10th March 2011 9:00
By Blue Tutors
Many long-standing Blue Tutors will know that we deliberately don’t try to enforce a lesson structure or a lesson style. This is particularly important to communicate to our students, because there is often some uncertainty about what should happen before their first lesson, and whether they need to do anything to prepare.
Obviously we could easily send students something which would explain exactly what will happen in their first lesson, and subsequent lessons, but that would hinder the beauty of tuition. Since a tutor can tailor a lesson perfectly to a student’s needs, it would be foolish for us to create a more general, less bespoke structure, which wouldn’t be nearly as effective for the student.
The advice we do give to students is to prepare for their first lesson. It’s a great idea for a student to gather all of their work/exam results/text books, so that the tutor can get an overview of the student’s studies very quickly. Our tutors are very good at quickly identifying the areas where there is most room for improvement, and, particularly when there is a short time before an exam, a tutor needs to find the root of any problems immediately.
Students (or their parents) will expect their new tutor to take charge of the situation to some extent. Some students will be quite adamant about what they want, and when they want it, but there is no harm in the tutor being very clear about what should happen next. The tutor should suggest a number of times for a first lesson, and explain to the student what they should bring to that first lesson. The problem when a tutor lets a student plan everything, is that the tutor ends up not being able to meet the commitments that the student has forced them into, and/or the tutor doesn’t discover enough about the student in the first lesson.
We always suggest an initial introductory meeting. Generally this will only last 10-15 minutes, so is a much easier thing for both tutor and student to fit into their respective schedules, and the meeting also gives both parties a chance to agree upon things that are more difficult to decide on the phone. The first proper lesson is almost always more successful when there has been an introductory meeting.