Why Choose a Tutor to Support your Child’s Learning

There are many good reasons to choose a tutor to support your child at school. Sometimes a teacher at school will recommend individual tutoring as a way of improving a child’s results, confidence and enthusiasm for learning. At Arrendell Secondary Education Centre we see students who are struggling and failing to achieve, students in the middle range who are ‘falling through the cracks’ of the education system and failing to achieve their best and high achievers, who have ambitions and are working hard to achieve specific goals. Each of those groups of students can benefit from tutoring and in our almost 50 years of operation, we have found  that the best tutors to help students achieve success are qualified experienced teachers

Struggling Students

If your child is failing to achieve in certain specific areas, it is often beyond the scope of the teacher in the classroom to provide the time or possibly the specialised skills required to remedy the problem. A tutor can make a huge difference in helping a struggling student to improve their skills, their school results and their confidence. At Arrendell Secondary Education Centre, we offer help from experienced, caring teachers, many of whom have specific training as remedial specialists. This is why we have parents who have said, ’Thank you for turning our lives around!’

Students who are Underachieving

Sometimes parents will feel that their child is ‘falling through the cracks’ in the classroom. They are disengaged, lack confidence to ask questions and avoid approaching tasks, which they see as both difficult and irrelevant. Tutoring in either a small group or an individual context can have a significant effect on a child’s relationship to learning. Often as teachers who are tutoring students, our goal is to help the students to ‘catch’ the subject, rather than simply to teach underlying skills. If a teacher can share their enthusiasm and help the student to see the work from a different perspective, this can have a profound long-term effect on the student’s approach to both that subject and to learning in general.

High Achievers

Parents often seek a tutor for their son or daughter because they have a specific ambition and will benefit from individualised support outside the school system. In New South Wales, for example we require that two units of English are included in the students’ Year12 ATAR assessment. Students who are good at Maths and Sciences, but who have a weaker background in English find this a challenge in the preparation for entry to high ATAR University courses such as Medicine and Law. Students who have these ambitions can benefit immeasurably from work with an experienced Senior English teacher.

Many of our students at Arrendell Secondary achieve top band results in the HSC English, which helps them to gain entry to their preferred discipline at university while also providing the underlying excellence, which will strengthen their written work throughout their academic and professional careers.

Why Choose a Teacher to Tutor your Child?

Because teachers are  working closely with a student in a tutoring context, they can create learning pathways that suit a student’s individual learning style. This means that when students are revisiting areas of learning, where they have previously encountered failure, the whole experience will feel better. The student will feel supported by a trusted mentor as well as finding the learning process easier. This helps the student to develop greater mastery and confidence which feed future success.

What gives Teachers the ‘Edge’ in Tutoring

Teachers are trained to connect with learners so that they can empower them to master skills or solve a problem independently.

Teachers are trained to observe students’ learning processes and in a tutoring environment can adjust techniques used to help students learn. They can also modify the way material is presented to a student to reflect individual learning needs.

Teachers also understand the school system. This means that they are familiar with underlying sequences of instruction, expected learning outcomes and assessment criteria associated with a task.

This understanding enables the teacher to explain the relevance of the work the student is undertaking and also the underlying process that makes it meaningful. Students who have been taught this way, quickly develop confidence and mastery of their material. Also, because a teacher understands the finer points of school assessment, they can provide specific feedback and direction to students seeking to improve their assessment results.

How Can a Teacher Help a Student who is Struggling?

Relationship

An effective teacher knows how to connect with a student and to develop a supportive mentoring relationship. The relationship between teacher and student is of key value in supporting students’ confidence, their enthusiasm and their success in improving their outcomes. At Arrendell Secondary Education Centre, we focus on placing students with the right teacher to support their learning needs and to establish a strong positive relationship to support effective learning.

Identify the Problem

Teachers understand how the learning process is structured from one level to the next. A student who is failing to achieve at a particular level probably missed some of the basics. A teacher is trained to recognise the missing areas and can remediate and build a strong base from which the student can progress to create future success.

Individual Solutions

Because teachers are working closely with a student in a tutoring context, they can create learning pathways that suit a student’s individual learning style. This means that when students are revisiting areas of learning where they have previously encountered failure, the whole experience will feel better. The student will feel supported by a trusted mentor as well as finding the learning process easier. This helps the student to develop greater mastery and confidence which feed future success.

Contextualising Learning

Students who are struggling often feel that the work is both difficult and irrelevant. A teacher can explain the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of learning as well as the ‘what’. This approach enables students to become far more confident as they learn to apply the skills they are developing in a meaningful context.

Practice and Long-term Success

An effective teacher understands that achieving an outcome once is not enough and that practice is essential to develop a strong and dependable skills base. An effective teacher is able to give a student feedback and fine tuning while also encouraging their enthusiasm and developing confidence so that the struggling student becomes an active, successful achiever.

How Does a Teacher Effectively Tutor a High Achiever?

As teachers we understand how students learn, how the school system is constructed and we can identify the end goals to be assessed.

Insightful Approaches to Learning

This means that teachers can explain to students the ‘why’ of learning as well as the ‘how’ and the ‘what’. Students who understand the reason behind the process of their assessment, are able to direct their own learning and to become more insightful and more confident. This process of explaining how and why is called ‘metacognition’.

Students who are taught a metacognitive  approach to learning are able to use it to enhance their entire professional journey. Teachers at Arrendell Secondary Education Centre draw from a variety of approaches to learning, ranging from metacognition, through immersion to deconstructive approaches. This versatility means that we can use our own creativity and insight as teachers to stimulate students’ learning . This versatility is useful in teaching all students, but it is particularly valuable when working with gifted students.

Extension Work

Obviously teachers must ensure that able students have mastered the basics, but our goal is to encourage and challenge these students to develop their full potential,

Our education system aims to encourage the development of lateral thinking, independent problem solving and creative experimentation. Teachers working with gifted students are able to guide them to success within the school system while also introducing them to greater challenges and extending their research beyond the areas covered in the classroom.

Self Management

Despite their innate ability, gifted students often face difficulties with self-management and timetabling. This is another area where appropriate mentoring can be of long-lasting value in their success journey. A teacher who is tutoring a student is able to help with advice on goal setting and provide strategies which enable the student to achieve their goals.

How Can Teachers as Tutors Support Parents

Parents are often confused by the school system and are uncertain about how to evaluate their child’s learning processes and outcomes. They are also uncertain about how to guide their children effectively in navigating the school system. Teachers can support the parents of their students by advising them about their own child’s process and also about the school system. This can empower parents to better support their children on their journey to school success. One of the key ways we support parents at Arrendell Secondary Education Centre is through sharing advice and useful community referrals with parents. This service empowers parents to make the best choices and provide the best support for their children.