What Makes the Best Tutors?

With so many tutors and tutoring agencies out there to choose from, what makes the best tutor… for you?

Description: Looking for the best tutors, either online or face to face? Minerva tutors can build your child’s confidence and help them achieve the results they deserve.

Standfirst: More parents than ever are coming to understand just how important a good tutor can be for their child—especially since the vast majority of children have been forced home by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tutoring encapsulates both learning and teaching in their purest states. It is the most personalised and concentrated form of education—even when conducted online.

A tutor is more than an instructor. They are a motivator, mentor, coach. They boost their students’ confidence, build them up to bring their potential to fruition, nurture their idiosyncrasies and unique talents.

But with the demand for the best online tutors now greater than ever before, how can you tell if your prospective tutor is truly as good as your child deserves?

Building confidence

The best tutors never rush their students. They check comprehension every step of the way, and positively reinforce progress by praising improvements. This sets the foundations of a mind that is not only quizzical but also grounded and sure of its own faculties. And when a child is confident and their curiosity has been piqued, well—remarkable things can happen.

The best tutors cultivate in their pupils a willingness to ask questions, a genuine interest in the world around them—even when the lesson is over. These children begin to read additional material around their subjects, even when it extends beyond the scope of the curriculum. They no longer fear raising their hand in class; they have no shame in demonstrating when they don’t know the answer. In fact, they relish the opportunity to learn and grow.

Confident students have faith in their instincts and perform better on assignments and in exams. For them, education is no longer a chore; it is a joy.Content expertise from the Best Tutors

The best tutors will generally be highly educated in a particular field. They don’t just iterate the course material back off the page; they bring it to life, invigorating the child’s imagination with their in-depth knowledge and sincere passion for the subject.

Because the tutor knows the subject like the back of their hand, they are able to create lessons that are fun, exciting and relevant to the child’s own interests. Students who are fortunate enough to have such a tutor become far more invested in their learning than the students of more generalised tutors.

Encouraging different learning styles

Humans do not learn in an identical, one-size-fits-all manner. Back in the day, the different ways in which we all absorb information were not well understood. Schoolchildren were taught almost didactically, and there was little consideration of how to tailor the curriculum to those pupils for whom traditional methods did not represent an optimal educational environment.

There are no fewer than seven learning styles. We refer to them here both by their common names and their more scientific ones, the latter being denoted in parentheses:

1. Verbal (linguistic): Words, whether written or spoken, are the preferred form of learning. These students typically like to take notes, then rigorously read and reread them.
2. Visual (spatial): Pictures, infographics, charts, graphs, even videos—whatever form the visual representation of the lesson’s material takes, it will be immensely helpful to visually oriented students.
3. Physical (kinaesthetic): Action-based learning such as experiments, crafts and building are perfect for these children, who are never happier than when they’re working with their hands.
4. Logical (mathematical): Pupils for whom the logical style of learning is optimal prefer to study systems and use reasoning to solve a problem. For these reasons, their favourite subjects are likely either maths or science.
5. Aural (auditory-musical): These students learn optimally when the lesson involves sound (and, where appropriate, music). They thrive off listening to talks or lectures—and when they have a tutor they respect and admire, they absorb every single word.
6. Solitary (intrapersonal): Some children work to the best of their abilities when they’re left alone to learn independently, guiding and sometimes even creating their own study regimen.
7. Social (interpersonal): For more gregarious students, they learn optimally when working on a group project or collaborating with others.

By identifying which learning style the student is most comfortable with, the best tutors can shape the course materials around the child. This helps pupils retain information more quickly and in greater quantity.

Challenging

A good tutor gets the results that the student needs to get by. The best tutors push their pupils to surpass their own expectations. They see qualities and intellectual faculties in the child that the child may see themselves. These tutors set realistic but mentally exerting benchmarks, encouraging the pupil to think outside the box—but never setting them up to fail in the process.

Addressing learning gaps

A learning gap is the disparity between what a pupil is expected to have learned by a given point and what they have actually learned. Some children with learning gaps adopt ways of hiding what they consider to be their intellectual inadequacies—sometimes to the point that their teacher and even their parents have no idea they’re struggling.

The best tutors will identify a child’s learning gaps early on, and eke out the reasons underlying these discrepancies in knowledge. They acquire this information in a way that never makes the child feel belittled or patronised, but rather in a manner that is kind, gentle and genuinely enlightening for pupil and parents alike. The unique one-on-one support offered by a tutor creates a safe, judgement-free environment in which a pupil feels able to open up and ask questions about what they don’t understand—at a pace that suits them.

Collaborating with parents

An amazing tutor is one who understands their role in the child’s wider social environment. They create individualised learning plans by leveraging insights from the pupil’s parents, as well as other key adults in their life, to form a well-rounded picture of where the child is at the moment—and where they could be if they only put their mind to it. The best tutors are exceptional communicators, saliently and constructively relaying updates and suggestions to parents.

Developing rapport

Finally, it would be remiss to discuss what makes an amazing tutor without addressing the key ingredient in any educational relationship: chemistry.

Without a trusting, organic and egalitarian partnership between pupil and tutor, no number of hours’ learning will have the same results as when the two respect one another and get on well. The best tutors take time and make an effort to understand where the child has come from and how they feel about their home and schooling. They ingratiate themselves with the family and, with their outside stance on their student’s progress and capabilities, prove an effective conduit between parents and child. They are caring, compassionate and genuinely invested in seeing their pupil succeed and thrive.

The Minerva style of tutoring is what sets us apart

Minerva Tutors are a highly renowned and award-winning London tutoring agency. Since our inception in 2014, we have become one of the UK’s fastest-growing education companies and have helped thousands of children succeed. In fact, a staggering 95 per cent of our pupils have achieved or even surpassed the goals they outlined when they came to us. What’s more, every student bar none who came ‘through our doors’ in 2019 either reached or exceeded their target grade.

With most children currently under lockdown, the value of finding a professional and reputable tutor is being realised by more parents than ever before. An online tutor not only helps keep your child mentally active and stimulated but also presents an escape from a somewhat insular existence during these unprecedented times.

Minerva tutors instil in their pupils a confidence, a hunger to succeed, a drive to know more—a yearning for learning, you could say. It’s why we’ve been consistently rated one of the best tutoring agencies not only in London but in the whole of the UK.

Get in touch with Minerva Tutors today and, together, let’s help your child stay active and positive, prepare them for when lockdown lifts and build them up to achieve their aspirations. Simply fill in our contact form, email us at hello@minervatutors.com or call or WhatsApp us on +44 (0) 2088 193 276.