Some mistakes are small and insignificant; others can cost us a lot. Simply avoid these common mistakes in order to be a successful tutor.
No one is protected from mistakes. Even famous people are not perfect too. But in some professions: engineering, medicine, teaching — mistakes “cost” a lot.
TutorZ has been working with a lot of tutors for many years and we’ve found and summarized some tips for tutors to be the best! This article is an attempt to help you avoid these common mistakes.
- Self-doubt
You’ll never get a second-third-fourth chance to make the first impression. Any tutor must make a positive impression at the moment when he/she comes to a classroom for the first time.
Diffidence and fear won’t help you to become a good tutor. In addition, you can’t go to the other extreme, putting on a mask of an evil teacher, forbidding everything along with threatening your students. Previously mentioned kind of mask will disappear sooner or later, students will see your real character, and this may cause to the absence of students’ respect.
There are some tips for tutors to feel more comfortable. Before the lesson, do a little exercise, take a deep breath, raise your head and smile at her reflection in the mirror. Remember that you definitely have enough knowledge to teach people and work with your students and the confidence to be yourself even if the situation confuses you. Don’t be late, but if you have no choice, be sure to call and notify the student: for the fact of being late you will not be killed, and this call will leave an impression of a polite person.
- Unsystematic lessons, the absence of concrete requirements
Before the lesson, you need to create a set of common rules for everyone, and later complement it with some rules for the individual student. For example, I highly recommend students to have a notebook on the first lesson: to write down different recommendations for the homework. The result of studying should not be done by accident, remember, the result of studying is the product of your and your students’ work.
Students also need to be disciplined: they must always know where their notes and books are to prepare for the lesson. Therefore, if you do not like textbooks, there if a variety of handout materials, you can advise your students to make a special folder for them. Also, you need to be disciplined. Get yourself a day planner or some semblance of the journal: it will be very useful to save all of your materials, record all of the tasks, errors, and achievements of each student. It is important because it is impossible to keep all this information in mind, especially when you have a lot of work, many students.
- The absence of a lesson plan
It is a mistake to think that a good knowledge of the subject allows you not to prepare for a lesson. Especially if you’re still in the very beginning of your tutoring career. You need to plan what to do in the class and how much time it will take to complete each task. But the plan should not be treated formally. It does not matter how simple you theory and tasks seem, they should be very carefully studied. You need to think of the possible difficulties of students and ways of overcoming them, the possible answers of the pupils on oral and written assignments. In addition, you should be prepared for the situation when the homework wasn’t done by the student. So instead of checking it and starting a new topic, you will have to do something else. Thus, the plan should have several options for the development of the lesson. There is one more reason why you should plan the class: it is unacceptable to interrupt a student in the midst of a job just because you yourself have not calculated how much time it will take.
- A unified approach to different pupils
If you are a young teacher, you could not form extensive teaching library yet, and now it’s important for you not to be afraid to learn new things. There are different students, different problems, and different goals, so you have to use different textbooks. Take some time to do the search of different useful books, textbooks, and materials. Subsequently, in order to facilitate the search for the right material for the particular topic, you can compile a catalog of available resources.
- Unwillingness to answer questions
Active and interested students are a real gift for any teacher, but sometimes it is hard to work with them. Surprises lurk everywhere: for example, if you teach a foreign language and your students are studying the topic “Profession”, you may ask who his parents are. But what if his answer will be some rare profession like herbalist. You might not know the right translation for this word. Foreign language teacher may be faced with the problem of the specific interests of the student beyond his linguistic competence and experience, the difficulties in the translation of a term (aircraft parts, dancing moves). In this case, you can inform the student that you can’t know everything and push him/her to self-education. Don’t be scared of any questions, feel free to say that you don’t know something, try to find the right answer together.
- The absence of tolerance and patience while working with the slow students
The tutor should have great self-control because shouting at students never works, even if you really-really want it to. Screaming and swearing scare children, block their thinking processes and form their complexes. Even if you have to explain something twenty-five times in twenty-five different ways before the student will understand that, try to do it in a positive and friendly way. You are a great tutor if you know twenty-five ways to explain your subject, and even Indian yoga would be jealous of your patience!
- Inadequate complexity or simplicity of material
Maybe it is your first student and you are very excited, you may stay in a certain euphoria from getting new professional knowledge or new status and sincerely want to teach the student everything at once. Such generosity may bring harm, not benefits. If we are talking about elementary school it is obvious that we can’t use difficult or boring tasks. The other mistake — to avoid any difficulties of terminology, even when the student obviously needs to know them. Be sure that you know how to work with different groups of students.
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