What Do You Want Your Tutor to Know About You?

Before going into your first tutoring session, students worry about what information about themselves their tutor should know. Some opt for none, some opt for everything under the sun. The answer is somewhere in the middle. Here are seven things your tutor should know about you:

What are your interests that may relate to your tutor?

Starting out, your relationship with your tutor may be rocky, as are all new relationships. The easiest way to get past this rough patch is to find common ground. Let your tutor know about your interest. They may sync up with his or hers. If you guys can find something in common, conversations will go more smoothly, leading to quicker learning.

What’s your schedule?

Possibly the most important one on a practical level, you need to let your tutor know your schedule. When are you available and for how long? Both of you have busy lives outside of the tutoring sessions so figuring out the optimal schedule for your future meetings will get you guys off to a productive start to your relationship.

Why have you hired them?

Your tutor needs to know why you’ve hired them. There are five different types of tutoring: remediation, maintenance, support, test prep, and enrichment. By letting your tutor know which of these you require, it will allow them to structure the tutoring sessions for optimal learning capability. By letting them know what you need and why they can better prepare you for whatever test or subject you are staring down.

How do you want to study?

Your tutor will inevitably be coming in with their own perception of how your study sessions should go. If they are an experienced tutor, they will have developed a strategy of the course of many tutoring sessions. Although their strategy may have worked in the past, you need to let them know what works for you, as different methods will work for different people. Some people are visual learners, some people are literal learners, some people are auditory learners. Let your tutor know which you are so they can better tutor you. But, don’t be scared by new methods. Allow a mix of what you want and what they want for the best results.

What do you expect from the sessions?

This ranges from what you want from the tutor to what you expect to know by the end of your sessions. Going into any task, you should have a clear, concise goal and tutoring is no different. Make your tutor aware of what you expect to learn and where you expect to be by the end of everything. If you don’t have any expectations, at least have a conversation with them where they can let you know where this whole thing should be going.

What are your post-school plans?

The intensity of the tutoring sessions will be determined by your answer to this question. IF you are planning to go straight into the workforce or to pursue a career, you won’t have to go above and beyond learning calculus. But, if you are pursuing extra schooling or are going into a career that has to do with the subject you are being tutored in, your tutor should up the intensity level to make sure you are primed and ready for your life post-school.