22nd April 2010 9:00
By Blue Tutors
This might sound strange. What does tutoring have to do with stamina? Obviously we’re not talking about the stamina needed to run a marathon, although physical stamina is a part of this quality, it’s probably mainly mental stamina though.
Many new tutors are keen to tutor as much as possible, and want to do it full-time. While this shows a real interest in one-to-one tuition, and is very pleasing, it brings up an important issue, something which some tutors might never experience if they don’t tutor a lot of students. The issue is how a tutor’s teaching ability declines over a period of extended tuition.
Everyone who tutors knows how intense an activity can be, both for the student, and the tutor. Maintaining the engagement required to tutor takes a real mental effort; you have to be aware of to what extent the student has understood something, whilst continuing the social relationship with the student. Obviously these skills aren’t mutually exclusive; the student will be speaking to you to explain their understanding, but the skills do require different thought processes, and can take a lot of effort.
You might be reading this and thinking ‘I’ve never experienced this kind of mental exhaustion in a lesson’, and if you haven’t then that’s great. However, it is a very common thing, and if you’re able to tutor for more than five hours in one day without finding that there is a drop in your teaching ability then you’re doing very well. Most tutors find that after 3-4 hours of lessons they need a break before tutoring again.
There are lots of things you can do which will allow you to tutor for longer: the right amount of sleep, a healthy diet, a stress-free life, regular short breaks while you’re tutoring; all the things we’d advise a student to do when studying. The best thing to do, if you’re worried about becoming too tired to tutor, is too start slowly, and not commit to tutoring for six hours a day until you’re certain that you can maintain that.