Today is World Tutor Day. I am reminded that this is now my full-time profession, and how lucky I am that I get to do this every day. But what is the difference between teaching and tutoring? Do we really need to employ a tutor if we have a good teacher? These are questions that I am asked all the time: “Do I really NEED a tutor? And how is what you do different from what a teacher does.”
Working as a specialist tutor with a small group of students gives me the privilege of being able to completely dedicate myself to their education journey. It’s a very different life from the one I had as a teacher. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my job as a teacher, and dedicated thirty years of my life to it, but there are big differences between the life I had and the one I enjoy now and it is certainly relevant to parents asking, “But is it really necessary?”
- Instead of teaching up to 140 students per day across three Key Stages (Years 7-13,) I am now responsible for around 16 AQA GCSE students per day; Years 10-11 and resits only.
- Rather than feeling completely overwhelmed with hundreds of pieces of work to mark weekly, I am now able to spend FAR longer on each piece of work. For my 1:1 students, I make a Vimeo video in which I live mark the work on screen with a mark scheme next to it, so that the student can see EXACTLY where the strengths and challenges lie. I also use exemplars and models tailored to the submitted work. The most committed students will often resubmit work and keep on resubmitting it until they hit the nail on the head. These are the students that make massive progress.
- In both my 1:1 lessons and my group sessions, my students often make incredible progress. The more committed they are, the more they get out of tutoring with me because I no longer teach 140 different young people or have a huge amount of additional work to take care of, as I did day to day when I was a teacher. See other blogs to find evidence of the results these students attain after joining one of my programmes.
- When I left the classroom I finally had the time to build the business in the way that I wanted to, and I also commissioned a superb website from SKIM Media that does exactly what it needs for my students.
- I believe I have used my experience to craft a selection of offers that WORK and do exactly what they should, to get my students across the line and give the them best possible chance of success. The results speak for themselves.
- If you’d like to see how, drop me a line on claire@theenglishlab.co.uk
- Don’t take my word for it; have a look at my reviews and my results: theenglishlab.co.uk/review. Have a wonderful day!