The Qualities of a Great Tutor
Over my years as a tutor, I have not only been a tutor, but have also been around a lot of tutors. When your primary tutoring location is a table in the middle of a college library you will get to see a lot of different tutors, tutoring a variety of subjects. I have always tried to watch and listen to what other tutors were doing. This has allowed me to learn from other tutors and also see what qualities appeared to be common amongst those who were doing quality tutoring. I have also stopped students after a tutoring session to ask them about a tutor they were working with to hear from them what they liked and what they did not like. Here is the shortlist of qualities that I have found common among great tutors. You definitely don’t need to have all of these qualities, but it is important that you can say that you have several of them. Again, I encourage you to be honest with yourself about who you are and if you truly have them.
Empathy
I said that you don’t need to have all of these qualities. However, empathy is probably the one quality on the list I would say is a MUST have. Many of those who are reaching out to you for assistance are doing so from a place of discomfort. Some of them feel embarrassed that they cannot do it themselves. Some of them believe the common myth that only unintelligent people need to get a tutor. Almost certainly they are coming to you feeling alone in their struggle and very vulnerable. This means what they often need first from you is to know that you understand how they are feeling, and that you are not dismissive of these feelings. I know you might be thinking that this is true only for tutoring within the academic space. This is actually true of anyone who is asking for help, and should always be one of the qualities of anyone providing help.
Good Listener
You will never be able to understand how to truly help someone if you are unwilling to listen to their needs. If you are not listening to their needs, you might as well just be providing them a lecture via a YouTube video. You have to listen to the questions they have, and you also have to listen to how they understand what they are learning. You may have your assumptions about why they don’t understand, or quickly jump to a conclusion about the best way to help a student (I am guilty of this). This becomes harder to handle the longer you have been a tutor.
The instructor who taught my Math 385 (Supervised College Teaching), a how to be a tutor course that all tutors working for the university were required to take, course believed so strongly in the fact that listening was the key to tutoring that he would not let tutors use any sort of writing material when working with a student. He believed that the tutor should listen to the words of the student, and the student should listen to the words of the tutor. I can say that listening to my students talk me through a problem has consistently helped me see where the gap in their knowledge really is located. They might know the notation to put down on paper, but they may not truly understand what it is saying to them.
Being a good listener is especially important when doing online tutoring as there is usually some type of audio delay between you and your student. You will want to leave space for questions and input from the student, and not just talk, talk, talk. You will also want to make sure you are listening to their exact descriptions of their process. You can do a lot through screen sharing these days, but sometimes it will boil down to a student talking to you about what and why they are doing a process.
Sometimes being a good listener means listening to your student’s concerns other than solving a specific problem they are working on. I often tell people my job is 10% tutoring and 90% counseling. You must really listen to what your students are saying they need. Do they need help with the how to, do they need help in navigating an unfamiliar environment, do they need a boost in their confidence, do they need additional assistance beyond what you can offer?
I once has a student who after listening to their full educational story, listening to them walk through their solutions with their words, and then watching them translate what I heard from their head to paper, I could tell that they had some learning disabilities. I referred them to the Disabled Student Services office on their campus. They came back the following after having gone in, and said they had been diagnosed with several learning issues. Due to that diagnosis the student was then afforded accommodations to assist them in their studies. This student went from being a C student to an A student. While it might have been my amazing tutoring, it was also my listening that helped me to better understand their needs not just in the course we worked on together, but in all their educational areas.
Patient
Patience as a tutor is key to your mental survival. The first obvious need for patience comes during your tutoring sessions. You need to be extremely patient with your students. Always keep in mind that they are coming to you looking for help, and that sometimes they have not always received the most patience from other teachers in their lives. You might have to explain a process over and over and over again until your student finally has that break through moment. You might be thinking how many more times can I explain the same concept to this student. You might feel like where was their head two seconds ago when I just explained that exact same concept. You must in those moments take a mental deep breath, and remind yourself to be patient with them, and when the words come out of your mouth keep them calm and gentle no matter your level of internal frustration.
You might also have a student who is there not of their own choosing, but of their parents choosing. This can sometimes mean your student’s attitude is perhaps not the greatest. Again, you must remember to be patient with them. They may not have wanted to be there at first, but often if you can be patient with them their attitudes can come around. Believe me it is hard to work with a student who does not want to be there, but the one thing I try to convey to them that is once they have a taste of success they will usually want more.
Your student may show up late, or cancel at the last moment, or not come prepared, or interrupt you with another question before you are finished answering the previous question. Remember always that you are there to be the teacher that they need to be successful, and that you need to maintain your composure in all situations. I am not saying that you need to be accepting of all of these behaviors, but you need to be patient with students as they may have never worked with a tutor before, they may not understand what is required of them as a student. So, make sure you share your expectations with them in advance, share with them calmly when they are not meeting those expectation, and do not lose your patience with them.
Organized
When talking about being organized, I mean both on the internal business side and the external business side.
Within your business you need to be organized with:
- Scheduling: It only takes missing one appointment or double booking one appointment to lose a client. You also want to keep track of any scheduled posts on social media, or deadlines on other advertising methods.
- Budgeting: You can’t be a tutor if you can’t afford to be a tutor.
- Communicating: Make sure you have a system in place to ensure you respond to all messages from students promptly across all your communication platforms (email, Facebook, Twitter, Craigslist).
On the outward facing side of your business, you must also be organized with:
- How you run your tutoring sessions. You need to make sure that you are not jumping all over the place during a tutoring session. You should have a consistent process in how you run a session. You should move through your instructions in a very consistent step by step process, that ideally your student can repeat on their own.
- How you collect payment. You should have a well-defined process for how you are going to get paid.
- How your students schedule with you. If you don’t have an easy-to-follow way for students to setup an appointment with you, you will get less clients. I provide visitors to my website with a very clear three step process on how to setup an appointment.
- Adaptable
- Confident
- Honest