High school students struggling in a course like math, or students who want to get a leg up on their peers, improve their grades, and get accepted into the university they most want to attend, might wish to consider hiring a tutor.
Tutors provide a kind of educational help that high school teachers often can’t. That’s because, unlike high school teachers, tutors specialize in one-on-one or small group learning, where students receive more attention than they do in traditional classrooms.
Tutors became more popular during the pandemic as they were able to provide the kind of pedagogical help that students could not receive through their home school or elsewhere, including help on assignments that their home school assigned. Some high schools, including online high schools, provide their own tutors. Students at high schools that don’t might have to seek help from private tutors.
Here are four reasons to work with a tutor.
#1 Efficiency
Students who do not know the best ways to study—and many if not most students don’t, as they’re not taught—may struggle to study efficiently for intellectually challenging courses like MHF4U. In addition to helping with course material, and in some cases additional material that is relevant to course material, tutors teach their pupils how to study efficiently, meaning their pupils can study better while studying less.
#2 Attention to Learning Type
Instructors at traditional high schools tend to offer a one-size-fits-all approach. The problem with this is that different students have different learning types and what works for one student doesn’t work for another.
Some students are visual learners, while others are kinesthetic learners, reading and writing learners, and visual learners. No student learns the same. A tutor can identify a pupil’s learning type and teach accordingly. Students who struggle in a course that does not cater to their learning type can do far better in the course when a tutor helps them work through the course material in accordance with their learning type.
More, when a tutor identifies and teaches a pupil according to their learning type, the pupil will learn more about the way they learn and what study methods work best for them. This is a kind of knowledge that will benefit them academically in the short and long term.
#3 Discipline
When a tutor identifies a pupil’s learning type and teaches them accordingly, that pupil not only learns what study methods best work for them, but they also learn how to be disciplined about their studies.
#4 Strengths and Weaknesses
Just as a tutor can identify a pupil’s learning type, so too can they identify a student’s strengths and weaknesses. Often, students are already aware of their weaknesses, but too afraid to address them in class. Tutors provide safe learning environments where pupils can expose their weaknesses without fearing embarrassment, helping them become more well-rounded, self-aware, and confident learners.
The Bottom Line
Tutors help students excel by providing them with what traditional high schools can’t. If you’re interested in hiring a tutor, see if your home high school provides their own. If not, you may wish to hire a tutor through a tutoring agency.
