Be the Bridge Between Your Child’s Teacher and Tutor
When a tutor becomes part of your child’s educational equation, it is important to remember that you, the parent, are the key to ensuring your child is getting the most enriching experience possible. These three tips will help ensure you are an effective bridge between your child’s teacher and tutor.
Communication
An important factor in making a tutoring experience beneficial is to ensure everyone involved is on the same page and has access to as much information as necessary about your child’s academic struggles and successes. As a parent, you are likely one of the only individuals your child’s teacher(s) can legally speak to about your child. Therefore, it is imperative that you are able to keep in touch with your child’s teacher and stay informed about the progress your child is making in class. Get in the habit of emailing or speaking to your child’s teacher regularly to see what progress is being made and what they suggest would be a beneficial use of tutoring sessions. By relaying this information to your child’s tutor, you are helping the tutor to make informed plans and create relevant supports to help facilitate growth. Also, be sure to share with the teacher what work is being done at home with the tutor so you can get another point of feedback about whether growth is occurring and if your tutor is truly being effective.
Share Your Child’s Work
When your child brings home completed work from school, make it available to the tutor. This not only provides examples of your child’s strengths and weaknesses, but it allows the tutor insight into what is being asked of your child in school. Your tutor should be prepared to tailor instruction to help promote success in the particular forms of assessment given by the teacher. You may also want to share with the teacher examples of the work that your child is doing during tutoring sessions. This will help the teacher to get a more complete picture of your child’s successes and struggles.
Avoid Teacher vs. Tutor
Do not allow there to be negative talk by the tutor about the teacher or vice a versa. The ultimate goal is to create a support structure between home and school whereby academic gains can be made.
If there are aspects of your child’s teacher’s pedagogy you are not particularly impressed with, use appropriate administrative channels to voice those concerns. Venting these frustrations to a tutor will not do anything to help the situation. For some productive ways to handle teacher issues, check out this article from Parenting.
On the other hand, if your tutor is the one bringing up criticisms about your child’s teacher, kindly ask them to refrain. As a tutor, it can be tempting to speculate about better methods or curricular changes, but the tutor’s role is not to be a critic. The tutor is in the picture solely to provide practice and support for a child’s educational needs, not to take the lead. If your tutor is too preoccupied with playing Monday-morning-quarterback to the efforts of your child’s teacher, it may be time to find a new tutor.
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