Common Tutoring Mistakes And How To Avoid Them

Whether you are just starting as an academic tutor or you’ve been in the business for some time, tutoring is an art form. Tutoring can be developed and built upon to ensure student success. As an academic tutor, it is your responsibility to help students learn and excel in their academics, and this goes beyond being an expert in your field or a specific subject. Our goal today is to dissect common tutoring mistakes and how to avoid them so that you, as a tutor, can create an effective road plan that minimizes obstacles to your student's educational success.

Not building a personal (professional) relationship

The first lesson can be nerve-racking, not only for you as the tutor but also for your students. As much as it is necessary to present yourself with confidence and as someone possessing expert subject knowledge, relatability is often overlooked but essential in getting the most out of a tutoring experience. Tutors often make the mistake of not establishing a personal relationship with their students. From the surface, it makes sense to view tutoring as a transaction between you and a client; you provide academic support and get paid for it. But, like any working environment, finding commonality makes working more enjoyable.

Ultimately, your goal is to lead your students to academic success, so building a personal (professional) relationship should look like this:

1. Ask your student what they enjoy doing outside of school: This helps you theme your lesson material around what they find interesting to make the content more engaging.
2. Ask them how they feel about having tutoring sessions: This helps you understand their sentiments towards tutoring and enables you to gauge what their motivations are—whether academics is something their parents care more about or something they feel passionate about.
3. Ask what their favorite subject is at school: This helps you get a personal understanding of how they view the subject they are being tutored for. For example, a student signed up for Maths tutoring may enjoy English, so contextualizing the need for tutoring can help explain how it impacts their future.
4. Ask them to tell you about something they excel in: This is a confidence-restoring strategy. Sharing something they are good at sets a positive tone for the tutoring session. You can lead this conversation by talking about something you excel at.
5. Ask your student if there are any things they’d like to work on with you: Personalizing tutoring sessions by inviting your student to express their points of view demonstrates that you value their thoughts and feelings.

Over-promising but under-delivering

While you want to put your best foot forward by leaving a great first impression, one of the most common tutoring mistakes is setting unrealistic expectations for yourself and your students. The danger here is that it sets your student on a pedestal. If they are unable to satisfy the expectations you place for them, they may feel disappointed or believe they are unable to achieve their academic goals. These poor outcomes also leave your student feeling misled or regretful for entrusting you with their educational development.

The solution is honesty; be truthful based on your assessment of your student's abilities and present academic situation. Setting attainable objectives can help you avoid disappointment on both sides. This is accomplished by running diagnostics for your students.

Not keeping parents in the loop

You have a responsibility as a tutor to give lesson feedback on student development to the student's parents or legal guardians if they are under 18. Excluding parents from their child’s educational journey is another common tutoring mistake.

What it looks like to exclude parents from the conversation:

1. You withhold information concerning the course of the lesson.
2. Parents are unaware of any developmental milestones their child has reached.
3. Parents are unaware of any academic shortcomings that could be hurting their child's overall effectiveness.

While focusing on building a working relationship with your student, it is also essential to keep parents informed. Honesty is always the best policy. Parents can use the information to support their child both in school and through private tutoring.

No formal learning plan and overly structured lessons

No formal learning plan:

Learning plans maintain consistency and keep you and your student on the same page. Without a clear strategy, you may face issues like mismanagement of time, assigning too many or too few tasks, or not allowing time for questions. Preparing a lesson plan ensures progress can be tracked and evaluated.

Overly structured lessons:

Over-planning can restrict a student's learning. Here's how to avoid this:

1. Invite students to reflect on lesson structure and tasks set from each lesson.
2. Revisit previously discussed concepts to assess understanding.
3. Include tasks based on student interests.
4. Use materials to support session goals without over-reliance.
5. Ask students what themes or content areas they’d like to discuss in the next lesson.

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