January is a time for fresh starts and new beginnings. It’s a time where we reflect on what has been and what we want to accomplish in the future. We vow to exercise more and eat right. We make resolutions to spend more time with the family and prioritize our relationships.But don’t forget to include your children’s educational advancement when making resolutions this year. January is the perfect time to evaluate how to help your child excel academically. Is he bored at school? Is she struggling in math? Are there tears every night when it’s homework time? If so, private tutoring should be on your family’s goal list for 2016.
Benefits of Private Tutoring
One on one attention is always helpful and can provide the following benefits.
Private Tutoring Can Pinpoint Issues and Find Solutions
It’s easy for kids to feel frustrated—whether they aren’t understanding academic topics or they are bored with assignments provided at school. Private tutors are skilled at dissecting issues and providing a plan to address them. Sometimes a child is having difficulty with an advanced subject because his or her foundational skills are lacking. Private tutors can go back and build those necessary skills to allow a student to excel as subjects get progressively more difficult. Or maybe a child is breezing through school assignments and needs more challenging work to supplement his or her learning. Private tutors have access to resources that can help parents know their child is learning at his or her maximum capacity—and some may be able to help navigate the complicated requirements for enrolling in gifted programs in public schools.
Private Tutoring Can Bolster Confidence
Parents know that it doesn’t take much for children to question their abilities. Encouragement from mom and dad sometimes isn’t enough to convince kids that they have skills within them to succeed. Private tutors are adults with authority who can convince their pupils that they are capable of achieving academic success.
Building a student’s confidence is a key element to future successes. According to a blog article in Psychology Today, Fredric Neuman, M.D. states, “Low self-esteem is a thinking disorder in which an individual views him/herself as inadequate, unlovable, and/or incompetent. Once formed, this negative view permeates every thought, producing faulty assumptions and ongoing self-defeating behavior.”1 A private tutor can help bolster confidence that can help a student in every aspect of his or her life.
Private Tutoring Offers Flexible Schedules and Locations
Whether sessions take place once per week or more frequently, private tutoring allows flexibility for a family’s schedule. Scheduling around soccer or band practice, tennis lessons or religion classes is far easier with private tutoring than other after-school learning options. Even better, a tutor may make house calls and can work with a child in the comfort of his or her home. Or if the home proves to have too many distractions, a tutor may work in a library or another educational facility. The parent can control both the time and location of private tutoring sessions.
Private Tutors Offer Individual Attention
One-on-one attention is the best way to get children on the path to success more quickly. Private tutors can identify the way each child learns best. Is the pupil a visual learner who needs to see pictures, diagrams, and maps to understand? Or is the pupil a physical learner who needs to participate in role playing or drawing diagrams to learn? Unlike traditional classrooms, private tutors can tailor sessions for the most effective learning approach for each child.
Private Tutors Help You Turn Over Academics to an Expert
More than anything, private tutoring takes away the drama often found at the kitchen table when parents are trying to help children with homework. Private tutors are experts at explaining concepts and providing tricks for success—whether the subject is math, English, science, or history. They are up to date on Common Core standards and the new methods being taught in schools. Partnering with a private tutor can help maintain peace in the family and start the new year off right.
Does your family have other academic goals for the new year? Let us know in the comments!
Author: Amy Daniels, Marketing Manager at MathWizard, Inc.
