoring program that works for them. Tutors also work to improve your child’s overall executive functioning skills – such as organization, time management, and task prioritization – which will set them up for success in school and beyond.
Adam Caller, independent educational consultant and founder of Tutors International, explains that a good tutor can easily sense when a student doesn’t completely understand or know a topic or skill when working one on one. They can polish this and fill in gaps until a student has complete mastery. And they can do practice tests until the student knows what to expect and how to answer the types of questions that they are likely to get we well as possible. In school, this transfers to being fully prepared, lowers anxiety, and increases confidence.
Source: Cluey Learning
2. Helps Children Move Forward
Alex Dyer, CEO & Founder of Tutor House, explains that many people use tutors for supplementation and out of school support, often though it’s not reinforcing past learning. Students may have misunderstood the topics in class, or a teacher may have been ill. Most people seek out extra support from tutors because they are lost or stuck. Chances are their teacher is dealing with 20+ other students and can’t give them the time they need to improve.
Some people see tutoring as a long term investment, not just a supplement. Some families whose children are at state school put aside a lot of money to ensure their children have ongoing support. Tutoring should be seen as a long term investment that helps children learn and improve but also focus on academic goals and build good learning habits.
Source: Understood.org
3. Improves Attitude Towards Learning
Ward also mentions that it’s no surprise that when students struggle in school, they begin to see learning as a negative experience. It can be difficult to find joy in something that you struggle with every day. This can lead students to feel unconfident, frustrated, overwhelmed, and stressed out. These feelings have only been compounded by the pandemic and changing school formats. Tutoring works to fill in the educational gaps that cause students to struggle and gives students a learning toolkit filled with strategies that meet their individual learning needs.
As the gaps are closed and students feel more prepared to tackle educational challenges, the negative feelings start to subside. The personal and supportive nature of the tutor/student relationship means that the student has not only an academic coach in their corner but also a confidence coach. A key part of a tutor’s role is creating a positive learning environment where a student feels safe, and mistakes are seen as learning opportunities. Through this environment, positive reinforcement and celebrating every success helps a students’ confidence soar. They feel proud of their efforts and accomplishments and begin to see that learning is fun. It also helps them understand they have what it takes to succeed.
Source: Inc. Magazine
4. Improves Self Confidence & Forms Positive Habits
You don’t get much confidence or motivation in a classroom with 25 other kids, Dyer explains. Tutoring allows both the tutor and student to focus on critical issues or problem areas. Once they have identified them, they can work as a team to overcome any difficulties and plan for the future. In a one-to-one tutoring session, children aren’t comparing themselves to others like they might in a busy classroom and can instead learn at their own pace. This builds children’s confidence, as they aren’t afraid to get it wrong and instead start to think for themselves and communicate their thoughts.
Tutoring introduces a reciprocal relationship between the tutor and student; they are working together, and this is where the sense of achievement and self-efficacy comes from. Kids and students want to learn, they just need the right teammate to help them. From here, positive habits are formed, like work ethic, homework completion, and independent learning. Children learn to be self-reliant, manage their time, and focus on personal improvement, which are essential life skills.
Source: ADDitude
5. No Learning Distractions
Callers also mention that tutoring tends to require periods of greater intensity of learning than a classroom setting. As a result, it is a much more productive use of time (if learning is seen as the measure of productivity). Compare a one-hour classroom lesson with an hour of individual tutoring. In the classroom, there are distractions from others. The teacher may need to explain things more than once and then ’trouble-shoot’ issues that arise with students.
These interruptions punctuate a classroom lesson in a way that does not happen as much with individual tutoring. Students being tutored require longer attention-spans, more extended periods of concentration, and a higher concentration level because the tutor can immediately tell if their student is disengaging.
