11th February 2010 9:00
By Blue Tutors
Reliability is a more practical quality of tutoring, but is also a vitally important one. It’s a real shame when a student requests another tutor, and says that their current tutor is a great teacher, and has all the qualities that the student was looking for, but unfortunately they’re regularly late, or even miss some lessons.
The first thing a tutor should realise, before embarking on teaching a student, is that the student needs commitment. Obviously from the tutor’s point of view, the reward received from every lesson is the same, but the student is usually looking for someone to take them through a course of lessons, and if that not what the tutor is offering, then the student will probably not want to start lessons with the tutor.
As tutors we need to make a commitment to students, and consider their goals, and their time to be as important as ours. If we have busy lives, then that’s not a reason to constantly rearrange and/or miss lessons, it’s a reason to not tutor anyone. Students generally appreciate regular lessons, at the same time every week, where they’re sure that their tutor will be there on time, and ready to teach.