How can a tutor help my elementary school child's performance?
Tutors come in handy for a couple of different reasons. Sometimes tutors just act as one more person to present information to your child and support your child's education. Some kids are great at learning in a big setting and picking up information that they need; other kids tend to just day dream straight through group lessons or don't understand at the pace at which a particular teacher is talking. So sometimes a tutor can just kind of bring it back, put the lesson at the right pace and present it in the right way for your particular child. Sometimes a tutor steps in when your child needs help with something that you simply can't help with. For example, if you have fears about math or never learned it well, or, English isn't your first language and you want someone else to come in and do the grammar and the writing with your child. Tutors also play a really interesting role because tutors aren't invested in your child the way you are as a parent. I've had a lot of parents who just say about working with their child, "He screams at me and we end up in a huge fight." The great thing I always tell a parent is, as a tutor, I don't have to have dinner with your child after we work together. I can work, I can push him, he can hate me by the time I leave - I hope he doesn't, but he can. By next week it will be fine. Parents can sit down and have family dinner and talk to him about other things, and not have all of that pressure from the tutoring hanging over their heads. As a tutor, I'm also not sitting there worrying, "Okay, is he going to go to college? Where's he going to go? What's he going to be? Is he going to be just like me or just like my partner?" I just have to focus on the issue at hand. Tutors can come to teach your child minus all the emotional baggage that you bring into the situation when you try to help your child with schoolwork yourself.
