Academic Tutoring: Plan Now for Success

Post by: Jonathan Kao, TTA Tutor

Want to be a more confident student in and out of the classroom? Academic tutoring helps boost a student’s confidence by deepening subject comprehension and hastens all-around improvements in learning (and life) skills like focus, perseverance, independence and troubleshooting. But, a word of warning –ensure your tutoring is ‘proactive’ rather than ‘reactive’. Don’t wait until your grades have dipped or you are facing a final exam, prep as you go.

PROACTIVE TUTORING VS. REACTIVE TUTORING

After years of working with students, we’ve seen that many middle school and high school students are afraid to admit that they could use a tutor, and only turn to tutoring when it’s an emergency. By that time, it’s often too late to help. No amount of tutoring can cover a year’s worth of material in a week or a month’s worth of material in two days. This kind of tutoring is what we call ‘reactive’ tutoring—it is not only painful and stressful for both the student and the tutor, but it is also ineffective.

It’s no secret that the highest achieving students often enlist tutors’ help. Juggling classes, extracurriculars, sports, research, standardized tests, family, and friends is a tall order for adults, never mind teenagers! But crucially—these types of students work with tutors on a low-commitment basis year-round. What we call “proactive” tutoring stimulates genuine interest and learning independent of teacher quality, keeps the student ahead of the learning curve, decreases student stress, allows students to self-study for additional standardized tests, and most importantly, leads to better results. Tutor as you go vs trying to cram at the last minute.

BENEFITS OF PROACTIVE ACADEMIC TUTORING

Better Scores 

Every year, plenty of students work with tutors steadily year-round (proactive), and other students work with tutors only when they are cramming for major exams (reactive). Across all exam types and student profiles, we have seen that students who work with tutors year-round achieve better results. Additionally, a majority of our students with the biggest improvement in AP scores and GPAs, have committed to consistent year-round tutoring.

Self-Studying

Working with long-term tutors gives students the opportunity to self-study for standardized tests. While self-studying for a standardized test may seem daunting, it can be more efficient under proper guidance. Self-studying is a good way for students to demonstrate an interest in an academic area, show academic maturity, and learn independently outside of school.

Increased Exam Capacity

Not only does working with long-term tutors create better results, but it also increases the number of exams students can prepare for effectively. If a student crammed for one exam a week or two AP tests over the standardized testing season, working with a tutor long-term will help reduce stress by allowing students to prepare for more exams over a longer period of time. 

Less Stress, Better Productivity

Preparing for exams is often a major source of anxiety and stress for students and worried parents. To avoid this stress, many students procrastinate until the last minute, which often leads to additional unnecessary stress and anxiety, blocking what energy is left to study.

Students who work with tutors long-term have the added benefit of slowly chipping away at a subject over several months or weeks. By the time testing season comes around, students with long-term tutors only need to do minimal additional preparation. In other words, stress that might have been heavily concentrated near the exam date has been spread out over a longer period, which is much more manageable for students. Spreading studying over a longer period of time allows students to maintain other responsibilities, such as extracurriculars, sports, and leadership.

Building Genuine Interest

Proactively working with a tutor allows students one-on-one time to focus on themselves and how they best learn, as well as get ahead of the learning curve, spend extra time asking questions to resolve any uncertainties they might have, and to truly think deeply about a subject. This active learning experience is more effective and can build genuine interest in a subject. With additional time outside of classroom lesson plans, tutors can also dive deeper and share more interesting core concepts, further building interest.

Staying Ahead of The Curve

It is much easier to stay ahead of the curve than constantly playing catch up. Tutors can perform periodic “maintenance work” to review past concepts and keep the student’s knowledge up to snuff.

Owning Your Learning

Sometimes teachers and students don’t ‘click’ or for various reasons, the teacher isn’t able to provide the level of learning a student might need. Academic tutoring allows students to excel regardless of what may happen in their classroom, good or bad, and allows students the opportunity to take learning into their own hands.  Additionally, some teachers might not be able to teach to the standardized test, including AP and IB exams. Supplemental academic tutoring can help fill testing gaps and prepare students for end-of-the-year exams.

Let Them Blossom

There are two types of academic tutoring—proactive and reactive. Every year, many students opt for reactive tutoring, not knowing any better, when in fact proactive tutoring is the most effective — hands down.