Five Tips for Parents Who Have Hired a Tutor
At Omniac Education, we pride ourselves on helping students "learn to fish." That means that we are much more interested in teaching kids skills that help them learn on their own than in telling them the answers to questions on their homework. In addition, it also means that we hold students accountable for their work and effort, emphasizing to them that they decide between and A and a F every time they work on any academic project.
Yet, parents still totally have a key role to play in the process. While we want students to take the lead on raising their grades, parents are an incredibly vital part of the overall success or failure of the student. We simply cannot succeed without their help!
With that in mind, here are a few tips for parents who are eager to get involved and make a difference for their children:
5. Ask Your Tutor Questions
Tutors may have specific advice that pertains to your student, but are not comfortable shoving more information at you. Some kids need more attention than others, or struggle with different parts of the school process and usually your tutor will be able to isolate their specific issues. Direct attention to these areas a child is struggling can be more beneficial than glossing over all aspects. Give your tutor a chance to point those out to you.
4. Communicate With Your Child's Teacher
If a teacher knows the parents are putting in effort, they are quicker to tell you progress is being made. If you let the teacher know you are working with them to help your student, they tend to ease up a bit and provide extra opportunities that otherwise might not have been made available. ALWAYS be positive. Your dialogue should always be about solving a problem. “What can I do at home to help my son?” is so much nicer to hear than “Why is my student failing your class?”.
3. Enforce Homework Time.
If a student can’t manage their grades, they lose the right to manage their time. Pick a two hour time slot and expect your student to work without distractions the entire time. Put the dog outside, turn the TV off, and get them out of the computer room. If their homework is done, they can read a newspaper or magazine. When their grades come back up, don’t quit! Reading comprehension applies to every subject and is something every student can always improve on. Ask your tutor for additional materials if you feel like you don't have enough!
2. Check Your Child's Homework
You might think that you don’t know the math, so you can’t check the homework. In reality, parents can do a lot just by looking over the work. Students consistently hand in low quality work that can be spotted from a mile away. Is anything blank? Have the student read the section with this problem and then rewrite the example that is similar, or all of them if they use the phrase “I don’t get it”. Watch how fast blank papers turn into actual effort! Just knowing that you are going to look at it means that your student will work harder on it.
1. Set high standards.
Ask your student what score they are trying to get on their next test. They will probably tell you “a B would be nice”. WRONG! If you know before you take the test that you are only going to get a ‘B’ then you knew ahead of time that you needed to study more, but chose not to. There is only one correct answer: “100%, plus the bonus if there is one.” Just saying this out loud is a huge push in the right direction and can help students set goals that will challenge their current abilities.
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A huge thanks to our Academic Tutoring Director, Michael Fitch, for helping to write this blog post. Thanks, Mike!
Got any tips we missed? Put 'em in our comments...