3 Reasons Hiring a Math Tutor Benefits Your Student

As both a math tutor and someone who has received tutoring in the past, I think the 3 big reasons tutoring can help a student are:

1)     Take your time. Not everyone learns everything at the same speed. What one person may intuitively understand, another may not be able to make heads or tails of and visa-versa. In a classroom environment being able to quickly and intuitively understand the material is vital for staying on top of the course and failing to do so can lead to semester-long difficulties. With a tutor this becomes a non-issue. Working with a tutor means the student can spend as much or as little time on a given topic as needed, if a topic is well understood it can be quickly reviewed in 5 minutes or skipped entirely while at the same time a more difficult topic could be given several hours if needed to ensure total understanding.

2)     Tailored learning. In the same vain as above, we know that not everyone learns in the same way. Some prefer to go over textbook examples while others prefer to do actual problems, while still others may just need a different way of explaining then what a textbook or teacher will offer. Obviously in the limited amount of time that a single class period has, it’s impractical to explain a concept many different ways so a teacher will have to pick just one or two and hope that most people will understand from that. However, a tutor can work directly with a student to find the best method of teaching for them. When taken with the first point, this also means that a tutor can explain things multiple times, multiple different ways if required to really cement a particular concept.

3)     No pressure. Inherently there is pressure to do well in school, which is perfectly understandable, but does add a level of stress for the student since there is a perception that they must understand the material quickly and be able to apply it on the spot for homework and exams. Their grades depend on them getting it quickly, and no one likes to get a bad mark on work they’ve done. This sort of pressure isn’t conducive to learning and in the worst case can lead to a negative feedback loop where the worry of not doing well can lead to loss of focus when doing work which in turn makes the student do worse, causing them further stress. None of this is a problem with a tutor since the tutor’s entirely there to help the student, they don’t assign grades or homework. A tutor is solely there to cultivate understanding and work for the benefit of the student they’re tutoring. This creates a more relaxed and stress-free learning environment, which in turn promotes learning and understanding.