“A perfect tutoring session is a thing of beauty. There’s no formula for recreating it every time, but it happens more and more often at Study Hut these days. Tutors and tutees are in mid-season form by this time in the year – the early-semester inertia long past and the end-of-semester burnout still months away. We’ve settled into the school year, developing our own rhythms and rapports with all our Study Hut students. It’s perfect tutoring season.
No two perfect sessions look exactly the same; there are too many contributing factors to consider. Some students are panicked, struggling to finish cramming for that test they kept putting off; some students are relaxed, looking forward to another weekly session with the same tutor they’ve been working with for the past 6 months; some are on their way to SAT tutoring, dreaming of the day they will strut their stuff at college, applying all their Hut study skills to everything from Bio 101 to Shakespearean sonnets to intramural softball. Some are terrified at the mere mention of numbers, others are enthralled by the simple joys of deriving or integrating. Still others are history sponges, seeking to soak in as many dates and elections and revolutions as possible, baffled by some of their peers’ classic refrain: “Why do we have learn this? It already happened.”
This variety is what makes working at Study Hut so engaging. It is a constant process: evaluating a student’s interests and needs, weaknesses and strengths, passions and quirks. Only by getting to know each student – asking them about their day, their favorite color, and their life’s goals – can we craft these elusive perfect sessions.
As we begin to understand our tutees, we get better at tailoring our sessions to their own specific needs and goals. This is the constant process of creating perfect sessions. We may not achieve perfection every time (and some students may make it more difficult than others), but even when we fail we do pretty good job at making learning happen.”
Hope this is useable and feel free to make any changes you want!
