13th July 2012 12:55
By Blue Tutors
Protect yourself from criticism and motivate your students.
Just yesterday I received an email from the parent of one of my students telling me the marks he had received in year end tests. His email sounded disappointed and his comment about next year’s tuition seemed to imply I was to blame for his son’s performance, which incidentally had improved dramatically from when he started with me.
By submitting reports after each, or after at least some, lessons, you can protect yourself from this kind of accusation, as well as providing a further motivation for your student to really take account of your comments on their work.
I have suggested to this parent that from September I send him a short email report on whether his son has responded to my comments on earlier work. This way, the child has a real reason to pay attention to your marking. Also, the parent is kept up to date in a way that will praise successes as well as comment on the more negative aspects of their homework and work in class.
The Blue Tutors website allows you to submit a report at the end of every lesson. This report is then emailed to the student, or more often, their parent. The feedback I get from parents is that they really appreciate this regular contact and regard it as a very professional feature of a tutor’s performance. This means you may well be benefitting in other ways too as your feedback rating is part of your path to promotion.
So, all in all, submitting reports can only be good - protecting you, motivating your students and improving your feedback scores.