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. 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, and 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 two jobs that are worth pointing out:
- Instead of teaching up to 140 students per day across three Key Stages (Years 7-13,) I am now responsible for a maximum of 12-14 AQA GCSE students per day. Years 10-11 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. 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.
- Whilst, of course, there are no guarantees, students are often making 2-3 grades progress on a 12 week programme – sometimes more. The more committed they are, the more they get out of the programme.
- When I left the classroom I finally had the time to spend 400 hours writing my programme, complete with all the revision resources, ‘how to’ videos, and I also commissioned a superb website from SKIM Media that does exactly what it needs to, to support my students.
- I believe I have created a system that WORKS and does exactly what it needs to, to get my students across the line, and it does it FAR more cheaply and effectively than 1:1.
- 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: theenglishlab.co.uk/reviews
- Have a wonderful day!