Having been a teacher for five years, I know that one of the trickiest and most important parts of teaching is figuring out what your students do and don’t know before you get started with them. If you start with content that is over students’ heads, you risk losing them by making them feel defeated and confused. They may develop misconceptions that they cannot learn the material, or get more of a fixed mindset about the topic.
If you start with content that is too easy for your student, you often lose buy-in and give the student the impression that you are boring or treating them like they aren’t intelligent. Sometimes, you may start at the right level but then make assumptions that the curriculum they had in school was the same as what you’re familiar with and covered everything that you would expect. There are many ways to teach any concept, and your students will all have had different experiences and will probably have different gaps in knowledge for a variety of reasons. Basically, you can’t assume anything.
Although there is no surefire way to know exactly what each of your students does and does not know, it is definitely beneficial to do a lot of information gathering before you dive in with lesson plans. Teachers in school use pre-assessments, past report cards and testing results, conversations with other teachers and students’ parents, and work samples. They see their students much more frequently than tutors do and also have more context to go on.
For tutors, determining where their students are can be challenging. They may only see their student once a week, which means that they have less of an opportunity to establish a strong rapport than teachers do. Also, each of their students may be from different backgrounds and ability levels in different grades from different schools with different curricula. However, none of these challenges make it any less crucial for the tutor to make determinations about what to teach. If anything, they need to be even more targeted to use the time most efficiently.
Since you are probably wondering how we ensure that our tutors accomplish this, I thought I would explain. Here are the ways that our tutors determine what to teach their individual students. You will see that it is a multi-step process that involves a lot of people and communication!
1.) How Parents Help Tutors Decide What to Teach
When parents call our office, the call is not just about logistics and information about our tutoring services. The bulk of most of the phone calls that I have with parents is actually about listening to what they have to say about their child. Many parents have struggled with trying to get their kids to succeed in school for various reasons. Often, these parents can very specifically describe their child’s needs.
When I speak to a parent who is a little less forthcoming about their child’s story, I follow up with a lot of questions so that I can get a clear picture of that child as a whole. Some of the questions that I ask might be, “Has your child always struggled with this content or has it just become hard this year? Would you say that your child has difficulty decoding words, or is it more of a comprehension issue with their reading?” or “What learning style do you think your child has?” The questions vary depending on the needs and the flow of the conversation, always with the end goal of determining what tutor will be best for that child as well as how to advise the tutor on what the student needs.
2.) How Tutors Use Testing Reports
Many of our parents have had neuropsychological testing for their children to determine any learning disabilities or specific areas of weakness. If I know that the parent has had this done, I will ask them if they feel comfortable sending the report over to us to share with the tutor that we select. The testing reports include information about learning style, any learning disabilities, and recommendations to help the student grow in their areas of weakness. This can be helpful both in determining the best fit for a tutor as well as helping the tutor create lessons for their students.
For example, if a student has a report that says they are in a low percentile for working memory, I know that I need to place them with someone who is patient and will repeat concepts regularly. The recommendation might include things like having information repeated regularly, developing stronger study and reading comprehension skills, and giving breaks in between assignments so that the student has time to process information.
3.) How Tutors Communicate with Teachers
Although there are some situations when contacting a student’s teachers might not be beneficial, it usually provides the tutor with a lot of great information and is highly recommended.
The first thing that a parent does is give permission to the teachers to share information with the tutor. At that point, they provide the teachers with the tutor’s email address and phone number.
Once the tutor and teacher have connected, they can exchange information about the student’s behavior in and out of school, areas of weakness that they have observed, and recommendations about what will work. It is also helpful for the tutor to get class materials such as a syllabus or curriculum map.
This sharing of knowledge saves the tutor a lot of time and effort and makes the sessions more tailored to their student’s needs. The tutor can also help the teacher do a better job working with the student, so it can be a mutually beneficial relationship.
4.) How Tutors Assess Student Needs
Lastly, the tutor will use his or her own techniques for determining what the student needs by getting a baseline. This can be accomplished by having the student complete a few problems related to a variety of concepts, administering a learning styles or metacognition survey, and interviewing the student on their strengths and weaknesses. This process is typically fairly informal but can be very effective in helping the tutor cater to their student’s needs.