Find a Tutor – 15 Questions to Help Qualify a Tutor
1. What do you charge? Fees can range anywhere from $15-$75/hour. Usually at the lower end of the scale are people without degrees or teaching credentials. They could also be high school or college students looking to earn some additional income. Depending on their academic knowledge and their ability to explain things, these less expensive tutors may or may not be a good match for your child. At the upper end of the scale are people with advanced degrees (Masters and Doctorates) as well as college professors. Again, just because they look good on paper and charge a lot of money doesn’t mean they are the best tutors. What you are looking for is someone your child can relate to and understand, someone who explains things in different ways until your child “gets it.” Feel lucky if you can find a certified teacher who has a good rapport with your child that charges anywhere between $20-$40/hour.
2. What is the length of a session, and how often should the student meet with you? To be the most effective, tutors should meet with students 2-3 times a week. Sessions can range from 1/2 hour to 2 hours, depending on the age of your child. Very young children have short attention spans and should meet more often but for shorter periods of time. High school students can focus for up to two hours if the tutor varies the activities and keeps the discussions lively. Even if students are attending 2 hour sessions, they should still meet with a tutor at least twice a week. By only meeting once a week, students are not able to get enough feedback about the material they are covering and do not have the consistency they need to succeed in their problem areas.
3. How long have you been tutoring? Tutors who have at least one year of experience have had time to work out the kinks in their systems. That’s not to say that tutors just starting out won’t be excellent teachers for your student, especially if they have previous experience as teachers. However, novice tutors probably haven’t worked out their billing system or their cancellation policy or other types of business matters. They may not have as many resources available to them as tutors who have been in business longer. Conversely, just because a tutor has 20 years of experience doesn’t mean he/she will be a good match for your child. Sometimes older tutors get set in their ways and have difficulty adjusting their system to new material or children with problems focusing. Making sure your student gets along with the tutor is one of the most important factors in ensuring the relationship is a successful one.
Learning Programs For Early Childhood
When you have children in your house who are not yet old enough to join regular school but definitely have the capability of acquiring some knowledge, one of the best things that you can do to help your child and yourself is to enroll him into an early childhood learning program.
These programs are obviously helpful for your child and also ensure that you get a break from the screaming, jumping, running and endless banter. Don’t feel guilty about doing this because the early childhood learning programs are much needed by your child himself.
We tend to underestimate the capabilities of our children and do not realize that they have they have a much higher learning and grasping potential than what we can imagine. What we need to ensure is that we choose the right program that uses appropriate and apt skills to educate your child and ease him into the subsequent regime of curriculum and structured learning.
Land of the Free, Home of the Beaver – Literacy Levels in Canada, Why Should We Care
Logic would tell us that there is something dreadfully wrong when almost half of the nation does not meet the minimum literacy level. However, the problem goes deeper than one might think. We know that being illiterate can effect job prospects, but consider your daily routine and how often you need to read just to get by. To get an idea, try the simple exercise of keeping track of how many times you use your reading skills in a day; it will give you an idea of just what a necessity being literate is and the impact it would have if you could not.
So what? As long as illiteracy does not cost me money!
When you understand that our literacy levels play a huge role in whether or not our ‘True North’ remains ‘Strong and Free’ you may feel a slight pang of concern. Our entire democratic society depends on an educated, informed electorate.