How to Begin Tutoring Children

Whether you’re working for yourself or for a tutoring company, tutoring children can be both rewarding and daunting at times. I worked for three years, tutoring children of middle and high school age in writing, literature comprehension, and standardized test preparation. I didn’t have an education degree or a lot of experience working with kids; this was on-the-job training. Tutoring children was something I stumbled into – a happy accident, as it turned out.

Here is some advice for anyone who’s thinking of tutoring children:

Tutoring children, step 1: Build rapport with your students.

When you’re tutoring children, a strong rapport is essential. Don’t try to sound like a classroom teacher, even if that’s your background. Kids have plenty of classroom teachers already. By the end of the school day, they’re tired of listening to instructions, rules, and lectures. (Let me say here for the record that I have great respect for teachers and can only begin to imagine the challenges they face.) Tutoring children isn’t classroom teaching.

Tutoring children successfully means listening to them, and talking with them rather than at them. You’re not their friend, but you are a special mentor, not just another adult who tells them what to do. Tutoring children will be much easier if you come across to your students as a relaxed, friendly, and maybe even cool adult, someone who won’t make them feel stupid for asking questions or making mistakes. Even the most reluctant kids usually open up once they realize that you’re not another authority figure, but just a person who’s there to help them.

Tutoring children, step 2: Keep up steady communication with parents.

Sometimes, tutoring children is easy, and handling their parents is the hard part. Most parents are satisfied if they see that their kids like you and that you’re able to help them progress. When things go this way, tutoring children is a joy. But there are always a few who want to dump all of their anxieties about their kids’ abilities, their own parenting skills, and the college admissions process on you.

When tutoring children, you can head off potential problems if you communicate regularly with parents from the beginning. I typically e-mailed parents after each tutoring session to update them on their children’s progress. I also answered parents’ questions via e-mail. When necessary, we spoke by phone or in person.

If you’re tutoring children, e-mailing is an appropriate way to keep parents informed. It also allows you to document your work, which may come in handy if there’s a problem down the road. Finally, when you’re tutoring children, e-mailing helps to put a little distance between you and a parent who doesn’t quite understand the concept of boundaries. (The mother of one of my younger students literally cried on my shoulder after a difficult meeting with her son’s teachers. She also kept offering me rides home after tutoring sessions until my tenth polite refusal.)

Tutoring children, step 3: Give your students homework.

No, not enough homework to make the kids hate you (see step 1). You’re tutoring children, not tormenting them. Just give them an assignment they can easily complete between sessions. It might be work they have to do for school anyway. It might be a one-page practice set of SAT questions or a brief writing exercise.

When you’re tutoring children, you need to provide some kind of structure for sessions. If a student completes an assignment you give her and brings it to the next session, the two of you have something that’s ready to be corrected and discussed at the beginning of the session. Otherwise, you may find yourself sitting and staring into space for the first 20 minutes of a session while your student works on something for you to look over. Giving assignments to your students makes better use of session time, and it nearly always makes parents happy (see step 2).

Tutoring children, step 4: Let your students slack off every now and then.

If you’ve built up that strong rapport with your student, you’ll know when she’s too stressed out or tired to focus on a session. Don’t push her past her limits. She already feels pressure from all sides to get her work done and pay attention during class, no excuses. You can be the one person who cuts her some slack every once in a while. Give her a chance to vent for a few minutes if something’s bothering her, then give her something easy to do. When tutoring children, you can attenuate your approach according to a student’s energy level, a luxury that a teacher with 30 kids in her classroom doesn’t have.

Tutoring children allows you to be the nice guy (within reason). I once tutored two high school boys in English grammar and usage – God help us all. They slumped in their chairs while we went over tenses, capitalization, and the proper use of the semicolon. Once we struggled through the boring stuff, I gave them creative writing exercises. They both perked up and wrote amazingly vivid and original pieces right there on the spot. I thought of the exercises as a reward for tolerating me and my grammar worksheets.