22nd November 2019 14:58
By Blue Tutors
New tutors sometimes say that they think they would be better at helping advanced students and some say struggling students. Similarly, students can ask for a different tutor because they decide that their tutor is more suited to tutoring students at a different level. We understand why this happens but it really shouldn’t be the case.
A classic example is a tutor who thinks they would be a great GCSE maths tutor because the tutor didn’t find it easy when studying it. The rationale is that it’s important to know how it feels not to understand something well and find it easy. Only then can a tutor fully empathise with their student, because if not, the tutor will become frustrated and won’t know what to do.
It is definitely true that we have seen tutors struggle to help someone who can’t understand the basics of a lesson. Obviously as we continue through education, understanding is built upon previous understanding and when those foundations aren’t laid properly it is virtually impossible to build on top.
From our point of view it shouldn’t matter how well a student is doing for a tutor to be able to help. Do some students need to be pushed more? The tutor’s goal is to find how far a student’s understanding stretches and help them to reach even further. The best tutors will be able to assess that level quickly and ask appropriate questions. Of course, some students will understand things more quickly, and this differs across different topics, but the idea that a tutor cannot help when the student takes longer to respond is ridiculous. This is why we hold the space.
There is an argument to say that the rapport between a tutor and student develops better when they can share similar stories about their school life, and similar academic successes are part of that. That’s probably true, but a professional tutor can, and should, still provide the same quality of lessons when this isn’t the case.