Skills a Tutor Must Possess!
and How To Improve Them
Tutors play an important role in the development of students within a broad range of subjects. Having the right skills can be essential to successfully delivering sessions to students and helping them thrive within a specific subject. Knowing how to best present these skills can play a significant part in your success as a tutor and the progress of your students.
In this article, we explain what tutor skills are, list 10 skills that’s important for tutors to have, explain how you can improve your skills and provide steps you can use to highlight your skills for employers.
What are tutor skills?
Tutor skills are the qualities and aptitudes tutors possess that allow them to carry out their job functions effectively. There are several skills tutors need to instruct their students constructively and help them achieve better results. These skills can be used to help students do well in a range of subjects, including English, maths, science, art, history and other focus areas.
10 examples of skills for tutors
Skills a Tutor Must Possess!
Here are 10 examples of skills that are beneficial for both you and your students:
- Patience
Having the ability to remain patient, calm and respectful is an essential skill for tutors to have. While tutors often have advanced knowledge of a specific subject, students typically have less knowledge, or are completely new to the topic. By staying calm and patient, not only can tutors ensure sessions run smoothly, but they can also improve students’ confidence and help create productive learning environments.
- Positivity
Staying positive and encouraging can help students feel comfortable and motivated to succeed. Work to uplift your students and provide positive reinforcement. By celebrating student wins and amplifying success, you can help them stay focused, productive and confident in their new skills and knowledge.
- Empathy
While some people naturally enjoy learning new things, others rely on their connection with their teachers to motivate them. That’s why it’s so important to show compassion and empathy towards those students who struggle with learning and retaining information. Having a high level of empathy can motivate tutors to stay dedicated to their students, and vice versa. A tutor who is empathetic can encourage students to push themselves and achieve their goals.
- Confidentiality
Confidentiality is another important tutoring skill. Generally, tutors aren’t allowed to disclose personal information about their students to people without authorisation. Being aware of this and following the correct protocol is essential as a tutor.
- Technical knowledge
Technical knowledge is a level of understanding of a specific subject or procedure. To help students fully understand and advance in the subject in which you’re tutoring them, it’s helpful to have a certain level of knowledge about the subject or skill area. Keep up-to-date on your subject area and do lots of research to stay as knowledgeable as possible.
- Active listening
You can practise active listening by focusing on the speaker. Consider taking notes, maintaining eye contact, nodding and interjecting where appropriate to show your student they have your attention. As a tutor, display active listening skills when a student ask a question about the subject or wants to voice concerns. This can ensure students feel heard and valued and it also helps you, as the tutor, to know the best way to help them.
- Communication
Having strong verbal communication skills can help tutors relay information that is complex or difficult to understand. Good written communication skills are also important, especially for things like writing the student an email or writing in-depth notes for the student to refer to during revision. Using clear, direct and thoughtful communication makes tutoring easier, not only for you, but for the students too.
- Leadership
Leadership is another important Skills a Tutor Must Possess!. Generally, tutors teach a subject to one or more students, and situations such as group tutoring mean that they manage multiple students at the same time. Showing strong leadership skills can ensure you guide the lesson appropriately and keep students focused on their tasks.
- Problem-solving
Having good problem-solving skills means you can successfully identify a problem and create useful solutions to overcome that problem. Showing these skills within a tutoring environment can reassure students and build their confidence in your skills and abilities. Because tutors often help their students to problem-solve and overcome milestones or difficulties within a subject, displaying these qualities themselves can allow them to set helpful examples for their students. As a tutor, being able to identify anything that is holding a student back from understanding a subject fully can help you come up with solutions to help them.
- Time management
Time management is another beneficial skill a Tutor Must Possess!. Being able to manage your time productively means that tutoring sessions start on time and don’t run over. Staying on task and keeping track of time also means you’re able to cover all the key points required in the lesson, allowing the student to accomplish as much as they can within your established time frame. If you have larger curriculums that take place over weeks or months, spacing your lessons to ensure students have time to learn and retain the information they’ve learned can also be important.
How to improve your skills as a tutor
Here are a few things you can do to improve your tutor-based skills:
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Identify areas for improvements
The first step in improving your tutoring skills is to identify areas for improvement and which skills you can work on. For example, if you struggle with explaining to your student when to use one formula over another, you can identify communication as an area you can improve on. If you get frustrated when a student doesn’t understand something, then you may need to work on your patience and empathy.
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Ask your students to evaluate your performance
Another good way that you can improve your skills is to ask your students for feedback on your performance directly. To get the most honest and accurate feedback, consider sending out an anonymous email survey or give the student a paper copy to fill out after a tutoring session. In the survey, ask them to rate different aspects of your tutoring style. These aspects can include your communication skills, level of patience, ability to explain certain concepts and whether the students enjoy their sessions with you.
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Hold a mock tutoring session with a friend
The third step to improve your tutoring skills is to enlist the help of a friend who you know can give you honest feedback. Hold a mock interview session with them about a topic you understand well. Afterwards, ask them to tell you about the strengths or weaknesses they noticed.
For example, if your friends list your active listening and organisational skills as strengths, but say your weaknesses are your patience and empathy levels, this can make it clear to you what you need to improve on.
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Keep learning
Skills a Tutor Must Possess! You can also improve your tutor-based skills by challenging yourself to keep learning. Educate yourself about different tutoring methods and learning styles and regularly practice your knowledge on the subject you’re tutoring in. As you gain experience and knowledge, you may notice your skills as a tutor growing as well. Working to understand students’ unique learning styles, develop effective teaching strategies and create interesting lesson plans can help you develop your skills and become a better tutor.
Thanks for reading…
Skills a Tutor Must Possess!
If you have any other ways of improving Tutors skills, kindly mention them in the comment section!
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Skills a Tutor Must Possess!
