Why do people tutor?
This is axiomatic. I ain't gonna argue about this. Cause cmon, most tutors (the good ones) are uni students who want some amount of disposable income.
"What can a tutor add?"
Well, this question is quite intricate. One might consider a preliminary question, such as, "How many students does the tutor have?"
Why is this important? Because quantity of students has a significant impact on the quality of tuition.
Say for example, you have a tutor like me, who only teaches 1 student.
They can focus all your efforts on that one student, and put in their time and love into getting them the results they want.
Now contrast that thought with a tutor, who takes 10 students weekly.
Their timetable is spread out. Cause they're probably busy with uni things. They have to deal with 10 students, hence the quality of their teaching decreases since they are simply not able to maintain a standard of teaching similar to the one-student tutor.
With that in mind, think "What can a tutor add"?
Tutors with more students may have the same total effort compared to tutors with just a few, yet because of the quantity of students, this effort is distributed, i.e. fractured, hence the actual effort students receive in their tuition is reduced.
Tutors can definitely increase grades, for sure. But, there's something more to it.
How I see it, there are two meters that a good teacher must balance:
These two come hand in hand, yet are inversely related.
With massive profits, a tutor must take many students, resulting in a reduced quality of tuition.
Yet, doing things like teaching one-on-one increases the value of the tuition(and the quality), hence tutors can change more, resulting in increased profit.
While one might initially perceive these two things as mutually exclusive (in terms of maximising), there are little exceptions to such a rule.
For the sake of this page, I will classify tutors into two types:
Yes I'm aware these words are nonsensical. Just go with the flow my g.
The survivalists, as I have called them, teach students who really "need" tuition.
These are the people who are really struggling, and need tuition to bump their grades from say a 40% to a 65%.
Sure. Those people need tuition. They need it to get better grades. Yet, in reality there is a duality of the kind of student the survivalists teach.
There is the legitimately struggling student. This one works as hard as they possibly can, they struggle and struggle, yet they don't get the marks they want. Not because they couldn't, but for external factors out of their control. Maybe their teachers are bad. Maybe they don't have access to resources, like past papers. Maybe they've been sick and need catching up. Maybe all of those things.
That kind of student can't really help their situation, so I feel it is fine that they get tutored by the survivalists.
Then, there are the lazy students. They could work to increase their grades, by themselves. But they are lazy. They play video games till 2am the night (or day, depends how you see it) before an assessment. And before you take a jab at me for being mean to other people, I consider myself to be partially if not wholly part of this group. I definitely could work better, do more study, etc.
These people get tutored out of necessity. Maybe their parents force tuition onto them. Regardless, it is quite difficult to tutor these kinds of people.
Suppose for the sake of the argument that lazy students are lazy because they don't care about grades. They don't care about the subjects they learn.
Hence, from a tutor's perspective, it will be much more difficult to push this student, to actually overcome their apathy and get them to learn, and in doing so to increase their grades. At the same time, such a process is boring, laborious, and mentally draining.
Tutors don't really want to do this. They want to avoid this as best they can. Because it's so god damn tiring and difficult to do so, for the same pay as one of the other students.
Hence, in summary, tutors(survivalist tutors to be specific) do not want to tutor lazy students, who do not care about the subject.
The successers seek to tutor students who are relatively good at school. The ones who get 90%, maybe 80%. Their goal is to push their score to the upper limits, like > 95%.
These students, who can already get like high 80%s, most certainly care about their subject (or their are tutored to death). They are passionate, and enjoy learning that subject, and the marks subsequently reflect as such.
Hence, it is a joy to tutor these kinds of students because they are able to learn. They want to do better. They are inquisitive, and ask questions that demonstrate some semblance of critical thinking about the subject, and most importantly what the tutor has taught them.
Tutors are quite happy to teach these kinds of students, as they don't have to force this information onto them.
In summary, successer tutors enjoy teaching passionate students
This leaves tutors with a choice. They can choose to be a survivalist, or successer.
If they choose survivalist, they find themselves sorting through students, searching for one who actually needs their help, since otherwise their time and care would be wasted on students who simply don't want to learn. This would be a struggle for them, and not bring them as much value, financially and emotionally.
If they choose successer, they get good, capable students who are a joy to teach. Furthermore, they can somewhat make up the difference from being a survivalist teacher with many students, by charging a quality fee. The financial and emotional value presented is simpler and generally greater than if they were purely survivalist.
The math is simple.
Tutors(at least the ones I've met) should tend towards being successers.
In my opinion(this is all my opinion please take with a grain of $NaCl$), the best tutor is one who takes a few capable students.
Yea dunno why i ranted on about tutors for 1k words. Kinda weirdchamp, but i'm in the mood to write something so why not.
With love(but not for dasindu),
Ed
