How To Be A Good Tutor: 5 Essential Skills You Need
Teaching is a rewarding and fulfilling job because it allows you to broaden another person’s knowledge and encourage them to succeed academically and professionally.
Tutors often work with students that need extra support outside of the classroom. It could be because the individual has special needs or might be behind in their work due to ill health. It’s a tutors job to help learners of all ages develop and succeed, so while it’s an enriching career, you need special skills to become an effective educator.
This post will reveal five ways to be a good tutor. Whether you’re interested in exploring a new career or would like to help your child with their education, these tips will ensure you know how to support, encourage and motivate a student.
What Does a Tutor Do?
A tutor helps students develop the skills, tools and lesson plans they need to succeed both academically and personally. While teachers are responsible for delivering a classroom-based education under the approved national curriculum, tutors offer extra support for learners of all ages.
For example, if a young person struggles with Science at school, a tutor will provide support either in the home or over the internet. This enables the student to receive more intensive support, which isn’t always possible in the traditional schooling environment.
Tutors also help students with their personal development outside of school, which might be helping people to become motivated learners, increase their confidence and set goals.
In some cases, parents might decide to homeschool their children, making them tutors. Balancing raising your child with educating them isn’t easy, but knowing which skills are vital to succeed as a tutor can help you decide whether it’s right for you.
How to Be a Good Tutor
You’ll need many skills to be an effective tutor, including the right mindset, subject knowledge, and a dedication to helping people of all ages succeed with their studies.
Let’s take a look at each skill in more detail.
The Right Mindset
A good tutor has the mindset to help others learn and believe that they can make a difference. It goes beyond explaining concepts well and understanding a subject area because a passion for teaching others is essential.
While many students are keen to learn, some might act out because they have low confidence, and it’s your job to show them that you genuinely want to teach them and treat each learner with patience and compassion.
Empathy and dedication are also important because you can’t predict how quickly a student will learn. Each person has unique abilities, and recognising how to bring the best out in each learner is essential.
Ultimately, tutoring is a vocation, so if you’re not genuinely passionate about helping others, you might be best considering a new career or hiring a tutor for your child.
Excellent Communication Skills
Communication is a valuable skill for anyone to have, but for tutors, it’s essential. Good communication ensures you can engage with your students and make them feel involved in their learning.
When you know how to communicate with your students, you can help them become more confident and identify what might be holding them back from achieving academic and personal goals.
As tutors often have to talk about a student’s progress with the parents and school teachers, knowing how to approach a difficult conversation can be valuable when discussing any potential issues that might be holding your student back.
Adaptability
Tutors have to have a wide range of skills that allow them to adapt to a student’s learning style. We all learn in different ways, and while some people take in information by reading and listening, others might need a more practical approach.
Adapting to your students’ needs is essential because it defines their learning experience. For example, you could have a student that struggles with maths, and your job will be to identify their learning style and adapt your lesson delivery to meet their needs.
The great thing about this is that no day is ever really the same for a tutor, and it can be a rewarding job full of surprises.
Good Listener
While many people believe that teachers need to be great at talking and explaining things, they often forget that teachers should be excellent listeners. Students might not always understand a particular theory or concept, and they need to know you’ll listen to them.
People of all ages need to feel as if someone is listening to their concerns, and as human beings, we often shut down around disinterested people. By showing your students that you value their thoughts and listening to them, you can make a big difference in their lives and become a more effective teacher.
Maintains Boundaries At All Times
There’s a fine line between being an effective tutor and a friend, and knowing where that line is can save you from a lot of problems. Some students might have issues that have prevented them from learning effectively, and while you need to support them, it’s essential to set boundaries in place.
Parents and legal guardians are the people who need to offer emotional support and friendship to a child, and it isn’t helpful to confuse a child with the nature of your relationship. Older students are slightly different, but it’s still best to maintain a professional relationship at all times.
The Bottom Line
For many tutors, it’s an incredibly rewarding job that allows them to work flexibly or remotely, but teaching others requires a lot of commitment and patience. At Fleet Tutors, we support learners of all ages with the core subjects, including English, Maths, Science and languages following the national curriculum.
Many parents come to us for personal tutors because they find it challenging to teach their children and maintain a strong relationship. If you’d like to learn more about our services and the strict tutor onboarding process we consistently uphold, please feel free to contact us for more information.